Artist Mike Winkelmann, also known as Beeple, became the poster child for the NFT craze when his digital artwork Everydays: The First 5000 Days sold for a record-breaking $69.3 million in March.
The sale was backed by an NFT, or nonfungible token, that authenticates the ownership of digital assets. The sometimes staggering sums attached to NFT transactions in the heat of the fervor a few months ago—and then the cooling in the market shortly thereafter—have led skeptics to believe it’s all just a bubble.
But Winkelmann is leveraging the hype around his own success to create what he hopes will be a more sustainable market for NFTs through his new venture, Wenew, a curated platform to auction off historic and iconic moments across sports, politics, history, fashion, and more.
“We’re really trying to add as much value to these NFTs as possible,” Winkelmann says. “Everybody’s [asking], What gives NFTs value? And it’s really no different than any other medium, whether that be music or paintings. It’s the emotional connections we have that gets to people.”
Winkelmann chose to create a platform of existing cultural milestones as opposed to, say, curating and auctioning original digital art as a way to align the value of NFTs with these valuable moments in history.
“This is something that connects with people in a different way than digital art does,” he says. “By taking moments that we already have given relevance to in culture, it’s another use case for NFTs that I think will show people the value of these things in a different way.”Still, one of the the persisting criticisms of selling moments like Murray’s win, or other iconic sports moments such as NBA Top Shot, or memes, tweets, and so forth, is that they’re already accessible to everyone. In a way, offering physical experiences does make it feel like you’re not just buying a YouTube clip.
That said, Winkelmann doesn’t see Wenew’s approach as a dismissal of the value of NFTs as is. “Does the NFT itself have value without those things? Absolutely, but it can’t hurt to have those things,” he says. “It’s almost like a relationship between the collector and the creator that can evolve over time. It’s definitely something that does add value to it and that we believe is another differentiating factor from the other NFT platforms.”
At the moment, Wenew isn’t disclosing its other partnerships that will follow Murray and Wimbledon. But Figge says they’re looking at moments “with the lens of making sure that diversity is super key.”
Another concern for Wenew, and really the crypto space overall, is the environmental impact.
“A big piece of our focus with [Wenew] is making sure it’s done in a very sustainable way,” says Winkelmann, who earlier this year participated in a carbon-neutral digital art show through the Open Earth Foundation that raised $6.6 million.
Before Wenew goes into heavy circulation with its auctions, the company will employ Layer 2 solutions, which is basically a set of protocols to process transactions off the blockchain to help with scalability, speed, and sustainability.
It’s just one of the ways that Winkelmann and Figge see Wenew as being a long-term platform and not just here for the hype. “There’s this gold rush [in] NFTs, like, ‘You gotta get in now or the moment is going to pass.’ We absolutely do not believe this,” Winkelmann says. “We’re very much taking a very slow and steady release schedule to make sure each moment is given the respect it deserves and to add as much value and education around it as possible.”
Figge adds: “Unlike a lot of other offerings that are trying to launch with ‘Here’s how much money we raised’ or ‘Here’s how many things we have for sale,’ we’re really about the quality of the story. We think our moments are so valuable that people are going to want to pass them on in their wills.”
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