Art doesn’t care
Ever since the Bored Ape Yacht Club launched in April of 2021, the PFP (profile picture) membership NFT has dominated the cultural side of crypto markets, as well as mainstream discussions around blockchain utility. Thousands of—aptly named, ‘projects’—have failed since then, on probably a dozen different blockchains. Some remain. And with them, the argument of who will still remain when less remain. Will any remain?
The criticism of NFT ‘projects’ has generally been that they hold no intrinsic value. It’s fair to say, because arguably most of the utility is based on ponzi-nomics of staking, burning, secondary drops, and number-go-up marketing. Yet, despite the correctness of the criticism, and perhaps despite the brains of those involved, some of these ‘projects’ have managed to not only survive a crypto bear market but even maintain a remarkably valuable market value throughout. The value this value is based on? It’s hard to say. It seems in an environment where the existence of the underlying blockchain is under threat from governments, relevance, and regulators, speculation correlates around the potential of these ‘projects’ to become ‘brands’. And despite the fact that ‘brands’ typically sell services and products that people buy without any expectation of profit, these ‘brands’ have deFied gravity and the price has clung to the sky.
But what if it did all crash down?
What if the founders all disappeared. And every collection, even the bored apes, went to zero. The ERC20 tokens nosediving behind them, and even the coins—Solana, Ethereum, Bitcoin—fall-owing to the depths of a trendline that infinitely approaches zero. Imagine all but the infrastructure perished, leaving a series of nodes powering the network and giving life to the code, on which no NFT would ever be created again.
If all of this happened, the pfp NFTs might never be worth owning again, but there is something that would always be what it is. The art.
Created on a decentralized, permissionless, uncensorable medium, crypto art embodies the techno-cultural revolution of the web. The best and the worst, in a way that is interpretable only by the beholder, but un-beholden to the medium. Like Picasso would not perish with the usefulness of paper; XCOPY, FVCKRENDER, and Jack Butcher would not cease with the usefulness of the chain.
Art often transcends the medium it finds itself inhabiting. This story is no different.
So, whether you believe in blockchain or not. Or crypto or not. Or pfp NFTs or not. You’d better believe in the art. It will not fail. It doesn’t depend on the value of Bitcoin or blockchain technology any more than Andy Warhol’s work relies on the value of soup cans. The art will always be art. And art has never been quite like this art.