NFT Art And Photo Minting
NFT photo galley, Opensea, Lazy minting, Gas fees.
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180 Billy Newman Photo podcast mixdown NFT Art And Photo Minting
Hello, and thank you very much for listening to this episode of the Billy Newman photo podcast. Happy St. Patrick’s Day appreciates you guys tuning into this episode and checking it out. I wanted to talk today about some information coming out about NF T’s. And it’s been a great, significant bit of news in the digital art market, at least in the last couple of weeks or something. And it might be a short-term bubble, but I thought I’d talk about it a bit. It’s these, these non-fungible tokens in this kind of weird and abstract idea that I don’t think we’ve seen explored yet, and it’s going to make sense in the future, probably for digital spaces or something like that. But it’s also kind of a strange idea. These NF T’s, these non-fungible tokens, are these kinds of blockchain-backed tickets of pieces of art built into a smart contract so that you can have information about it. And it’s, I guess, it’s proof of origin to the owner. And this is supposed to be what makes it valuable and unique. And these go up on markets, and art collectors are purchasing these digital art pieces to be individual pieces of digital art, or at least have the unique ownership of that token of digital art.
I guess it goes up in value; a few different people have made a lot of money trying to sell these, these NF t pieces of rare art that they’re creating. And it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out. I also think it’s kind of related to the big, big boost that we’ve seen in aetherial. And in Bitcoin in the last couple of months, where people had, I guess, like a lot of money or a lot of assets in Ethereum and Bitcoin, and they were able to put that over into these collectible pieces of art and see that I guess they grow in value. Also, I think William Shatner put out an NF t collection of collectible works of art throughout his career that the NBA put out top shots, which is like a collectible Hi, highlight reel of different pieces of the games this year, I guess. There are other trading cards and stuff that have come out various selling video game tools, or video game assets that you can buy and then transfer in a wallet to the game and then apply like special armor or special tools or unique swords or something like that.
And that kind of makes sense. In a digital world, you buy an asset that you would want to have in it, and then it would do something. But it’s interesting, though, in the art market, I think Grimes put out some piece of digital artwork or some collection of digital painting, and it’s sold for millions of dollars. I think Lindsay Lohan put out just a picture of herself with an Ethereum diamond in front of her face that sold for $17,000. The band Kings of Leon was the first to put out an NFT album and NFT collectible, and I guess collectible band memorabilia around it or something. But I think it was through yellow heart.io was this company partnered with to do an NFT release of their album, which is interesting. And it’ll be interesting to see how the kind of control that stuff into the future. But yeah, they definitely like it at the moment when the NF t story was popping.
So I heard about it a few weeks ago. I’ve also heard about a few years ago, I think, like back in 2019. I talked a bit about the distributed apps and the interplanetary file system stuff being developed. And it’s different and a few others it’s more blockchain but kind of related stuff about using some distributed web stuff to do some interesting, I guess, kind of distributed sales and tools and stuff. But it’s cool that this has some taken off; it’ll be interesting to sort of see what’s going on; it’s getting a lot of attention by digital artists as an opportunity to be a new avenue to sell art and to have an evaluation of collectible art.
And it’ll be cool if it does take off. And it’s probably like early days like it was sort of weird and abstract to talk about Bitcoin early on; it’s perhaps still too odd and abstract to talk about NF T’s and unique pieces of digital art as having equity in the digital virtual reality space. Maybe that’ll make more sense in 15 years, but right now, it seems like why I don’t understand what that was even to do with that. Which is, you know, kind of where I’m at, I don’t know that you like, how you get the accurate equity in a digital asset like that if you can duplicate it and copy it. Again. And again, even though you have a smart contract that does say, You’re the original owner, I kind of get through some evaluation of it. But still, it just sorts of seems like there, and it doesn’t have to hold that much value. But for collectors and stuff, it’s an exciting way to see it.
But what I’m looking at was a couple of ways that photographers tried to apply this to set up their sets of photos or see as a collection of pictures and like, e-book or something like that, or even like physical goods, where they have an intelligent contract set up to have a print delivered to the individual who purchases it, along with the NFT, that I think is just the blockchain ledger record of original ownership or something. So it’s interesting how, I guess, they weigh that out; I haven’t seen anybody be specifically successful with any one way of doing it yet. And that would be interesting to seeing what happens; I was looking at Trey Radcliff he’s, he’s been in the digital photo environment for about ten years or something like that big an HDR stuff, it’s okay. And successful, push a lot of work sells it to a lot of good spots, a lot of good prints and stuff out there, he set up an NFT gallery of some of his prints to be limited run collectible.
So you can go in and select in a gallery and get, or whatever it is that that smart contract, I guess kind of sets you up for maybe it’s a specific print, perhaps it’s just that, like, whatever digital version has a locked content piece that you get there, you can purchase it and then have that as a collectible. And it makes sense for a lot of artists. So in that sense, it’s something similar to what I’m going to try and do where I’m going to set up a gallery of some of my photographs and a limited run as NF T’s in their only run as those NF T’s and put them on the market to see how they work. But generally, that seems like an analog to the same function that you do for a stock photography market where you’d buy a photo, receive the file, and have the right to use that photo. Or if you were going to purchase an image or a digital print off of my website or something like that, and then receive that was just sort of like it seems in a way another analog to achieve that same thing.
What’s interesting is if, if it kind of goes into a different space, where are you getting some digital asset that you’re applying to a, let’s say like virtual reality, art theater that you have. This is, I guess kind of one of the notions that you’re supposed to go along with in the future is you’ll have some like augmented reality glasses, say that will show different digital art pieces along your walls in your house as you go around or a VR environment where you can move to a whole virtual environment that offers you, I don’t know your sports cards collection, or you move to another room, and it’s your digital art pieces, or your I don’t know, whatever other pieces you can collect as NF T’s, and then you have those unique pieces, and I guess it’s we’d see more of the value,
I think in some ways, it’s going to be kind of a bubble since it doesn’t seem to hold as tightly to the value of stuff on the blockchain; it’s kind of difficult to even sort of getting the abstraction of the importance of Ethereum or, or of Bitcoin. And you’re not really.
It’s challenging to Infuse the piece of art with that, I guess, stayed together. Or it seems like something that sold for a high price could suddenly drop and be almost valueless if there’s no other buyer in the market to repurchase it. So it seems like right now, there’s a lot of liquidity in it because there’s a lot of art collectors with a lot of Ethereum cash that is trying to do a quick flip of stuff to see collectible items escalate and value.
And so there’s going to be some risks and some big winners in that. And they’ll probably come out on top if they invest. Right. But as it is for like a real collectible piece you intend to, I keep, or you know, really have and do something with. I don’t know if I see how it’s going to play out, at least in the short term. So it’ll be kind of interesting as listening on the clubhouse. It’s like a newer app. Probably most people have heard of it in some way by now. But it’s a new app. And it’s like audio like group messaging thing. At the same time, we’re outside of messaging.
I think it’s like a group chat. But for voice. It’s silly. It’s got like a conference call. So I’ve kind of just been listening in on a few of them. Everybody talks about Bitcoin. When in crypto and, in this case, like NF T’s on that, it’s full of people getting into it. And I hear a lot of nonsense on that channel; mostly, when I was listening in on some of their ideas and stuff, it seemed like they were a little detached from, like, kind of the realities of what it is to put it together and, and sort of move it along. And I might sound that way, too, if you hear this.
But it was kind of interesting to sort of try and pick up on what they were thinking. And it seems like people are hopeful that this is going to be a significant change. And it probably will, in the long run, be something that sticks around. But in the format that it is right now, I think it’s going to adjust. I think there’s going to be some leveling in the market. And there’s going to be certainly some winners in the collectible space. And it’s not like an even kind of marketplace yet to really understand the value of goods and stuff. So we’ll see how it is. One exciting part of it is the kind of strange part is the inefficiency of some of it. Now I’m talking about the Ethereum blockchain.
And it seems like most NF T’s that are being bought and sold and traded in the collectible space right now are moving across the Ethereum blockchain, through the marketplaces like open see this sort of the one that I primarily See, or re arable, or there’s like, known origin, or a couple of others that are out there that are pretty interesting. And they have some lovely pieces. And some of them are like invite-only, where you have to be known artists or have some connection or have some group review your art so that it goes up and is of some state of quality. And it’s cool to be in that marketplace. It’s a superheated marketplace right now with a lot of attention. And a lot of liquid Bitcoin, a lot of liquid, I guess, asset and the theory to buy that at a higher value than what you kind of, I think, think it would maybe be worth. And so it’s kind of cool that artists can get their pieces in there and perhaps sell something. But it’s also.
It’s interesting because there are gas fees related to I’m not sure, if you’re kind of familiar with the way that Ethereum transactions work, I’m not entirely I don’t, I don’t understand how they change it. It used to be much cheaper to pay, you have your transaction, and that’s a fee. And then you have what it costs to do the work of making that transaction, that’s the gas that it does, like transact that on the blockchain and sort of pay this Ethereum gas, it used to be kind of a relatively low fee, because if Ethereum was valued at a low value, so whatever it’s it was also kind of a lower yield of people trying to demand transactions on the network. And I guess the market demand for it is what kind of increases its value. So all of a sudden, now, the gas fee to mint an NFT on Ethereum is somewhere around $100.
It was like $80; it was $90, it was $124. Lowest I’ve seen it in the last two weeks, somewhere around $65. So for just one NFT, if you are minting it, and that’s just the creation of it. So I guess it just seems like it’s it which would have once been, I should mention, which would have once been like, a few dollars, or maybe Max $10 or something like that. And now, with the escalation to that demand and the gas fees. Now it’s like nearly 100 bucks. So just the way that it kind of works to put an item as an NFT into a marketplace seems a little too costly. And it’s sort of like to what end is, am I doing anything with that work. So it’s cool; it just should be maybe a more efficient way of getting that transaction accomplished.
Like other blockchains can do, perhaps like the same ledger task and record things cryptographically in the blockchain so that you do have proof of like unique ownership or, you know, the particular creation date. But you can do that perhaps for like a cheaper gas fee if you’re doing it on some, you know, collectible blockchain. So, let’s get to the idea. I guess I was thinking that I was looking at the ghost market.io. And that’s another marketplace site that I put up a couple of my photos is NF Ts, which runs on a different blockchain like the phantasma blockchain. So it’s almost costless to put up an NF t on that page, like, you know, if you like 10 cents or 20 cents or something like that, I guess it would evaluate to, and he uses the same sort of system. So we’re using a crypto coin to run the transaction onto the blockchain and mint the NFT in the same kind of ledger process.
It’s the same kind of file asset or unlockable stuff, but it’s just like using a different cryptocurrency. And then, I guess, and I’ve still kind of confused as works. Still, I think it’s supposed to be compatible with Ethereum, or you’re able to transfer that into your crypto wallet. Then how to in the theory and wallet or back onto the Ethereum blockchain, you have to kind of pay for a transfer something there, but I guess it’s supposed to be interoperable. I don’t know how it works. So it’s kind of like, a little mysterious to me. But I’m kind of interested in shadow work on it. So what I’m going to try and do this week is set up a gallery of NFT photos from some of my portfolio stuff. And maybe I’ll try and put that as, as a link on my website, or
Just as a link that I have available. I’ve been trying to kind of debate or a bit between trying to set it up with
Open C is probably the site that I would use to set up FTS with the Ethereum blockchain. But yeah, as I mentioned, there’s just that that heavy Ethereum gas fee; it seems right now to be around 80 to $90, just a mint one. On the open sea, they have a process called lazy minting. That allows you to pay just once the first time to set up your first NFT in your account on the open sea. And so, you pay around $80 for your first minting through that process. But then after that, as you list things for sale, it will do it as a lazy man.
So that means that you don’t pay the Ethereum gas fee until someone purchases that that listing on the open sea marketplace, and then it’s minted into an NFT. And then it’s owned, I guess by the purchaser there; I think it’s set so that the buyer pays the gas fee. So I feel included in the price of your item or something. And there’s like it’s like some circumstances if you take as a low bid offer, then the seller pays the gas fee and it but doing that process, you’re not if you make a gallery of it, you’re not, you’re not finalizing and minting the NFT until the time that the item sells. So if you perhaps don’t sell many of those items, they aren’t ever minted into NF T’s. They do, though, however, list on the marketplace. And I guess that’s a significant benefit, generally, is that you’re trying to list on one of the biggest marketplaces to get your artwork seen. A lot of the painting I see right now is like digital artwork created on the phone or through some digital manipulation, sort of with a cinema graph tool like cinema graph Pro. Some make like a still picture have some flowing motion elements in them.
I’ve seen as a lot of that sort of stuff, where a lot of like kinds of gifts where there’s a couple of seconds of rotating sculpture in a digital video, you know, I don’t know, it’s kind of interesting to see the types of things that are purchased as art collectibles right now. So it’s somewhat interesting, what I do see those that it seems to be artists that are selling things or artists with a big market, following you know, they have like a more prominent Instagram or Twitter or art marketplace network already. So I think like some of the artists that I’d seen perform success successfully in selling their NF T’s in the collectible market, we’re already involved in like the art of like, high-end Fine Art market, with high-end art collectors, that are moving into this digital space. And they have a manager, agents, and a marketing program kind of already laid out for the launch of the NFT collectible product.
And so it seems like they’re already prepared to, to kind of make listing, you know, like, list that and advertise it to, you know, 250,000 people that would kind of potentially be in that collector’s position. So they’ve already kind of at a higher tier position, I guess in that hierarchy anyway. So it’s kind of interesting to seeing how that is. And we’ll be seeing how it starts to take off over time. But yeah, I think it’s maybe perhaps a bubble for a bit of time. But, remarkably, the crypto prices are going up like they are. And it’s cool that the NF t space exists, which will probably advance into the future and stuff.
I wanted to talk about it a little today on the podcast and put out a couple of my thoughts. I want to try and fill it out a bit more in the future. Maybe we’ll talk a bit more about that clubhouse app that I was talking about and some NFT gallery stuff that I put together this week on the next episode. Also, some good stuff. It’s pretty active. But thanks for listening to this episode, the photo pack, So thank you again.