What Cos. Need To Know Before Entering Nascent NFT Market
Michelle Ann Gitlitz, David Ervin and Carissa Wilson, 31 March 2021
On March 11, the artist known as Beeple sold for $69.3 million a digital collage work, “Everydays: The First 5000 Days,” and its associated nonfungible token, or NFT. The auction was conducted by Christie’s International PLC and “Everydays” became the third most expensive work ever sold by a living artist.
A few days later, an image of The New York Times column, “Buy This Column on the Blockchain!” was turned into an NFT and sold for $560,000.
The musician and artist Claire Boucher, known as Grimes, sold nearly $6 million worth of digital artworks as NFTs in under 20 minutes.
These transactions represent some of the highest profile sales of an NFT to date and have rapidly propelled NFTs to the forefront of public consideration. Individuals and businesses participating and operating in this space should carefully consider the legal implications of doing so, as the laws surrounding NFTs are not yet well developed and there is a good degree of regulatory uncertainty in the industry.
NFTs are digital assets that represent anything unique — such as artwork, videos, GIFs, songs or even tweets — as an Ethereum-based smart contract, which does not contain the associated image, but instead contains a link to the image file.
