NFTs
Lots of schadenfreude to enjoy about the NFT craze
For those who watched the rise of NFTs and I found the whole idea unspeakably stupid, The Stormtrooper Scandal (BBC Two) is deeply satisfying. An NFT is a non-fungible token – described here as a kind of digital watermark that can be attached to a work of art online.
So you buy this piece of art, but you can’t hold it or put it on your wall because it only exists in the digital world. And the people who negotiate these things laugh all the way to the bank.
Well, they were. According to one estimate at the end of this film, more than 90 percent of NFTs ever issued are worthless. You do not say! But at the height of the boom, in 2021, an art curator named Ben Moore had a brilliant idea. A few years earlier, he held a charity auction in which prominent artists – Damien Hirst and Jake Chapman – decorated Star Wars Stormtrooper helmets.
Their new scheme was to sell them as NFTs: winning bidders would receive a digital image of them. Initially, it went well. Lots were sold in a matter of seconds and subsequent negotiations increased the price. For each trade, Moore received a cut. “It was like hitting the jackpot, all the money in the casino,” he said. But the entire enterprise fell apart within a week of the sale, and Moore was facing desperate collectors showing up at his door. “I’m $10,000 out of pocket,” one man pleaded. “I’m about to lose my wife here.”