Nfts
plenty of schadenfreude to enjoy about the NFT craze
For everyone who watched the rise of NFTs and I found this whole idea incredibly stupid, The Stormtrooper Scandal (BBC Two) is deeply satisfying. An NFT is a non-fungible token – described here as a kind of digital watermark that can be placed on a work of art online.
So you buy this work, but you can’t keep it or put it on your wall, because it only exists in the digital world. And those who deal with these things are laughing all the way to the bank.
Well, they were. According to one estimate at the end of this film, over 90% of NFTs ever issued are worthless. You do not say ! But at the height of the boom, in 2021, an art curator called Ben Moore had a brilliant idea. A few years earlier, he had held a charity auction where renowned artists – Damien Hirst and Jake Chapman – decorated Star Wars Stormtrooper helmets.
His new project was to sell them as NFTs: winning bidders would receive a digital image. At first it went well. The lots sold out in seconds and subsequent trading pushed the price up. For each transaction, Moore received a cut. “It was like winning the jackpot, all the money in the casino,” he said. But the entire business collapsed within a week of the sale, and Moore was saddled with desperate collectors showing up at his door. “I’m losing $10,000 out of my pocket,” one man pleaded. “I’m almost losing my wife here.”