American writer Elbert Hubbard said, “Art is not a thing, it is a means.” For Bitcoin (BTC) artists, the method is inspired by Bitcoin, its symbol, philosophy, and images. In some cases, it’s inspired by memes. Bitcoin has become a “way of life” for some Bitcoin artists, which inspires their way of doing business, accepting payments and interacting with customers.
Cointelegraph asked Bitcoin artists what inspires them about the invention of 13-year-old Satoshi Nakamoto and whether minting a non-fungible token (NFT) will complement their “way” of artwork. After all, an NFT is a unique digital receipt to prove ownership of a purchase that lives on the blockchain. Surely artists will want to prove ownership of the art they worked on away?
Lina poses with one of her pieces of art. Source: Justlenasart
Lena, a Bitcoin artist who recently moved from Germany to crypto-friendly Dubai, started creating, drawing and printing Bitcoin artwork after diving down a Bitcoin rabbit hole in 2018. She said that while starting her crypto career as a cryptocurrency, Bitcoin changed its approach and took charge In the end. She now runs a “maxi-style” bitcoin wallet:
“My mindset changed and I started working on myself, asking myself what am I doing with my life because of Bitcoin. Bitcoin has become a way of life, so I should put all my savings into Bitcoin.”
When talking to people in the crypto community, she explains that she’s a Bitcoin artist, which crypto enthusiasts ask, “Oh, do NFTs?” She told Cointelegraph that she replied, “No! Material art!”
“OpenSea is full of art that doesn’t look like art — I mean, art is always up to the person, but it was a lot to me.”
However, countless artists make a living generating AI artwork and selling or minting it as NFTs on platforms like OpenSea. The biggest stories of 2021 included collective cartoon characters of chimpanzees – Bored Ape Yacht Club – and CryptoPunks, as well as digitally rendered images or artwork.
In the bear market of 2022, the hype around NFTs has evaporated. However, big-name brands like Starbucks continue to jump on the shopping cart, while luxury jewelry maker Tiffany’s caused volume to increase by 1,700% after NFT’s move in August.
When Cointelegraph asked FractalEncrypt (an anonymous Bitcoin artist) if they would release NFTs of their art in the future, they said, “Absolutely not.” FractalEncrypt sculpts large, hypothetical and time-consuming Bitcoin entire node structures, which it has hidden in locations around the world:
“I created the NFTs in 2017/18 and the deeper I looked into them, the more disappointed I became. They felt deceived by nature, and continuing down this path would make me a crook in my eyes.”
FractalEncrypt explained that the link between art and the token was “ephemeral at best and outright distortion/fraud at worst.” They compare the issuance of NFTs as being akin to central companies issuing tokens, which can be problematic and even litigable.
But that doesn’t mean that FractalEncrypt wrote off NFT technology initially. Like Lena, the two artists were curious about the technology based on Ethereum when it first came out:
“An artist who issues an NFT token and sells it to others in the hope that it will appreciate puts the artist in a potential position to issue securities.”
In fact, Wikipedia states that NFT is “a financial security consisting of digital data stored in the blockchain.” The US Securities and Exchange Commission is focusing on some crypto projects during the bear market. Meanwhile, the issue between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Ripple regarding the latest XRP token rages on.
