Independent Lens

[Typing] [Children laughing] [Indistinct conversation] Mike: Are we watching this?

Yeah.

Okay, I feel like we have to get a little closer.

We have to get a little closer.

We have to get a little closer.

Wait, is this... with the, like, Christie's people?

Yeah.

Hey, how's it going?

So we are in my living room and there are a lot of cameras and crap.

And we're watching the closing of the auction, which closes in an hour and 18 minutes.

I mean, it's already at, like, absolutely ridiculous amounts.

I don't see how there could really be any pressure from here for it to go up.

So it's kind of like, good.

I'm good.

I was always very into making art.

Even as a kid, I loved drawing.

And I'd always wanted to learn, like, a 3D program, the things used to make Pixar movies and things like that.

And so I thought, what if I did a render each day out of a 3D program?

This was something that I did because I loved it.

Nobody was paying me for it.

Money was no part of the equation.

I had been doing these pictures, one every day, since May 1st, 2007.

I hit the biggest milestone in that project, which was 5,000 days.

Finally, I saw a bunch of people selling NFTs for prices that it was sort of like... Well, I didn't think that could be sold for any amount of money.

I thought the value of that was zero.

And so I really just dove in.

And I gave away a bunch of pieces for a dollar.

And immediately, that first night, one of them traded for $6,000.

And then one of my early pieces sold for 66,000.

And it was like, what?

What?

What in the [Bleep]?

Like, this is [Bleep] insane.

But nobody was talking about it because nobody knew about it.

But Christie's took notice.

Christie's is set to become the first major auction house to sell a purely digital artwork known as an NFT.

Now the work is a montage by the artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple.

Christie's: Hey, Mike, want to say congratulations.

You're at 25,250,000.

Crazy, man.

Shut up!

Christie's: Just went to 35 million.

Jesus [Bleep].

What the [Bleep]?

So [Bleep] crazy.

Christie's: Somebody else will get crazy and just bring it up to 50.

[Laughs] Christie's: Every bid will extend for one minute after.

[Indistinct conversation] It's at 50 million.

Oh, my God.

Oh, Jesus.

Oh, my God.

I thought everybody was [Bleep] joking.

[Laughs] Jesus [Bleep].

[Laughs] Oh, honey.

[Woman speaking] Jesus [Bleep].

In the end, it sold for $69 million, which put me at the third highest selling living artist.

The person who is now the fourth highest selling, I'd never even heard of him.

It was just like, "Oh, you beat Richter."

And I was like, "Who is that?"

I don't even know who that is.

And so that's how much this was like, so like, "What the [Bleep] is going on" insane.

Robert: The final bid, $69 million.

$69 million.

I think it's completely insane.

What you're seeing is pure crapola.

Man 1: NFT.

Man 2: NFT.

Woman: NFT.

Or Nifty, I believe we've been calling them.

Man: What is an NFT?

Non "whatable"?

A non-fungible token.

Some people are paying tens of millions of dollars to own a one-of-a-kind online collectible.

The greatest performing asset in the crypto space are NFTs.

Man: Beeple's historic auction had led to an explosion of interest into digital art.

Woman: It's this world of infinite possibilities.

I mean, this was revolutionary.

Man: The first ever published tweet getting a bid of $2.5 million.

Man: Art has always loved sleeping with money.

Woman: Welcome to the future of the internet.

This is what art collectors want.

Sorry, Van Gogh.

Lubin: With any new breakthrough technology, you have to help society understand it.

Man 2: It's early tech and it doesn't all work right.

These things are valuable.

Maher: I feel like you're selling a picture that I could also just find online.

Man 4: It's getting a little weird out there.

Man 3: You could right click and save it.

Man 5: Fraud has found its way to the red-hot NFT market.

Woman; It could certainly be a bubble.

Andrew: It started as a digital art movement and it transformed into one of the largest financial collapses in American history.

Man 6: It's going to get bigger and bigger.

Man 7: It looks like something out of Microsoft Paint.

This is not a new thing.

Mike: We're in an uncharted territory now.

Digital age is upon us.

This is their moment.

The artists are going to keep making art.

That's a little bit too bad.

Let's try another one.

[Startup chime] Okay, let's see if this disc has any life left in it.

I hope so.

[Laughs] When I started working with digital art in the 90s, the digital art scene then was just this kind of other world.

This early generation of desktop computers, you know, the Amiga, and then the early Mac, you know, and the arrival of Photoshop.

All these different media types of sound, of image, of video.

All kind of getting integrated into this one appliance was just galvanizing this experimental community.

[Applause] Are you ready to paint me?

We'll do the hair.

So we'll go up to color, pick yellow.

Man: Andy is selecting from the menu bar, which gives you all the features of the paint system.

But by and large, a screen inside of an art gallery was still pretty rare.

There was nobody buying digital art in the way that people bought paintings.

And for me, that was the nagging feeling.

I felt that there needed to be an alternative.

And when I started thinking about this idea that ultimately became the NFT, I was thinking about digital uniqueness.

That started my kind of self-education process around blockchain technology and trying to just understand what it was.

Normally, in the digital world, everything can be copied infinitely.

But blockchain creates digital scarcity.

With Bitcoin and Ethereum, if I give mine to you, I don't have it anymore.

And now you have it.

Everybody agrees on this transaction.

It's just incredible.

If this could work for money, there had to be a way that it could work for digital art as well.

How to make that digital art into this money-like thing that could go from person, to person, to person.

We've created a system whereby a process that's created that will establish verification and provenance over digital files, digital artworks.

Hey, are you interested in some animated GIF art?

Am I ever?

Hey, you want to buy that?

Yeah, name your price in any currency.

[Laughing] 20 bucks?

20 bucks sounds fair.

Sold.

Sweet.

We have just transferred the digital title of this work.

[Applause] Kevin: It's pretty wild that the idea would become this term that everybody in the world knew about in 2021.

[Audience cheering] Beeple.

Your work sold for $69 million.

[Chuckles] I absolutely think that this $69 million sale was in part a publicity stunt for the entire crypto space.

Before NFTs, what was the largest amount of money you sold a piece of work for?

$100.

Andrew: He's a perfect icon for the NFT space because of the type of humor and iconoclasm that he has.

Like, this is not respectable art.

This is internet based art.

It's meme art.

Some of them are weird.

Some of them are weird.

It was also not really related to a lot of the histories of art that people guard, maybe some would say gatekeep, in the market.

His arrival was, for many traditional art collectors, scandalous.

Why would anyone pay $69 million for a JPEG?

Small: Vignesh Sundaresan, who is an Indian crypto multimillionaire, was interested in this for financial reasons.

Beeple was part of his marketing plan.

He was saying that the traditional modes of valuing art and other things in the world has not caught up to how we actually live our lives in the digital realm.

He was planting the flag that, yes, this is a new world with a new value system.

There's going to be hundreds and thousands of people from around the world who are going to adopt this medium, a digitally native medium, to monetize art.

The sale of Beeple's Everydays was a huge landmark for artists all around the world who suddenly realized, "There's real money to be made."

I mean, it showed that the gatekeepers were not anywhere near as important as before.

And here were these incredibly, incredibly newly-wealthy crypto millionaires who came in and said, "Your art has value and you are the center of this new universe."

The whole culture in swimming was really toxic and it was hard for me.

I wanted to just go off and do art, but my parents wanted me to be a swimmer and go to college.

When I had sold my first two NFTs, they like drastically changed their minds.

Jasti: My first piece sold for $30,000, which was a lot for a 15-year-old.

The next day, I had another two pieces sold.

It was more than my parents made in a whole year.

My mom was kind of freaking out with me.

[Woman speaking] Young & Sick: I was just doing retail jobs and making art at night.

I started making NFTs, changed my life forever.

I didn't think I could be a homeowner in my entire life.

RAC: My auction today, the current top bid, is a little over 10 grand, I think.

render: So I sold my first NFTs for like $6,000.

At this moment, I said, "[Bleep] I'm not doing commercial work anymore."

[Typing] Chan: It was 1958, the French artist Yves Klein, already a very famous artist.

[Music starts] And he's best known for his blue monochromes.

[Speaking French] Chan: For him, artwork is a frustratingly imperfect medium.

Klein always understood that the way his work was bought and sold would be an aspect of the experience of the piece.

And he kind of perfects this with this exhibition.

People would enter the gallery and there was nothing at all.

Not a painting, nothing.

So Klein makes these works for sale.

Whenever you bought one of these, you would get in exchange a certificate.

And each one is unique.

And crucially, that certificate is not the art.

It is a token which indicates you own the art, but it is not the art.

So NFTs are an idea that artists have been playing with for decades.

And they're a huge step forward in terms of what's possible for artists.

[Singing] [Singing] I am on a different timeline Mother nature wrote the plan Shifting paradigm [Music ends] Woman: All right!

Let's do that one more time.

Try to stay right there.

Cool, no movement?

So really more like... More head.

Yeah, more shoulders, more head, more body.

But I'm loving the energy.

I'm feeling it.

Ready?

[Clearing throat] Camera rolling.

Camera rolling.

[Singing] My music videos are forms of self-discovery for me.

[Music] I always see music videos as these performance art pieces, right?

You're getting the music, you're getting the performance, you're getting the dance.

And I want people to understand that these are art forms.

Face on, going to fear this trouble Running out of steam, so my feet get double I don't get weeks or the boys get settled I don't make time for the haters, bubble Even as a kid, I would like walk down Flatbush and like blast my headphones.

And be dancing like in the street to myself and imagining music videos.

They can't make the line So I guess it was always kind of a need within myself, even though the world told me I couldn't be it.

I had all these label meetings and they were trying to box me in the same stories that you hear about a lot of artists.

I felt like people just wanted me to be this bubble pop rapper.

And my work was in activism.

This show is dedicated to you all.

It's about women.

It's about my mom fighting through things with men.

And I feel like I have to do that through hip hop.

I had a PR person at one point try to give me diet pills.

And I remember taking them and feeling like... lost in my body.

I felt like I found love with my art, finally.

And the world was telling me that I couldn't be in love with this art, and I couldn't be the artist that I wanted to be.

So I told myself I wanted to stay independent.

We were making music videos and everything, but no money, just making with what we had.

Gorilla style, shooting wherever we could with whatever clothes I had on my back.

I pretty much used my unemployment checks to pay for everything.

And then one day, my partner, Jahmel, came into the house and he was like, "Yo, you ever heard of NFTs?"

And I was like, "Nah, what's that?"

So I had a music video that I never released called "ilikedat."

Cause time been a lie like the race Like the race, like the chase Wild working the chase, chase the work I minted it and it became one of the first music videos on the blockchain.

Then I realized And just sat and waited.

And in 3 minutes, I got a bid and I took my first bid.

And it was only for like $1,000, but I was so excited because that $1,000 paid my rent.

I think people want to own a music video like they want to own vinyl from their favorite artist.

Woman: Yes!

Oh, that [Bleep] fire.

What I'd do is come in a little closer to me.

It feels really just good to level up.

Not Beyonce yet, but we'll get there one day.

[Laughs] Aversano: Photography is the easiest way for me to connect with other people.

Hey, baby.

Let's get started.

The 5 of coins, the generator card.

So just add 2 to 3 colors you like and also your mystic talents.

Whether it be through refractions or lighting, all these different conditions of composition are involved.

Here we go.

Understanding the value of the tangible, the analog.

This looks great.

Perfect.

I only take around like two to 12 shots for the whole shoot.

I don't do reshoots or redoes.

You'll see the mistakes.

Not every picture is going to be perfect nor do I want it to be, because it's supposed to be in the moment.

It's supposed to be real.

It's supposed to be authentic.

It's supposed to be life.

And not every day is perfect.

Being in college, about to graduate, and my mother battling cancer, it wasn't sudden, because it was always expected.

But when it happened, my mother passing away during winter break was devastating for me.

So the genesis of Twin Flames actually started in 2016.

And I was healing from my mother's loss and not following my own path.

There's a Polaroid show in the Lower East Side, and I saw a set of twins walk into the gallery.

And in that moment, I'm like, "Whoa, there's something here."

My mother had three miscarriages, one during, before and after me.

And I was like, the twin survivor.

And I'm like, I'm doing a twin project.

So I started at Central Park with those same twins.

From there, they introduced me to twins.

And then once I started posting it, other twins were resonating with it and friends of friends were reaching out about twins.

And I traveled the world photographing twins to find healing, to mend this hole in my heart that I've had from losing my twin.

I shot 100 twins within a year.

And my debt creating this project is around like $60,000 to $80,000.

I was barely able to pay rent or buy food.

I spent years figuring out where this piece could live, and there was no luck.

My reaction at first to NFTs was, "What the [Bleep] is this?"

Everyone was talking about it.

You couldn't escape it.

And I think, "Wow, it's not just for digital art.

"It's like, this could be for anything."

When I sold the first NFT, it was priced at 0.55 Eth, which was around $1,000 at the time.

I was very excited.

I was like, "Whoa, it's happening."

And then 20 more the same day, 25 the next, and then 50 the rest.

I sold out the series, like something I've been trying to sell for years.

Sold out in 3 days.

People are actually responding to the work that I've been putting out for 4 years, that basically no one gave a [Bleep] about up until NFTs.

And now I can pay off all the debt that I've accrued creating this project.

I was able to like breathe and not be burdened.

I pretty much broke even.

But then I started getting secondary resale.

This has a built-in royalty system that you don't see in the traditional world.

When there's secondary sales for works like Basquiats or Warhols, they don't see any royalties.

But with NFTs, it changes the whole paradigm of the art world.

The most important part is the self-sustainability that we've always been dreaming about.

When I went to art school and I learned about Diane Arbus and Mapplethorpe, and it's like, "Wow, like, I don't want to be a commercial photographer.

"I don't want to shoot for brands.

"I don't want to shoot for Nike or Gucci.

"I want to [Bleep] be in a museum.

"How do I make art to be museum quality?"

And that's like literally a dream.

Kina: Como madre, como artista... me da miedo estar ahora mismo aqu, en Cuba.

He visto a amigos, a artistas, a creadores, por su obra, por lo que estn diciendo o comunicando, ser reprimidos, ser encarcelados.

[Chuckles] Yo no quiero, ahora mismo, como est Cuba, que Nirvana crezca en Cuba.

Si yo pudiera teletransportarla, sacarla ahora mismo, lo hiciera.

En el 2018 se instaura o se impone el decreto 349.

Man: Estas son nuevas imgenes de la represin de la polica poltica contra artistas que se manifestaron en La Habana contra el decreto nmero 349, que pone an ms lmites al trabajo de los artistas.

Varios han sido arrestados por oponerse... Kina: El decreto 349 limita, primero, el ejercicio del arte que de alguna manera se pueda u oponer a los principios que la revolucin exige, no?

Pero creo que el arte debe tener su autonoma.

Tiene que estar respondiendo a su momento histrico o social, no?

Obviamente ha de tener esas libertades.

En este trptico estoy utilizando la metfora del cuerpo, de lo sexual, como va para hablar de temas polticos, no?

Sociales, de las relaciones de poder, no?

Si te fijas, estas piezas estn intervenidas, estn tapadas con material de embalaje.

Y fue producto de una censura en una galera municipal en Cuba.

Y estas piezas les pareci que el mensaje como alusin poltica era demasiado evidente, demasiado frontal, y que no deba presentarlo as.

Y la solucin fue, pues censurar las reas que refiere el trmino poltica.

Voy a abrirlo.

Esta fue la otra frase que provoc en la exposicin, que dice: "Los huevos que faltan para hablar de poltica sin metforas".

Yo me plante, a la hora de cerrarla, si realmente estaba dispuesta a presentar una obra bajo censura.

Y termin asumiendo esta solucin.

Recuerdo en BBC, encontr la noticia de la venta de Beeple.

Entonces, la curiosidad me llev inmediatamente a googlear qu es un NFT, "Cmo hago un NFT?".

El trptico fue el primer NFT que "minti" en la blockchain.

Los NFT me dieron el regalo de sentir por primera vez una libertad creativa y, por otro lado, econmica.

Cuando pude ver qu estaba logrando con la venta de uno o dos NFT, creo que fue el primer impacto y el primer impulso que tuve para liberarme de la institucin estatal cubana.

Pixel gatos.

Girl: Ahora pintamos este.

Blockchains were designed to be resistant to government pressure, and this has been justified as a way of avoiding censorship, as a way of avoiding government restrictions on people's freedom.

It's designed to promote people's autonomy from government.

The idea behind blockchain is to take ownership records out of a centralized system controlled by a government and to have the records of ownership maintained in a decentralized, distributed way by people around the world on computers.

But governments do a lot of things that people like, as well as things people don't like.

And some of those things people like are preventing massive abuses, and harassment, and frauds.

All of these things that we turn to the legal system for become impossible when these things take place on the blockchain.

Loish: I love to make digital art that has an organic and natural feel.

Even though it's digitally created, it still feels like traditional or handmade in a way.

Hey, everyone.

I'm Loish and this is my little home office where I spend most of my time working.

I was able to build a following by posting my art online.

From that I was able to kind of build a career for myself.

When a friend of mine told me about NFTs, I did some research and looked into it more deeply.

I was not hostile towards this technology.

I just thought like, "Well, it's not for me."

So I opted out of NFTs.

But then within no time, I found my work uploaded to various NFT marketplaces and being sold as NFTs without my permission.

I searched my own name and it gave, I think, over a hundred results of counterfeit NFTs with my name on them, with my art.

I found that the process of getting these counterfeit NFTs taken down was really difficult.

I was just infuriated because I felt like there was no recourse for me.

I also saw that happen to many, many artists that I know.

A lot of my anger came from the fact that the technology had been promoted as being beneficial to artists.

Grimmelmann: Technology can empower artists, but technology can also disempower artists.

If somebody rips off an artist's work and mints NFTs of it, the artist really can't do anything to get them taken down from the blockchain.

Artists both gain and lose.

So after Beeple sold his work for $69 million, I had the expectation that the NFT world would continue to focus on art.

However, it quickly became clear that the center of the NFT world was not, in fact, art.

It shifted over to a medium called profile pictures, PFPs.

This started with the CryptoPunks, these 8-bit characters that people would use as their profile pictures.

For me, what I think really changed the game was the rise of the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

These PFPs are algorithmically generated with certain attributes, like if one monkey has a pirate's patch and another doesn't, maybe the one with the eye patch is more rare, and because of that, it has more value.

And it quickly becomes not about art at all, but an image that is a financial token.

And so then you have the rise of this whole community, they call themselves "degens."

Gino: There's really two different main NFT worlds.

You've got your fine arts sector, which is Beeple, Justin Aversano, people that drop art projects.

Then you have the PFP sector.

So most day traders will play around in this playground.

What's really important when trading is to follow the volume.

So there's been 20 sales in the past 5 minutes.

For me, if I'm looking to flip, if I'm looking to trade, I'm going to look at a project like this.

Is it undervalued?

How many owners are there?

This mutant changed my whole NFT life.

It's a super rare mutant.

I sniped it for 6.5 Eth and then I sold it a month later for 16 Eth.

Then I took this 16 Eth and I bought 3 more mutants.

And then I obviously used that to kind of trade my way up.

I made about 30 grand in a month.

Man: You said that you used to have a gambling problem?

Gino: Yeah, I had a huge gambling problem.

This definitely plays into that addiction that I used to have.

Adam: I have my ape, I have my Squiggles, and I just bought a Beeple.

It's like $65,000.

I'm kind of like the OG art collector.

I actually spent quite a bit of time with Warhol and Basquiat.

So the reason I bought a punk is because it's like Warhol in the 60s.

Paintings, sometimes they're easy to sell, sometimes they're not.

But nothing is as fast as the NFT world.

The more it trades, the better it is.

Whereas in the art world, the less it trades, the better it is.

It's much more of a trader's market.

Are NFTs art?

Are they money?

Are they everything, nothing?

It's probably everything.

There's my doodle.

My little dead fella.

She's got a band aid on her nose.

So I bought it in January for $150,000.

At the time, it was the most amount ever paid for a crypto punk.

And I'd say today, now, it's probably worth somewhere between $12 and $15 million.

People have decided that artwork is worth millions of dollars.

Coins, baseball cards, clothing, streetwear.

How is it any different than any other collective delusion that exists in the world today?

My collection is worth somewhere between $68 and $110 million.

It's a lot of NFTs.

Shin: Because this world is also about money, you attract people that want to make a quick and easy buck.

I'm walking through the club, showing girls my Mutant Apes and my Clone X's now, instead of, you know, having a fresh Jordans.

Little conversation starter right here, like, "How much was your Honda Accord?

"Because my digital picture "right here cost about $100,000.

"How you doing?

"Can I buy you a drink?"

[Chuckles] Man: Are you concerned about the number of scams in the NFTs space?

Oh, gosh, yes.

The complexity and breadth of the scams that are starting to take place, I mean, it's devastating.

There's so much money being made, it's inevitable that we're going to see these sort of actors coming in.

Topshotkief: I was making so much money from NFTs.

I quit my job.

I started with Cool Cats, then Doge Pound.

I saw NBA Top Shot, and I was like, "Oh, wow, maybe I can make it big here."

Every week, I was just maxing out my credit card, and I was always flipping.

So I just rolled all that money into World of Women.

Logan Paul starts hitting me up wanting to buy it.

I just kept rolling it, and then the next thing was a Bored Ape.

Then I ended up buying another Ape that completed the perfect set.

I turned it into north of $500,000.

So then I bought these NFTs called Goblin Town.

I click on the Twitter.

It was a fake Twitter, I didn't know that.

Click "claim," nothing happens.

So I looked at the URL.

Couldn't tell, but the I was an L, or maybe vice versa.

And I'm like, "Oh my gosh."

My heart dropped.

It was hard to breathe.

I called the police.

Obviously, the police had no idea what I was talking about.

$500,000, one click, all gone.

Grimmelmann: If somebody hacks your wallet and steals the NFT and transfers it to themselves on the blockchain, there's basically nothing the legal system can do.

The legal system doesn't control the blockchain.

People in other countries will laugh at the court order saying that this should be transferred back to you.

That art NFT is gone.

It's gone forever.

Kina: Vamos a abrir ahora el OpenSea.

Esa est siendo la princesa Violeta?

Qu ests haciendo?

Y qu va a pasar con ella?

No lo s, estoy pensando.

Kina: Los NFT te dan la total libertad de expresar cualquier tipo de arte que ests haciendo, sea cual sea su visualidad.

Ensales tus dibujos, ac.

Girl: Es la bibliotecaria.

Este fue uno de los primeros, que se llama "El amanecer".

Kina: Para muchos de los artistas cubanos ha sido un espacio de liberacin.

Pero la blockchain es en s tampoco el camino de libertad absoluta que se pretende.

La censura, te digo, en la web3, tambin.

Por ser cubano o iran o ruso, polticamente muchas plataformas terminan censurndote tambin.

De: Esta pieza se llama "Stalker".

"El acosador".

Est basada en un momento de mucha tensin.

Un incremento masivo en el acoso por parte de la seguridad del estado.

Es como que te ponga una patrulla abajo y te la "seteen."

O el simple hecho de que t salgas a la calle y aparezca una persona, y te diga: "Tu nombre?

", y te pregunte qu vas a hacer.

Este personaje que est ac, estudiando en su cuarto, representa a la persona acosada.

Puede ser el artista, el intelectual.

Y este personaje representa lgicamente a la seguridad del estado.

Esa sensacin que se ha alimentado en los ltimos aos ac en Cuba de que todo... Ellos saben todo lo que t ests haciendo.

Y es todo un crculo vicioso que a la larga genera caos.

Yo la estaba utilizando, la tena alojada en OpenSea, la plataforma ms grande y ms importante del "marketplace" hasta el momento.

Hasta que me bloquean, hace un mes y medio, donde perd toda la obra que tena alojada ah.

Y, actualmente, cuando intento entrar lo que me sale es el error 404.

OpenSea es una de las plataformas ms grandes de NFT hasta el momento.

Pero el problema es que es una plataforma americana, radicada en los Estados Unidos.

Y Cuba y Estados Unidos tienen muchos conflictos polticos que producen este tipo de contradiccin.

Grimmelmann: You could list an NFT on other marketplaces, but OpenSea is basically the dominant marketplace for buying and selling NFTs.

This seems to happen every time something new happens in blockchain.

Every time they catch on, it involves some really centralized system, even in a system that is supposed to be completely decentralized.

De: En las plataformas que han hablado de descentralizacin, a mi entender, es marketing.

La descentralizacin es un concepto muy espectacular, pero la verdad es que somos seres humanos los que estamos manipulando todo esto.

Y el ser humano es poltico.

Latash: My music is activating folks to listen, to hear something different about the black experience, about black womanhood.

I'm loud and big and all of myself.

And I found during NFT-NYC that that wasn't really what people were ready for.

[Music] [Audience cheering] We did a show, and I only got to do one song.

And the coordinator at the event shut down our music and told them that they didn't want any more hip-hop performing at that venue.

What's up?

Hold on.

[People shouting] And that's something that hip-hop artists deal with for years.

Along with my performance being shut down at NFT-NYC, we didn't get invited to a lot of spaces.

And when we would pull up, we would see mostly degen, white male, rich folk getting into the party, and us not.

It reminded me of the way I felt excluded from the music industry.

I knew that this technology had this beautiful potential, and so I didn't want the same gatekeeping in the NFT space.

Everybody say, "Web3!"

Everyone: Web3!

[Indistinct conversations] It was because of one of my first NFTs... Art has, like...

So I started these seminars for artists, helping them understand what NFTs are and all the different platforms available to them.

You could mint your own pieces and you could mint from a collection.

So you're going to go ahead and press plus, and then you're going to go to "Mint New NFT..." And that grew massively.

Like, we started with like 30 people...

But the thing I really was tired of was the middleman.

It grew to like 100 people a seminar, which was beautiful to witness.

Man: Can we all give it up for Latash one time?

[Audience cheering] Latash: The industry was hard on me.

I went through tough times, like homelessness, and all kinds of [Bleep].

And then one day my babe was like, "I got this thing called NFTs."

[Cheering] We not going to act like this is all savior and [Bleep], but it was an opportunity for me as a black woman to start to create equity, to start to have some financial currency to give out, to spread.

And it's a blessing to witness.

And, like, ever since I got into this space, I feel so alive.

I really [Bleep] feel alive.

[Cheering] Let's go.

[Rap music starts] [Sings] So there was a several months stretch there where NFTs seemed absolutely invincible and there's this new type of respect that's flowing into the NFT space.

Sinclair: NFTs have expanded the scope of what I'm able to do.

When the article came out, I ran up to my parents' room and I woke up my mom.

I'm like, "Mom, look, I was in Teen Vogue."

[Applause] You're an accomplished, celebrated artist, but this is a whole different level.

Sinclair: I feel like I have become the person that I've always wanted to be, you know?

[Children talking and laughing] Yusuf Twins: We want to give back to the community.

So we've been able to set up an art initiative, which is going to be focused on giving back art supplies to school students.

So which one of you wants to be an artist in the future?

The process from NFT art sales has made it really, really possible.

Have you ever had your hair flat-ironed before?

No.

We told your mom to get used to having a glam squad.

[Giggles] Jasti: All this success has been pretty great.

My mom used to be a teacher, but she quit teaching and became my manager full time.

Hey dude, tie your shoes, please.

Can you tie it?

Managers don't tie shoes.

Moms tie shoes.

[Applause] It's just crazy to be anywhere near where I am now.

[Buzzer sounds] I was thinking about you, man.

I summoned you.

I know.

[Sighs] When we first met you, I was like, we got to [Bleep] take our shit up a notch.

My NFT resold for 505 Eth.

Which twins?

It was number 49.

The one of the twin looking in the mirror.

Oh, yeah.

Man: You're an NFT hero.

I'm about to go to Christie's after this, like for a meeting.

I'm having an auction there, on the 6th.

Man: Twin Flames?

Yeah.

Man: Dude.

It's finally going to where I always envision it to be, and it comes with an NFT, and it's like, it's always been like, remember how hard I was pushing Twin Flames before NFTs?

Man: You were stressed about it, man.

And now... sell this to somebody!

NFTs was the catalyst to making my career, and the entire collection really take off.

So come see these Robert Franks also.

The Americans.

I mean, this is also iconic.

Absolutely.

This is probably the most, is the book cover.

It's...

Exactly.

Do you know how exciting this is?

I'm [Bleep] in this place, and we're having this conversation.

We're talking about my art alongside all these people.

Totally.

Dude, this is like dream come true.

Don't wake me up.

So let's see what's happening down here.

Aversano: So what is this going to look like?

Man: So we're going to do 4 rows of 23 prints each, which is 92, and then there's 7 works left over.

So the horizontals have one more vertical next to the Diane Arbus of the child with toy hand grenade.

You're going to see the NFT and then you're going to be blown away by this massive grid-like installation.

Aversano: Christie's photographs department in New York is pleased to announce a live auction featuring Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus and Robert Mapplethorpe alongside contemporary artists such as Adam Fuss, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Justin Aversano, who will be offering the first photography NFT to be sold at a major auction house.

[Hammer hitting] Hey, what's up, dude?

I'm literally standing watching them install my [Bleep] big-ass project on this wall, dude.

[Laughs] I'm about to cry.

[Sighs] [With a broken voice] Holy [Bleep], bro.

This is crazy.

This [Bleep] is crazy.

I [Bleep] did it, man.

Hey.

Man: Here's the man right here.

Whoo!

Dude, let's [Bleep] do this.

Yeah.

[Laughs] Woman: Excited, nervous, all of it?

I can't be nervous.

I just have to be excited.

You got to hold... hold the energy.

I'm going to hop inside real quick.

I love you, bro.

We're [beep] doing this.

You feeling good?

Yeah.

Dude, this is getting wild.

Good morning, everyone.

It's fabulous to see all of you here.

Thank you so much.

We're excited to open the sale today, the first in the NFT space here at Christie's.

This is of course the beautiful, sublime and haunting work of the artist Justin Aversano.

Aversano: Yeah!

[Applause] Twin Flames #83, which is an non-fungible token, and then the documentary series of 100 prints that accompany this lot.

Christie's will be accepting payment in Ether, and we already start here, 70, 80, 90, $95,000 is already here.

100,000 straight away.

We are looking at 100,000.

110.

120.

130.

$400,000.

Bid Derek, 420.

Still ahead of the telephones, and it might be there.

700.

700.

Man: 800 bid.

$800,000.

900,000.

You're going to go with 900 dollars.

Any more bids for us?

[Murmuring] It needs a smart sale.

The gavel's going up.

It's coming down at $900,000 to you.

Thank you.

[Applause] Man: Nice job.

Aversano: It's always been a journey to be somebody in the art world, to not just make money.

That was never my goal.

I wanted to heal from losing my mom.

And I'm grateful for that.

Winkelmann: This is our new 50,000 square foot factory space, so we can sort of like, bring in people and have different experiences through digital art.

Every time I, like, come here in the morning, it's like mind-blowing to me, and I feel just insanely lucky.

After my sale, I spent a lot of time thinking.

What gives anything value?

What gives a Picasso value?

What gives Van Gogh value?

What gives a Jackson Pollock value?

It's because they did something new that somebody had not seen before.

So this is Human One.

It's one physical piece here, and there's an NFT with it as well.

What's very interesting about this piece is it continues to change and evolve over time.

That's something that static traditional art, a painting, a sculpture, something like that, can't do.

In the NFT community, there's obviously people who are doing things, who are true artists, who are using this medium to do thoughtful things that, again, have never been done before.

But I'm seeing a lot of things that I do not think are going to hold value long term.

People really need to be very careful about what they are investing in.

Is this a true artist who has artistic integrity or is this something that is some speculative pump and dump [Bleep]?

[Applause] That's mine.

This is an ape.

It's really cool.

The hat, the shades.

This is my ape.

One of the peak moments of NFT culture that also serves as maybe its low point is the Jimmy Fallon/Paris Hilton interview where they hold up their Bored Apes and talk about how much they love them.

Dude, look at this.

They look like they could be friends.

They're buddies.

[Applause] It was one of the most bewildering interviews I've ever seen in my life.

Everyone gets an NFT?

Yes, everyone.

Everyone gets an NFT tonight.

Chow: And so then from there, you see Snoop Dogg and Eminem appearing as Bored Apes, all these stars...

Guess what?

I'm making my own NFT.

...getting into the NFT game.

And then I decided to deep dive into NFTs and created Stoner Cats.

I recently decided to retire 5 of my signature moves and offer them as NFTs, so they'll live forever.

I am doing NFTs, if anybody's interested.

Mayweather: We just launched Mayweverse NFT.

The numbers is crazy.

Snoop Dogg: NFT, NFT, NFT.

Conversation starter.

This is a great business move.

Man: I always thought it was like, for celebrities.

They're the ones who were mainly making money off of it.

And I read stories about how kids were making 17 grand in a day off NFTs.

So I was like, "If a kid's doing it, I could do it."

You know?

And then a number of brands started to kind of get in on this mania.

During the Super Bowl, Budweiser did an ad that featured NFTs.

Man: Today, Pepsi announced the groundbreaking Mic Drop NFT collection.

Just a few months before, the center of the NFT world had been Beeple, who was iconoclastic and thumbing his nose at institutions.

So as celebrities and brands push NFTs onto the public...

I'm going to NFT it.

Chow: ...more and more money starts to flow into crypto exchanges, like FTX.

I'm trading crypto.

One cynical way of looking at this is that the NFT art boom was part of a very calculated strategy by crypto mavens to make their product more interesting... Fortune favors the brave.

...and palatable.

I'm never wrong about this stuff.

...to a mainstream audience.

Never.

Crypto or digital currencies have now lost $2 trillion in value after... Chow: When the market started to decline, thanks to many factors...

Male reporter: Ukraine at war.

Female reporter: The supply chain bottleneck rattled the global markets.

...crypto became in this risky asset class that typically fares very badly in recessions.

One of the largest exchanges in the world, FTX, collapsed this week after a chain reaction.

Chow: There is a bank run, and it turns out FTX does not have the money sitting in a vault somewhere, not by a long shot.

This was old school, Bernie Madoff style fraud, but the whole crypto world bore the blame.

Female reporter: NFTs have been dropping in value, having lost 92% since the peak.

Chow: When one fell, the other fell, and billions of dollars of market cap were erased within days.

If you own a non-fungible token or NFT, you are so funged.

We're coming off of a year where it felt like everybody was minting something.

When you talk about NFTs as a whole, where is the value?

I've invested like half a million dollars in NFTs.

Last week I was up a quarter million and as of now, I'm about even.

I watched it go all the way up to, you know, like 3 X of what it was and then now it's down to like 50% of what I initially kind of put it in.

I'm not sleeping on the streets yet.

I was in a high peak and I fell right off.

It was just kind of psychologically traumatic to see the balance of my portfolio go down.

You know how they say, "play with the money that you could lose"?

I didn't listen to that.

[Laughs] [Bleep], bro.

Like...

I don't know.

I need to come up with a different way to pay rent, that type of thing.

I've heard some gnarly stories.

I've seen some...

I mean just... "Oh, my heart."

You know?

My NFT portfolio was 7 figures.

It is no longer 7 figures.

[Chuckles] You have to be kind of crazy to trade NFTs in general.

99% of projects were trash, and everyone just got [Bleep] annihilated.

The space wasn't ready for mass adoption.

A lot of people were greedy, myself included.

This microcosm of the NFT/PFP community, these profile photos where people are buying and flipping, we created the mess we're in.

I hate to say that.

Man: The NFT market had become the greater fool theory.

There will always be a guy to pay more, until that guy doesn't exist, and then the musical chairs game stops when the music stops, and one person ends up without a chair.

Gino the Ghost: Are NFTs dead?

No, NFTs aren't dead, but a lot of people's hopes and dreams are for the moment, for sure.

[Laughs] Chow: So when you have the same people who were buying NFTs go into debt or lose 5 or even 6 figures from their bank account, the amount of money going back to the artists has suddenly dried up.

Latash: I feel for the folks who came into the space for a quick buck.

For my own sake, I was prepared and ready for the bear market.

Let's upload this video.

Let's pray that it's not too big.

[Rap music playing] Should this just be that part, Joy Ride Two?

Today we decided to sell this one music video a hundred times to my community for $160 or 0.1 Eth.

All right, squad!

We're about to upload.

We're about to upload.

We're about to upload.

91%.

91.

Almost there.

91.

It's still on 91.

Oh, my God.

91.

Latash: We would need to sell 10 Eths to make back what we paid for the music video.

Let us pray.

In a bear market, that might be tough.

This is a monumental moment.

It's our first open editions for Lighthouse Family.

This is a big deal.

Pull up and show the world.

Show the future.

Woman: Open your wallets!

[Laughs] Love y'all.

Bye.

Yeah, we just got 11 NFTs sold.

All right, we have one Eth, 1.04500 Eth.

Let's run it up.

We've really found community in NFTs, and that community equates to so much more abundance than just monetary abundance.

I'm witnessing abundance through how artists work together.

I'm witnessing abundance on how like people connect with each other.

That is bigger than just an NFT sale.

Aversano: In the bull market, everyone was so generous and happy to buy the next new project and being early on artists and supporting artists they love.

So it's very surprising and disappointing to see what's been going on with market places.

Grimmelmann: The last year has been confusing for everybody.

Artists who've been looking for resale royalties for years get this promise.

Then the market crashes, and the market places are incentivized to keep the volume of transactions going and so they cut artists out.

Aversano: Okay, let's do this.

Just giving it some texture, it's one little...

It makes sense for PFP collections and other collectibles of wanting to take royalties away, but when you take away artist royalties, it's someone's life you're playing with, and someone's work, and someone's emotions and expressions.

I just think we need to be more self-sufficient and not rely on these market places, because they're not honoring the artists.

The lesson I learned here is just don't change anything about yourself for the market, for anyone else.

Create what's true to you, and I'm still making art.

[Steps echoing] Matahari: El colapso del mercado NFT era algo que todos esperbamos en algn momento, como toda burbuja que, desde el inicio, se vislumbraba.

Cuando pas de arte individual a lbum de los coleccionables, creo que todos sabamos que en algn momento esa alza iba a decaer.

Al ver que estaba avanzando un nivel de declive en el rea de la criptoeconoma, tambin decid retirar y poner en funcin de mi vida y de mis planes.

La decisin de abandonar Cuba es un deseo que ya lleva mucho tiempo conmigo.

Que tienen que ver con la libertad, que uno vive continuamente de censura sobre la libertad de expresin.

Entonces, en los prximos das, estoy saliendo de Cuba a Espaa.

Ese dinero de NFTs fue una parte importante tambin que me ayud a demostrar de alguna manera parte de los medios econmicos que tena que presentar.

Estoy muy nerviosa, nunca he salido de la isla.

Pero mi proceso migratorio se basa en darle a ella un mejor futuro, un mejor espacio para tener una vida digna.

Bueno, hablar de una liberacin a travs de los NFTs, creo que, como todo, han de haber varias aristas, no ver las cosas en grises y negros.

Si me liberaron?

S y no.

Investigating power and privilege in the art world, I find that the question of gatekeeping is really a psychology on both sides.

The people that have the power don't think that they have it, and the people that feel like they're powerless actually have more power than they do.

I think NFTs are one of those key moments in history where they provide a horizon of possibility for artists to realize that they really do have power that they could use.

Yusuf Twins: The world NFT crash happening has given me that time to reflect.

I've been able to focus more on the art apart from just making sales.

The NFT space really brought a lot of financial freedom for us and so allowed us to help a lot of young people in Nigeria.

I don't think I'll be able to do some of these things if I haven't discovered the NFT space.

Jasti: My mom went back to work, but she still helps me out and manages stuff.

I've definitely been focusing a lot more on being a teenager and getting good grades, and I'm very grateful for the opportunities that I had in the past few years.

I was able to develop a whole new style and I'm going to keep doing NFTs.

Sinclair: My life has changed entirely because of NFTs.

I had to spend more time building up my own art and my own style.

In the NFT community, I've had something that I've never had before, which is to be fully accepted.

Like, how wild and also great it is that we're now stepping into a new era where digital artists are getting the type of recognition and this kind of fame.

Winkelmann: We are now at the studio opening here two years from the Christie's sale that... [Chuckles] definitely changed... changed my life.

And it's been an... [Laughs] an interesting two years.

It's been an interesting two years.

Woman: The room just isn't open yet, but you can all step in.

Okay.

This is freaky as [Bleep].

This is freaky as [Bleep].

Uh, yeah, I think these seem very good.

Did we have a scarf on the Picasso?

That looks good.

Okay, nice.

And so when are they going out?

7:45.

Okay, perfect.

Perfect.

Awesome.

Thank you, everybody.

This looks [Bleep] sweet.

Amazing, amazing.

I think traditional art is still quite skeptical about NFTs and digital art.

I don't think it needs to happen just at a computer.

I think that's actually like the laziest, most boring way to experience digital art.

I'm trying to push forward people's ideas of what you can say with this.

Now we are about to do the Everyday.

Man: For how many people?

500 people are out in the studio now.

Man: Let's go!

[Applause] Woman: Oh, my God, Mike!

Winkelmann: The pieces of paper with red dots on them, those won an NFT.

[Audience cheering] [Audience chanting] [Cheering] Winkelmann: What is something that's going to last for a hundred years?

It's got to be a real new idea that actually changes the way people think about art.

When you've been dead for 50 years, the hype train is very much over and you better have [Bleep] done something that is new and innovative that will stand the test of time.

And I'm trying to do that.

We'll see a hundred years from now if I've done it.

So you want to know if NFTs are a flash in the pan or if this is something that's going to have a lasting effect on the art world.

Talk to a curator at the Guggenheim who says that they're looking to put their entire collection on the blockchain, or go to MoMA.

Anadol: This is not just a piece of art on a wall.

It's a piece in a blockchain that has been collected by more than 5,000 people across the world.

Antonelli: The blockchain will remain forever, I hope.

And I think it is an evolution in the way we look at art.

Man: It's just such a natural desire to want to leave your mark on some structure that is going to exist for years and years and years.

Blockchain just brings in so many ideas about possible future aspects of society that are worth thinking about as an artist.

Tolokonnikova: We minted a performance.

It's the first ever art protest action minted on blockchain, and we raised money for reproductive rights.

NFTs can be more than just flipping JPEGs.

Murakami: [Speaking Japanese] This is a revolution in the way people think about value, and NFT art has become a symbol of it.

The current form of NFTs will completely change in five years.

If people are thinking that this trend is over, I would say that you can look back at the early dot com bubble.

At some point after that bubble, this technology is being used in a more mainstream way.

Grimmelmann: The scandals and controversies of the last year have helped bring the worlds of blockchain and law closer together.

The legal system can do more to integrate NFTs sensibly.

At the end of the day, we have to ask, are we going to protect the artists wherever they are, whatever systems they're using?

McCoy: The thing that I've always find fascinating with this technology, we're recreating the world in miniature, the whole range of human emotions and human actions.

This incredible altruism and then this incredible greed.

That's the world, and you see it laid out right in front of you.

[Indistinct chatter] [Laughter] Okay, got this.

There we go.

[Birds chirping] I don't play no games I don't know what you want me to say You're crazy to think I'm dumb Da-dum, da-dum