Pre-Framed NFTs Aim to Make Crypto Art More Approachable

So, this company offered to send me an IO frame that had Steph Curry in it, Steph Curry Top Shot in it. That’s the one that you’ve seen on my kitchen counter, but I don’t actually own that, but what’s interesting is if I go to the back of the frame, there’s a QR code, and I can scan the QR code, and it takes me to the NBA Top Shot website, and I can actually see a digital trail of all of the people who either own some version of that NFT or have preowned it, and how much it’s worth and what its top sale was, what its lowest sale was. It’s a fascinating data trail.

Michael Calore: So, with this particular Steph Curry video loop, how much is it worth?

Lauren Goode: That’s one of the things that’s a little bit hard to get your head around. OK, so in art, let’s say there’s a Picasso or van Gogh, and that’s the original, right, but then in college dorm rooms and West Elm living rooms across the country, you might see some kind of reprint of that art, and you know that is not the OG art. It’s a reprint of it. NFTs can be somewhat similar in the sense that you buy this certificate that lives in the blockchain, indicating that you own some form of the original art, but it’s not the only one in existence.

So, in the case of this Curry video print that I have, there’s a first owner, a second owner, a third owner, right? You can sort of go down the chain, down the blockchain. Then, every time you go down the chain, it might decrease a little bit in value, but because it’s digital, there can actually be replicas of it. So I think there are over a thousand out there available for sale through NBA Top Shot, and it’s a little bit confusing because the top sale that I saw listed in this digital trail on the blockchain indicated that at some point, someone paid as much as $6,000, more than $6,000, for this Steph Curry video print.

More recently, it’s been selling for as little as like $4.75, but that’s also because that’s not the first or the second or the third. It could be like hundreds or thousands down the line in terms of the art, and so the value is lessened. Also, the NFT market has been cratering in recent months, so that affects it as well. Then, if I were to go to the Infinite Objects website and take that video print that I either paid $6,000 or $4 for, depending on when I got in on it, and I wanted it printed, that would just cost $199 through the IO website.

Michael Calore: Oh, I see. OK.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. So, it’s like the frame that is sitting on my kitchen counter that you have seen, and this is where the whole NFT art world gets really heady, that happens to be the first purchase, the first instance of it, because it belongs to Infinite Objects, and they were the first buyers of that Top Shot, and it’s on loan to me. So that probably is worth a little bit more, but you could also theoretically go on the Top Shot site right now, buy the same Curry video print for less than a latte in San Francisco, have it printed, and have sort of a similar thing living on your counter. We just have to then do a little bit of forensics on the blockchain to figure out whose is valued at what and which is more valuable, even though we’re having the same sort of display experience.

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