Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are revolutionary technologies. They may have a bad rap amongst die-hard top-down governance supporters, but their systems can support real democracy, and the distribution of wealth.
Blockchain technology can create fair digital cooperatives that support individual ownership of digital capital, age, race, or social status notwithstanding. The rise of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) illustrates blockchain technology’s ability to lower the barrier of entry to services formerly only accessible to the lucky few.
Before the rise of the NFT Art market, most digital artists were hungry artists. As an illustration,Marguerite de Courcelle aka Coin Artist was a struggling artist before she discovered CryptoKitties and the NFT technology.
Coin Artist’s studio Blockade Games has made $333,000 from the sale of NFT game assets in 2021. A few years back, a 12-year-old would have had a hard time selling their art online. Today, tweens and teens are making money from the NFT art market, unbound by the pesky safeguards of the traditional financial system.
In mid-2021, Benyamin Ahmedsold his Weird Whales NFT collection for $160,000. The 3350 totally weird pixelated whale icons whose inspiration was a run-off-the-mill stock imagehave made Ahmed, a Londoner quite wealthy at a young age.
Ahmed got into the NFT space, not to make money but because it was “cool as an online flex.” He later saw the potential in NFT art and, with the help of his dad, a web developer, turned to Codewars for online coding education.
Benyamin is just one of many Gen Z kids that are making money by tokenizing their digital artwork. The NFT space, much like TikTok, welcomes the young, helping them get discovered and build a following at a young age.
What is NFT?
NFTs or nonfungible tokens, are digital assets. They however differ from cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a fungible token. This means that all Bitcoin tokens have the same value. You can send fractions of a Bitcoin to a friend.
To this end, Bitcoin is a medium of exchange. Its fungibility gives it the money-like features of divisibility and uniformity. Nonfungible tokens are not divisible. You cannot spend a fraction of your NFT or send a percentage of it to another NFT holder.
NFTs are unique assets whose value is incomparable and irreplaceable by another token. You cannot swap one NFT for the other, because they do not hold the same value. Like your average fungible crypto asset, NFT developers store NFTs on blockchain networks such as the Ethereum network.
NFT developers store nonfungible token data on blockchain networks for several reasons. One, data stored on decentralized blockchains is open, transparent, and free. Second, this data is unchangeable. Fraudsters cannot edit your NFT’s value or ownership data. Developers will tokenize your art by uploading it into NFT marketplaces.
These platforms will mint NFTs or digital representations of an artist’s work. An art NFT will symbolize the art’s value and ownership. NFTs have a wide range of applications beyond art. You can create NFT representations of video games, music, real estate, or collectibles. There is a growing market for just about any type of NFT token.
Minting NFT art
To create an NFT, all that you need to do is to create your “Crypto Wallet”. Next, convert a fraction of your pocket money to ether or ETH, the Ethereum network’s native token. The ETH will pay for NFT minting costs. Afterward, connect your wallet to your NFT marketplace account on SuperRare, OpenSea, or Rarible. Upload your digital art, list it for sale, and Voila! You are an NFT art owner.
Since blockchain technology secures the NFT art data, artists can easily prove ownership of their NFTs. Public blockchain data is open, accessible, and transparent, helping NFT art bring change to the digital art provenance system.
One-of-a-kind NFT art helps artists prove ownership of their art. NFT art is like an original but digitized Monet. While anyone can print a fake Monet, original Monet paintings are rare and have documentation that authenticates their history, creator, and appraisal value.
An NFT is a digital artist’s provenance documentation. It gives artists reproduction rights and copyrights, which helps them sell their art online.
How kids can monetize their art with NFTs
By leveraging the NFT art easy to access marketplaces
The ability to prove digital art ownership can help any artist generate an income from their creativity. That said, artistic creativity is not as easy to monetize as functional creativity because the value of an art piece is relative.
First, customers can be difficult to get a hold of. Second, artsy kids will face stiff competition for customers from their peers and the adult market. On top of that, potential customers will expect freebies and discounts, buying art at dirt cheap prices, because they do not value artistic creativity.
The budding digital artist that tokenizes their art and displays on NFT art marketplaces such as OpenSea, SuperRare, or Nifty Gateway will have instant access to a global market that values NFT art. As an illustration, Victor Langlois aka FEWOCiOUS or Fewo has built an empire on SuperRareand Nifty Gateway.
His fame eventually caught the attention of art specialists at Christie’s, a British auction house. Fewo had an art auction at Christie’s that earned him $2.16 million. Fewo a transgender teen, has earned $18 million from his NFT collection in under a year.
By creating their NFTs in their free time
Since the NFT art minting is a digital process, kids do not have to chase down buyers in brick-and-mortar art galleries. They can get to work unhindered by the bureaucracy that keeps children out of mainstream income-generating activities.
Some of them might love the coding process and make a lifelong career out of it. As an illustration, Carlos Gomez, also known as Solace, made her first NFT art from a borrowed iPad. Solace, 18, is from Soledad, California, and has sold NFT art at costs as high as $7,250 on Nifty Gateway. Kids that choose to specialize in digital art creation, on the other hand, can reach out to NFT developers on freelancing platforms for help, at a fee.
By earning royalties from their NFT art sales.
NFT’s will give you copyrights to your art. To this end, you will not only monetize and sell your art for a one-time fee but earn from its consecutive sales in your lifetime. Royalties are an excellent passive income generation tool that can bring in close to 10% of all an NFT art’s future sales.
By accepting payments via cryptocurrencies
Blockchain payment is an easy value transfer process. You do not need to open a bank account to own cryptocurrencies. Kids only need to learn how to store their cryptocurrency private key safely offline.
Conclusion
While the NFT art sector has many opportunities for kid artists, it is also full of risks such as cryptocurrency volatility, high gas fee charges on Ethereum, and scam developers and buyers. It is also a new market, with an unproven record of longevity.
To this end, some people call it a fad while blockchain enthusiasts call it the revolution of a new and fair digital age. The bottom line, however, is that it is an inclusive space where kids can monetize their art and generate income from their creativity.