With NFT becoming the new disruptor in the art market, Linkin Park rapper Mike Shinoda has become the latest one to have taken on this concept of blockchain art.
The American Musician has shared his first-ever digital collectible piece called the ‘One-Hundredth Stream’ which was dropped on Zora, which is a site for buying limited edition art and other goods.
Reportedly, the auction for the digital art piece has received an offer of $30,000. Shinoda confirmed on Twitter that the entire sum will be donated to a scholarship that he funded at ArtCenter College of Design to benefit students based on artistic merit and financial need.
In a follow up tweet, Shinoda revealed that there was more to come and also went on to explain that the non-fungible token [NFT] contains the music created by the rap-rock icon.
“And if the contained song becomes more popular, then arguably the NFT becomes more valuable.”
He added that listing an item this way would likely be more profitable than releasing a song across the globe through traditional methods. He wrote,
“Here’s the crazy thing. Even if I upload the full version of the contained song to DSPs worldwide (which I can still do), I would never get even close to $10k, after fees by DSPs, label, marketing, etc,”
NFT Hype
Shinoda is not the first one to dip his toes into the flourishing space of NFT technology. He joined other popular artists such as Lil Yachty who secured a whopping $16,050 for his first collectible, Carl Cox who also released music as a token, and Soulja Boy who minted his first piece.
It is without a doubt that NFT has emerged as a strong contender to steal the spotlight in the 2021 crypto world.
A quick primer: NFT is a special cryptographically-generated token that leverages the blockchain technology to link with a unique digital asset that cannot be replicated. They are tokenized versions of a non-fungible asset such as artwork, real estate, or collectibles and possess properties and individual characteristics that make them unique and valuable.
NFT are not similar to the traditional cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, which are fungible.
With respect to market capitalization, the non-fungible token industry saw a massive growth of 17% in the year 2019 and was forecasted to proliferate 50% by the end of 2020. According to NFT data resource NonFungible.com, the sales activity has risen dramatically especially since last September.
After a minor phase of cool off in late last December, the volumes have picked up yet again.