Even Sotheby’s Is Pushing NFTs To The Mainstream?

One of the best ways for new technology to gain mainstream acceptance is to get a stamp of approval from a trusted brand, from a marquee name within a vertical. Such an embrace fosters trust. And that may be the for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) which got a nudge from famed auction house Sotheby’s.

The initial observation may be that what might be seen as a conservative, entrenched institution (that would be Sotheby’s) is jumping on to a gee-whiz bandwagon (that would be cryptos in general and NFTs in particular).  But by getting Sotheby’s on board, NFTs may be headed to legitimacy that brings it to other commercial use cases, decidedly less frothy than is evident, at present, in the art world.

As CNBC reported on Tuesday (March 16), Sotheby’s is working with the digital artist Pak on its own first tiptoe into the NFT world. It’s a technological leap for an institution that has been around since 1744.

Sotheby’s thus follows Christie’s, which earlier this month sold art-cloaked-in-NFT (from the artist known as Beeple) for $69 million.  Separately, Patrick Mahomes, last year’s NFL Super Bowl champion, has launched his own NFT art gallery as reported earlier in the month.

In the art world, as in so much governed by the laws of supply and demand, the fact that these (and presumably) forthcoming works are both one of a kind and housed in immutable, distributed technology (you know it as blockchain) ecosystem that is geared toward keeping an asset safe — and establishing ownership without a doubt.

Across all manner of assets, that is, from precious artworks to sneakers.

CNBC reports, too, that there even have been collections of digital sneakers created.

If NFTs are used to make sure that something is what it’s supposed to be — authentic, of course — and that someone/or an entity is indeed the rightful owner they say they are, then it could be the case that NFTs can be tied to the most mundane of everyday items that are created, consumed and paid for digitally. That’s especially valuable for content, such as music, movies or books. Might be especially valuable for first editions — with a clear division of rights management and royalties.

One possible path on which we mused: Square’s recently announced it would take a majority stake in Jay-Z’s Tidal. Platforms are good conduits for distributing content, NFTs may be good conduits to get content onto the platforms in the first place.