05/07/2021 NFTs find credibility among Indians as crypto fever continues

On the NFT marketplace by WazirX, India's biggest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of trading volume, a unique NFT, which was a collaborative artwork between pop icon Ritviz and visual artist Santanu Hazarika, was sold for $391.8 within 10 seconds of going live. WazirX has sold more than 160 pieces of digital art on its platform for NFTs within month of its launch.

New Delhi: As high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) continue to invest in cryptocurrencies and seek to diversify their portfolio, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are slowly gaining asset-class credibility. 

Indians are also warming up to this new digital asset that has given creators and collaborators a fresh platform to earn better moolah while generating more value for their work. 

NFTs allow people to buy and sell ownership of unique digital items in cryptocurrencies, and keep track of who owns them using the Blockchain. NFTs can technically contain anything digital, including drawings, artworks, tweets, animated GIFs, songs or even video games. 

TV host and actor Vishal Malhotra collaborated with artist Ishita Banerjee to release an NFT which was sold last week for 2.5 Ethereum ($5,500) -- five times the listed price. 

On the NFT marketplace by WazirX, India's biggest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of trading volume, a unique NFT, which was a collaborative artwork between pop icon Ritviz and visual artist Santanu Hazarika, was sold for $391.8 within 10 seconds of going live. 

WazirX has sold more than 160 pieces of digital art on its platform for NFTs within month of its launch. 

The crypto company on June 1 rolled out South Asia's first NFT Marketplace with 15 creators hailing from diverse categories such as space 3D artists, digital artists, muralist photographers, canvas artists, street artists and visual artists. 

The platform came without any listing price and extended 50,000 WRX (WazirX tokens) as bonuses for the community. 

"More artists and collectors across the globe are today tapping the power of NFTs. NFTs ensure the exclusivity of ownership and can be seen as a way to digitise artwork and other collectible items," said Sandesh B Suvarna, VP, WazirX NFT Marketplace. 

According to Hazarika, the global NFT market is slowly becoming a crucial promotional tool for all artists to monetise their work and uniquely engage with their community of collectors and fans who value art. 

"With NFTs, artists are now open to working with anyone," he said. 

The WazirX NFT Marketplace is powered by the Binance Smart Chain, which brings the gas fee -- a sum required to mint the NFT via a blockchain -- down from $60-$100 to about $1. 

Since the NFTs are interoperable, anyone can later transfer the NFT to a different cryptocurrency such as Ethereum. 

An exhibition featuring the artworks of Bengal-born artist, Lalu Prasad Shaw, certified using NFTs is on view at Terrain.art till July 31. 

"Terrain.art is delighted to be one of the first blockchain powered platforms in India to register artworks using NFTs, presenting new works and those with prior histories through curated exhibitions," said its founder Aparajita Jain. 

On the global stage, digital artist Michael Winkelmann or Beeple sold one of his NFT arts for nearly $70 million earlier this year. 

An NFT artwork by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was sold for more than $5.4 million in April. 

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey even sold his first tweet as an NFT for over $2.9 million.

According to Capgemini's World Wealth Report (WWR), with the current stock market surge, HNWIs are seeking to diversify their portfolio with alternative investments. 

"Special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) are becoming more popular, while non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are slowly gaining asset-class credibility," the report noted.

Arts

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/cryptocurrency/nfts-find-credibility-among-indians-as-crypto-fever-continues/articleshow/84113433.cms

Interesting NFTs
Noodle Rock
soft body spline & hair simulations in cinema 4d
The Scion
A young figure caught in a moment of distraction, aware only ephemerally of his unconscious being, as it engages in psychological and psychedelic layer spaces. His right arm casually cradles a moray eel; the figure is comfortable but not truly aware of the potentials for danger in such negligence. His shirt reads “Bello” in Pokemon style font, harkening back to a childhood straddling the millennial threshold. To his right side, out of the unconscious deep, shrouded alien heads propagate as a fractal totem, each new iteration a more sophisticated rendering of emotional masking over the cold mystery of the greys. As the scion of the Budgie-Sattva, the young man, in his distraction, is also simultaneously aware of higher levels of self discovery. To his left a psychological topology sets beneath the oracle side of an 8 ball ,hovering; its message a purest concept of acceptance. The “Scion” lettering is in 80’s HeMan style bold declaration. The lower right side of the painting is like a hybrid of melon, feathers, and seeds. The crystals in the background bring light; conducted, refracted, reflected, and dispersed, to balance the dark shadow of the figure’s physical body. The aura of the scion succeeds in layers to point, with a finger, and the crown chakra, toward a center of a mandala existing as nigh pure application of strokes, in essence painterly abstraction, but also revealing hints of the Aura of migraine, and the bi-hemispherical nature of the brain–noting concerns of the possibility of inherited mental disease. Yet the flourish of chakra as it sets against that center is robust, active, coherent, and reveling against all fear. Fundamentally, the piece speaks to the activation of one’s potential to begin to “Know Thyself”, and find greater awareness out of the enigmas of the mind–as an inculcated seed given to the rich soil of one’s own birthright.
Double Room
Rafaël Rozendaal 2021
#46216
By OthersideDeployer
busy_chasing_dreams
Digital Painting hand-drawn on iPhone6, 1080px x 1080px, 2019