The market for digital art exploded in 2020 as non-fungible tokens, more widely known as NFTs, began to skyrocket in price.

NFT’s can be anything from an in-game video game item, a video or sports highlight, or a domain name. 

The most common type of NFTs sold are digital art pieces, and they are commonly bought using a crypto wallet. In order to purchase an NFT, one may need to use a cryptocurrency such as Ethereum or Bitcoin. 

NFTs can be extremely expensive. The most expensive NFT sold as of November 1st 2021 was under the Cryptopunk line and sold for 124,457 Etherium, or 532 million USD. Many experts believe that digital art will soon eclipse the art market, and because of this people are investing in digital art now, with the hope of making money in the future. 

Wall Street teacher Robert Plechner gave his opinion on this topic. “NFTs are a fad right now that I believe will lose luster very, very quickly,” said Plechner. 

Many non-believers of NFTs share this ideology. People without hope for NFTs believe that the stability of the NFT market is unpredictable because the market is so new. This leads them to believe that an investment into NFT’s is a poor investment, because of its extremely high risk.

Another reason that people are skeptical about investing in NFTs is because in order to sell them, there needs to be a buyer. Consequently, if people lose interest in NFTs, there will be no buyers. Therefore, NFTs hold no true value, as the market entirely depends on the interest of consumers. 

“People just invest to jump on the hype train instead of actually knowing what it is,” said student Nick P. 

This has been an extremely common recurrence in the last couple of years. Whether it’s a new crypto currency, a stock that people are talking about, or an NFT, people with very little knowledge in the subject of what they are investing in will buy into it without doing research. 

Although NFTs may be a risky long term investment, there are quite a few positives to investing in NFTs. Many experts, such as Jon McCormack, noted that over time, art generally exhibits exponential growth in price. Digital art could very well follow this track. NFTs are usually sold in an auction format. The most notable sites in which NFTs are auctioned are OpenSea.io, SuperRare, Foundation. app, Rarible and Mintable. 

Another reason to purchase NFTs is to support digital artists. With NFTs, succeeding digital artists across the world can sell their work and profit from it. Some digital artists to consider looking at include Mike Winklemann, Boonji project, and Tyler Hobbs.🔳