Pre-mined NFTs aim to make crypto art more accessible

So this company offered to send me an IO frame that had Steph Curry in it, Steph Curry Top Shot in it. It’s the one you’ve seen on my kitchen counter, but I don’t actually own it, 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 the people who either own a version of that NFT or have used it and how much it’s worth and what the top sale was, what the 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: It’s one of those things that’s a little 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 dorms and West Elm living rooms all over the country, you can see some sort of reprint of that art, and you know it’s not the OG art. It is a reprint of it. NFTs can be somewhat similar in the sense that you buy this certificate that lives on the blockchain, indicating that you own some form of the original art, but it’s not the only one that exists.

So in the case of this Curry video transcript 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 in value a little bit, but because it’s digital, there might actually be copies of it. So I think there’s over a thousand out there available for sale through NBA Top Shot, and it’s a little confusing because the top sale that I saw listed in this digital track on the blockchain indicated that someone at one point paid as much as $6,000, more than $6,000, for this Steph Curry video transcript.

Recently it has sold for as little as $4.75, but that’s also because it’s not the first or the second or the third. It can be hundreds or thousands down the line when it comes to art, thus reducing its value. Also the NFT market has cratered in the last few months so that is affecting that too. So, if I were to go to the Infinite Objects website and take that video print that I either paid $6000 or $4 for, depending on when I got on it, and I wanted it printed, it would only cost $199 through the IO website .

Michael Calore: Oh, I see. OK.

Lauren Goode: Yes. So, it’s like the frame that’s sitting on my kitchen counter that you’ve seen, and that’s where the whole NFT art world gets really hot, that happens to be the first purchase, the first instance of that, because it belongs to Infinite Objects, and they were the first buyers of that Top Shot and it is on loan to me. So it’s probably worth a little more, but you could also theoretically go to the Top Shot site right now, buy the same Curry video print for less than a latte in San Francisco, get it printed and have a similar thing live on your counter your. We just have to do some investigation on the blockchain to find out who is valued at what and which is more valuable, even if we have the same kind of viewing experience.