The Art Market Day 2021: Energy-Guzzling NFTs vs. Market Ecology


12/07/2021

On November 16, NFTs, cryptoart and the art market’s environmental impact were the themes of "The Art Market Day" at the Pompidou Centre in Paris.



by Maïa Roffé

Lauren Moffatt, Compost VIII, 2021, 4K video, drouot.com online sale, Maison Guerlain, « Quand la matière devient art ». COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
After a year of online viewing rooms (OVRs) and closed-door webcast auctions in 2020, the third edition of "The Art Market Day" focused on a burning topic: NFTs, cryptoart and metaverses, a future space on the Internet where you will be able to have immersive experiences as an avatar and, incidentally, buy and exhibit NFTs.

A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique, non-interchangeable unit of data associated with a digital file (a picture, sound, video, etc.) and stored on a digital ledger (blockchain). Think of it as a large database where information can be stored and transmitted securely using cryptographic processes. “An NFT can be just a certificate of an artwork’s authenticity or the artwork itself, digitally stored on a blockchain,” says Gauthier Zuppinger, who co-founded the market analysis platform NonFungible.com. He defines cryptoart, or a work of cryptographic art, as “any artistic creation of which at least a part exists digitally on a blockchain”.
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