Are NFTs Taking Over the Art Market? Notes From Art Basel Miami Beach

Are NFTs here to stay and become a necessary fixture of the future?

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ABOUT

This week, “Opinionated” hosts Ben Schiller, Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson are talking about Art Basel Miami Beach, the annual international art fair that took place in Florida last week.

Danny was reporting from the ground: This year, a new kind of art made its way to Miami, under the picky gaze of art collectors, curators and, yes, artists themselves. And yes, it’s NFTs, or non-fungible tokens.

NFTs used to be seen as merely cute funny antics of the crypto world (remember Crypto Kitties?) back in 2017, but now, they go for millions of dollars in the world’s most prestigious auction houses, like Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

The auction houses are aggressively hiring, fashion brands and music labels are signing up international stars to do exclusive NFTs, and artists are learning how to store files on IPFS and use MetaMask – are NFTs here to stay and become a necessary fixture of the future?

Listen to Ben, Danny and Anna discuss Danny’s impressions from Art Basel Miami Beach – and learn what Tina Turner high heels have to do with it!

This episode was produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso. Our theme song is by Elision.

HOSTS

Dan Ilett

Dan Ilett writes on tech, money and energy. He advises business on digital strategy and technology messaging for large deals. He is founder of Erbut - an advisory company - and Greenbang - a smart technology research company.

Anna Baydakova

Anna writes about blockchain projects and regulation with a special focus on Eastern Europe and Russia. She is especially excited about stories on privacy, cybercrime, sanctions policies and censorship resistance of decentralized technologies.
She graduated from the Saint Petersburg State University and the Higher School of Economics in Russia and got her Master's degree at Columbia Journalism School in New York City.
She joined CoinDesk after years of writing for various Russian media, including the leading political outlet Novaya Gazeta.
Anna owns BTC and an NFT of sentimental value.

Danny Nelson

Danny is CoinDesk's managing editor for Data & Tokens. He formerly ran investigations for the Tufts Daily. At CoinDesk, his beats include (but are not limited to): federal policy, regulation, securities law, exchanges, the Solana ecosystem, smart money doing dumb things, dumb money doing smart things and tungsten cubes. He owns BTC, ETH and SOL tokens, as well as the LinksDAO NFT.

Benjamin Schiller

Benjamin Schiller is CoinDesk's managing editor for features and opinion. Previously, he was editor-in-chief at BREAKER Magazine and a staff writer at Fast Company. He holds some ETH, BTC and LINK.

Danny Bradbury

Danny Bradbury has been a professional writer since 1989, and has worked freelance since 1994. He covers technology for publications such as the Guardian.

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