A cryptography artist known as “Neitherconfirm” recently listed 26 non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, for sale in the OpenSea digital market. Things took an unexpected turn on Tuesday, however, after the artist changed the images associated with each token of computer generated portraits in photos of literal carpets.
It is a well-known comment about a DeFi token outburst known as’ rugpull ‘, in which a fake or little-known token collapses or liquidity disappears, metaphorically pulling the rug under the victims’ feet.
The pieces of art, which originally featured people and animal faces in an apparently stained glass style, are now nothing more than an expensive metaphor for why you cannot rely on the value reserve proposition of any asset that maintains an aspect of centralized to control.
I just pulled the rug in my NFT collection at @Open sea . Nobody is hurt.
It is very easy to change the jpg, even if it is not mine or is on auction. I am the artist, my decision, right?
A conversation by someone who makes a living with IRL art about the value of NFTs. pic.twitter.com/LNAZqPpDMZ– noneconfirm (@neitherconfirm) March 9, 2021
“All discussions about the value of NFTs are meaningless, as long as the token is not inseparable from the work of art itself,” said Don’t even confirm it. “What is the meaning of creating an unpredictable token on a highly secure network if someone can alter, re-link or destroy their ownership? As long as the value of your work of art is reliable in a central service, you have nothing. “
The current price disparity between the artist’s seemingly similar carpets seems to give some validity to his claims. At the time of publication, the highest bid on many of the NFTs is less than $ 1.00, while one (which currently has no offers) is listed at an astonishing $ 139 quadrillion – or about 80,000 times the market capitalization of the entire cryptographic space. No confirmation since implicit who received more offers on their carpets than on the original portraits.
Although the artist’s identity is unknown, they declared on Twitter that his full-time job is “making sculptural art” with a best-selling artist who regularly sells pieces for more than $ 10 million. It is unclear whether Neitherconfirm created unique computer-generated carpet images to prove its point or simply found carpet pictures online and turned them into NFTs.
The cryptographic space is currently experiencing a huge boom in the quantity and value of non-fungible tokens. While crypto artists auctioned off their works for up to $ 130,000 last year, 2021 saw NFT prices inflate to previously unfathomable values. In February, the owner of an NFT created by Mike Winkelmann, also known as Beeple, resold the piece on the Nifty Gateway for a record $ 6.6 million.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also recently got in on the action, auction tokenized property of the first tweet of all time. He promised to convert all proceeds to Bitcoin (BTC) and donate them to the nonprofit organization GiveDirectly’s Africa Response. At the time of publication, the highest bid in the tokenized tweet is $ 2.5 million.
“At the moment, the appeal of NFTs is the status of owning one,” said MyEtherWallet founder and CEO, Kosala Hemachandra. “NFTs are attractive in the same way that lambo’s are attractive to Bitcoin purists. I think this current version of non-fungible tokens will continue to evolve into larger, broader use cases. ”
However, don’t even confirm claimed that works of art are “only a reserve of monetary value if they have artistic value”, as well as subjective beauty:
“Certainly, a token can bring a great benefit to moving ownership right, especially for digital art. There is undoubtedly a revolutionary value in the distribution of property. Only the token itself is not the work of art – it certainly can be, but this is a different story. “
The artist noticed in a posted tweet they will donate 51% of all profits from the rug-pull NFT series to charity.
Cointelegraph contacted Neitherconfirm for comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication.