About collecting and what is different about collecting NFTs!

In the art world, a successful collector benefits from his / her knowledge, experience and gut feeling. Moreover, money, reputation and contacts give many collectors access to great masterpieces of art history, while museums, with their limited budgets, are usually in the second line when it comes to distributing outstanding artpieces in the art market. The top results of the international auction houses have also whetted the appetite for collecting and selling. Art has become an asset in recent years and, figuratively speaking, it is also the nicer stock, especially during a market crash.

In 2021 a new global asset has conquered the investor market: NFTs.

Short history
The idea of bringing digital collectibles to market, assigning them a price and preserving their uniqueness and authorship has been around since 2014. It was made possible by blockchain technology, in particular by the Ethereum blockchain in 2015, by linking smart contracts to a decentralized system that enables the creation, management and transfer of digital stuff.

The real breakthrough, however, came in February 2021 with the sale of the famous internet gif “Nyan Cat”, which was sold on the art platform Foundation for 300 ETH — the equivalent of about 483,000 euros at the time. Money and enormous price developments, analogous to the art market, have also aroused the interest of collectors here, according to statistics with male millennials collecting the most NFTs.

NFT Collectors
They are extremely future-oriented, enthusiastic about technology and ideally rich. They are socialized into a culture of image and information overload, so that it is easy for them to act quickly in this volatile market.

What is noticeable among the players in the NFT world is an incredible desire to discuss, research and analyze. One might think that an NFT collector needs no sleep.

1,000s of CryptoFans sit at their computers for hours every day, studying and comparing the attributes of large collections, screening the team, verifying the investors, critically examining the contents of the respective discords, paying attention to the roadmap, looking for the long-term benefits / utilities of NFTs and their possible applications — both in digital and real life.

All this is then or simultaneously discussed on the real time channels Twitter and Discord, the latter allowing more interactivity — it’s simply a huge group chat. Discord is more interactive than other social media channels and at the same time a new kind of metaverse, in that people meet, discuss in the same chat, go to work and not infrequently remain anonymous with their digital identity — cryptographically by name, and visually as an avatar. Some even act with different identities, depending on the purpose. The collective discussion becomes swarm intelligence.

Reception
Beyond analysis, one specific interaction pattern of these new communities is the representation of the collected assets in social media channels. The active interaction of the actors on the basis of a decentralized system that guarantees transparency, distinguishes non-owners from owners, and exposes any forgeries, leads to a new relationship between image and recipient. Images are no longer consumed in dialogue with themselves, but serve the purpose of dialogue with the world, the cosmos and the metaverse unrestricted in time and space. Consequently, images are received collectively. Their owners are exposed to the pressure or fun of constant sharing and communication on social networks through which spontaneous, new relationships arise and in turn trigger diverse reactions.

NFTs cannot therefore be reduced to a new medium of art, but must be understood in the context of diverse practices that stand in performative relation to each other. Since all internet users can like, share and comment on the NFTs represented in social media, a collective of like-minded people is created and a viral circulation process of NFT projects takes place, which in turn creates fertile ground for new ideas and concepts.

Ownership Economy
Projects are being produced at turbo speed for the CryptoCommuity, which is growing daily.

Those who collect NFTs professionally today are similarly idolized as the art collector from the traditional world described at the beginning. Whether analogue or digital, they love sneakers, like to wear black and work hard for exclusive tickets.

The big ones, the Whales among them, are Twitter personalities known for sharing optimistic views about the future of the emerging world of Web3, Metaverse or Creators Community.

After all, owning digital assets today already means that everyone can be a participant and not just a follower on the internet. What we are witnessing here is the beginning of a new ownership economy that will prevail in the next few years.

Those who already invest in NFTs today are aware that they can also use the digital assets in the metaverse in the long term. NFts will be compatible for all metaverses and offer the possibility to earn money: wear to earn, play to earn, consume to earn. The differences between real work and gaming will be fluid.

Our prediction
The culture of NFTs seems very playful at the moment, but like any culture, it will become institutionally embedded over time via the adaptation of new habitual patterns.

OpenSea has reached a trading volume of USD 3 billion in the last 4 weeks alone (as of 26.01.).

We remain curious!