What Surprised Me About NFT Art (And I Own One!)

The World of NFTs: A Journey of Discovery

As I walked into the gallery, I was greeted by the enthusiastic staff who would guide me through the process of buying and collecting NFTs. They explained that NFTs are unique digital assets that can be bought, sold, and traded, much like traditional art. The staff emphasized that investing in NFTs is a gamble, as their value can fluctuate wildly from day to day, making it difficult to predict their worth.

However, the staff also highlighted the potential benefits of collecting NFTs, such as the opportunity to own a piece of digital art and participate in a growing industry. They explained that some people view NFTs as a form of investing, betting on which projects will be successful, much like betting on Amazon or Google back in the day. Others see them as a way to support their favorite artists and contribute to the growth of this emerging field.

As I navigated the gallery, I came across an exhibit featuring some of the most renowned names in the NFT art world. One of these artists was Brenda, a self-taught 3D artist from Montreal who had gained popularity for her work in the NFT space. Her latest project had generated over $36 million in revenue, and she had created her own virtual world called Lucidia.

I took the opportunity to speak with Brenda about her experiences as an NFT artist and collector. She emphasized that NFTs are not just about their financial value but rather about the art itself. "Just buy something that you like," she advised, "don't base it on the artist's popularity or anything else." This perspective resonated with me, and I realized that my initial concerns about NFTs were misplaced.

Brenda also shared her thoughts on how to approach buying NFTs for the first time. She suggested visiting a website like Nifty Gateway, which allows collectors to purchase and display their NFTs in a seamless and user-friendly experience. The platform enables buyers to pay with credit cards, making it accessible to newcomers who may not be familiar with setting up special accounts or wallets.

As I continued my journey through the gallery, I was struck by the potential of NFTs to bridge the gap between digital and physical art. Many collectors were showcasing their NFT collections alongside traditional artwork, blurring the lines between the two mediums. This fusion of old and new created a fascinating hybrid that seemed both exciting and overwhelming at the same time.

One collector had purchased an NFT called "Independence" from Brenda's latest collection. To my surprise, it was possible to buy this piece without setting up a special account or wallet, thanks to Nifty Gateway. The transaction was processed on the platform, and I waited only a couple of days for the NFT to appear in my digital collection.

As I concluded my visit to the gallery, I reflected on the journey I had undertaken. From being skeptical about the value of NFTs to discovering their potential as a means of supporting art and artists, I had gained a newfound appreciation for this emerging field. While there is still much to be learned and navigated in the world of NFTs, one thing was clear: they have the power to bring people together, foster creativity, and push the boundaries of what we consider "art" in the digital age.

The Future of NFTs

As I left the gallery, I couldn't help but wonder what the future holds for NFTs. Will they become an integral part of our everyday lives, like a digital equivalent of traditional art? Or will they remain a niche market, appealing only to a select few?

One thing is certain: the NFT landscape is constantly evolving. New technologies and platforms are emerging, making it easier for collectors to navigate and showcase their collections. The rise of web3 galleries like the one I visited is likely to continue, providing education and resources for those looking to explore this new frontier.

As an NFT owner myself, I am eager to see how this field will unfold in the coming years. Will we see more seamless integration between digital and physical art? Will the boundaries between collectibles, art, and entertainment continue to blur?

For now, I remain excited about the possibilities that NFTs offer. Whether you're a seasoned collector or just starting out, there's never been a better time to explore this vibrant and ever-changing world.

In the comments section below, I invite you to share your thoughts on NFTs. What is your favorite NFT artist? Do you have any questions about collecting or investing in NFTs? Let me know!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis may take several seconds complete I now own nft art I don't know how to get to it how do I access the thing I just bought I bought digital art with my own money and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with it but I really wanted to understand nfts lots of people call it a scam there are reports about nfts getting stolen and then you have celebrities trying to bring it to the mainstream can you explain what an nft is a non-fungible token so should we think of nfts as hot to find out I had to immerse myself what have you done to me am I a nft now I ran around an nft convention I toured physical nft art galleries yes physical spaces with digital art I know it's weird stick with me I spoke to artists and businesses that are building up this new world of digital property and all of which finds our way into the Physical Realm in many different forms a lot of it is pretty weird some of it I think is just dumb and of course I knew I'd come across technical issues I'm Bridget Carey and I'm trying to understand nft art if you don't know what an nft is here is a super basic lesson an nft is an online certificate that proves you own a digital good that's it sometimes it's art or song and it could be a ticket the technology that verifies it all is a blockchain yes that's the same as cryptocurrency if you want to verify what nft someone owns you just look up their digital wallet on the blockchain and you'll see the proof right there even if you know art the world of nft art is a whole other animal well actually it's a lot of animals and it brings up so many questions like do you need a special crypto wallet to buy it and where do you buy it and then when you own it what do you do with it and these collections are so weird like pixelated blobs and llamas and strange animals and it feels to me like a scheme to get rich but maybe not all of it is weird I got invited to go check out an art gallery opening at the Samsung store and I get to talk to the artist so let's go check it out and see what it's like this was not at all what I was expecting okay this is more than just like an animated gif I'm liking it so far here on these top of the line television displays it looks like a painting with brush Strokes that had come to life so if I buy this piece I better have a top of the line 4K Smart TV gotta add that to the total cost you know you got to get your frame right you don't want to have your nft oriented wrong in your frame now even with these little presentation quirks these pieces had feeling it was cool it was the kind of thing you want to show off on your wall and some were paired with background music now nfts are making a little more sense to me not that bored ape stuff this makes more sense to me this one is called Soul Trails Two Souls float through an abstract substrate their Trails melting and fusing with the surrounding environment as they Traverse an ever-shifting chromatic world this piece sold for two thousand eight hundred dollars artist Ben Heim explained the tech behind his process it's a bit different to your normal NF team which might be like a one-of-one artwork that a 3D artist maybe has designed and then created but what I do is I create these systems that generate awe endlessly there are digital art curators like Jessica Santiago who work with artists to get all of this made into nfts on the blockchain but why does this have to be through the blockchain why not just sell me digital art as a file so it'd be the difference in just having something that you can stream on your house a movie that you can watch and actually owning it so this could be an asset that makes you money in time or it could just be a really expensive screensaver hopefully the nft.nyc convention in town can help me figure out what else you can do with nft art certainly was a lot of energy from folks who were coming up with different methods to show off nft collections you could put your nft image on shoes or make it a chess set or put it on an Apple Watch or make it into an epic twenty thousand dollar high-end sculpture that takes a team of artists two months to make a lot of folks who jump into nfts buy it as a luxury Flex with some Concepts just seem fun like turning nfts into a video game the Nifty League wants to be the Nintendo of the nft world where every little pixelated cartoon character is a unique nft and owned by someone the value of each character fluctuates and I'm told most members paid around three hundred dollars to get a character when it launched how many characters in total ten thousand total ten thousand possible characters oh yeah yeah ten thousand community and if you want to play but you don't have an nft character well you can pay a fee to rent out someone else's character this was also a play to earn cell game so like you earn a little bit of revenue from from your wins do you worry about this ever getting too complicated to take off that is I mean yeah onboarding people into into crypto is probably one of the biggest hurdles you have to do if you face so lots of folks are here to make money from their nft but everyone also said owning nfts were about more than just making money it's about community community community community members Community First okay nfts are kind of like being part of a club I think it's time to get out of here and see some nfts in the real world I head out to an event space called at ease 605. it has on display the work of artist Kenneth Alexander he has been creating digital art since 2005 but the nft movement is helping give his work more attention and more legitimacy this is the Avenue that I was talking about all these years but like to have like motion artwork or digital artwork being valued and shown in real way as we do paintings and I saw the blockchain as you having your signature on a painting these high-end television screens make for a great canvas but I also learned that these displays now have software that connect directly to nfts in crypto wallets so what's being shown is the real deal people are getting more of an understanding of what it means to have a digital art piece instead of just seeing like a JPEG over the image that you can like get screenshot somewhere you know and that was the big disconnect for a lot of people like what what does it mean to have something with authenticity that's on a screen and there are more places popping up where you can browse an nft and buy it right off the wall on Fifth Avenue in New York City is the web 3 Gallery this is a permanent retail store for nft art and other metaverse stuff what have you done for me am I a nft now what is this this is just metaverse shoe let's unplug a little bit so yeah if you Gallery co-founder Nick rotola explained how this store can help you buy nft art but also you can display and sell the nfts you own if you buy the nft you get the frame so the frame and the nft are connected forever so if you sell the nft you lose the frame oh that's different yes because it's digital but with a physical it is with a physical the staff will hold your hand through all the steps so you would buy it on on our website you would mint it I oh I would you had a lot of patience with me as I imagined he'll need with a lot of customers so here's the first step you walk in we're saying hey don't stress Bridgette this place was like having a personal shopper take you through the better verse so this is we believe one of the one of the coolest games of the future lovely lovely lovely lovely field the value may not always be the art itself sometimes it's just the idea the elephant in the room is this industry is tiny tiny tiny so people are hoping that if they get in early they pick the right project it could be like betting on Amazon and 98 or Google and o4 so obviously we should say there is a lot of risk here and the folks at the gallery try to steer you away from trouble with guidance but crypto is unstable in value from day to day and investing in nfts is making a bet unless you're just in it for the love of the art time for me to visit one of the biggest names in the nft art world the name uh I'll let him introduce himself how can I refer to you Mr Mr render I mean my artist name is Brenda yeah a self-taught 3D artist from Montreal he got in the nft space early and became quite popular his press team says his latest project generated over 36 million dollars in Revenue do you think you're an nft expert at this point I don't think anybody's an nft expert at all like it's so new everybody's learning every day while getting a tour around his immersive exhibit I learned he also has his own virtual world that he's building it's called lucidia so I would call him an expert and I wanted to know what guidance he could give someone buying nft art for the first time a lot of people know the associate nfts with the financial value which is very destructive to me he really killed the art in general so just buy something that you you like don't it shouldn't be based on if the artist is popular or anything if they if you like the art that's all that matters I thought nfts were just visual pieces but that's not always the case for his show he made this piece called Independence anyone could buy it during the exhibit for 69 even if you do not have any cryptocurrency or a wallet setup you can pay with credit cards so it's your first interaction with the blockchain without having to buy crypto so it makes it very easy to so for newcomers just to get in and understand this is a very good gateway to become an nft collector without the without the stress this was the first time someone showed me a way to buy nfts without setting up some special account to make a wallet and yes I absolutely did it the whole transaction was done on a website called Nifty Gateway and it was no different than buying a pair of shoes online I needed to wait a couple of days for it to appear in my account but I'm not the only one who has this there were 251 of these Independence nfts minted that many people also bought one at the show I did not think I was going to end my journey buying an nft I went in thinking nft art was a bit foolish but I ended this experience really thinking differently about it I like some of the aspects of what nfts can do for art and giving artists respect for their digital work still much of this does feel like folks are collecting and trading the digital equivalent of Pokemon cards some hoping their collection gains in value but I like buying art because of how it looks and I liked how some Blended in music and animation but figuring out how to show off the art is still very messy new territory and frankly we need software to make it easier we may see more places like the web 3 Gallery popping up to teach us how to navigate it all I can easily see how nfts can be part of our everyday lives in a few years but we have a long ways to go to make it smoother for folks to show off their nfts both in the digital and physical worlds all right there you have it Bridget Carey nft owner thanks for watching me on this journey tell me in the comments if you have a favorite nft artist or if you have questions I'm still learning like everyone else but I will try to answer until next time thank you for watching and uh let's see uh what I can do with this thingthis may take several seconds complete I now own nft art I don't know how to get to it how do I access the thing I just bought I bought digital art with my own money and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with it but I really wanted to understand nfts lots of people call it a scam there are reports about nfts getting stolen and then you have celebrities trying to bring it to the mainstream can you explain what an nft is a non-fungible token so should we think of nfts as hot to find out I had to immerse myself what have you done to me am I a nft now I ran around an nft convention I toured physical nft art galleries yes physical spaces with digital art I know it's weird stick with me I spoke to artists and businesses that are building up this new world of digital property and all of which finds our way into the Physical Realm in many different forms a lot of it is pretty weird some of it I think is just dumb and of course I knew I'd come across technical issues I'm Bridget Carey and I'm trying to understand nft art if you don't know what an nft is here is a super basic lesson an nft is an online certificate that proves you own a digital good that's it sometimes it's art or song and it could be a ticket the technology that verifies it all is a blockchain yes that's the same as cryptocurrency if you want to verify what nft someone owns you just look up their digital wallet on the blockchain and you'll see the proof right there even if you know art the world of nft art is a whole other animal well actually it's a lot of animals and it brings up so many questions like do you need a special crypto wallet to buy it and where do you buy it and then when you own it what do you do with it and these collections are so weird like pixelated blobs and llamas and strange animals and it feels to me like a scheme to get rich but maybe not all of it is weird I got invited to go check out an art gallery opening at the Samsung store and I get to talk to the artist so let's go check it out and see what it's like this was not at all what I was expecting okay this is more than just like an animated gif I'm liking it so far here on these top of the line television displays it looks like a painting with brush Strokes that had come to life so if I buy this piece I better have a top of the line 4K Smart TV gotta add that to the total cost you know you got to get your frame right you don't want to have your nft oriented wrong in your frame now even with these little presentation quirks these pieces had feeling it was cool it was the kind of thing you want to show off on your wall and some were paired with background music now nfts are making a little more sense to me not that bored ape stuff this makes more sense to me this one is called Soul Trails Two Souls float through an abstract substrate their Trails melting and fusing with the surrounding environment as they Traverse an ever-shifting chromatic world this piece sold for two thousand eight hundred dollars artist Ben Heim explained the tech behind his process it's a bit different to your normal NF team which might be like a one-of-one artwork that a 3D artist maybe has designed and then created but what I do is I create these systems that generate awe endlessly there are digital art curators like Jessica Santiago who work with artists to get all of this made into nfts on the blockchain but why does this have to be through the blockchain why not just sell me digital art as a file so it'd be the difference in just having something that you can stream on your house a movie that you can watch and actually owning it so this could be an asset that makes you money in time or it could just be a really expensive screensaver hopefully the nft.nyc convention in town can help me figure out what else you can do with nft art certainly was a lot of energy from folks who were coming up with different methods to show off nft collections you could put your nft image on shoes or make it a chess set or put it on an Apple Watch or make it into an epic twenty thousand dollar high-end sculpture that takes a team of artists two months to make a lot of folks who jump into nfts buy it as a luxury Flex with some Concepts just seem fun like turning nfts into a video game the Nifty League wants to be the Nintendo of the nft world where every little pixelated cartoon character is a unique nft and owned by someone the value of each character fluctuates and I'm told most members paid around three hundred dollars to get a character when it launched how many characters in total ten thousand total ten thousand possible characters oh yeah yeah ten thousand community and if you want to play but you don't have an nft character well you can pay a fee to rent out someone else's character this was also a play to earn cell game so like you earn a little bit of revenue from from your wins do you worry about this ever getting too complicated to take off that is I mean yeah onboarding people into into crypto is probably one of the biggest hurdles you have to do if you face so lots of folks are here to make money from their nft but everyone also said owning nfts were about more than just making money it's about community community community community members Community First okay nfts are kind of like being part of a club I think it's time to get out of here and see some nfts in the real world I head out to an event space called at ease 605. it has on display the work of artist Kenneth Alexander he has been creating digital art since 2005 but the nft movement is helping give his work more attention and more legitimacy this is the Avenue that I was talking about all these years but like to have like motion artwork or digital artwork being valued and shown in real way as we do paintings and I saw the blockchain as you having your signature on a painting these high-end television screens make for a great canvas but I also learned that these displays now have software that connect directly to nfts in crypto wallets so what's being shown is the real deal people are getting more of an understanding of what it means to have a digital art piece instead of just seeing like a JPEG over the image that you can like get screenshot somewhere you know and that was the big disconnect for a lot of people like what what does it mean to have something with authenticity that's on a screen and there are more places popping up where you can browse an nft and buy it right off the wall on Fifth Avenue in New York City is the web 3 Gallery this is a permanent retail store for nft art and other metaverse stuff what have you done for me am I a nft now what is this this is just metaverse shoe let's unplug a little bit so yeah if you Gallery co-founder Nick rotola explained how this store can help you buy nft art but also you can display and sell the nfts you own if you buy the nft you get the frame so the frame and the nft are connected forever so if you sell the nft you lose the frame oh that's different yes because it's digital but with a physical it is with a physical the staff will hold your hand through all the steps so you would buy it on on our website you would mint it I oh I would you had a lot of patience with me as I imagined he'll need with a lot of customers so here's the first step you walk in we're saying hey don't stress Bridgette this place was like having a personal shopper take you through the better verse so this is we believe one of the one of the coolest games of the future lovely lovely lovely lovely field the value may not always be the art itself sometimes it's just the idea the elephant in the room is this industry is tiny tiny tiny so people are hoping that if they get in early they pick the right project it could be like betting on Amazon and 98 or Google and o4 so obviously we should say there is a lot of risk here and the folks at the gallery try to steer you away from trouble with guidance but crypto is unstable in value from day to day and investing in nfts is making a bet unless you're just in it for the love of the art time for me to visit one of the biggest names in the nft art world the name uh I'll let him introduce himself how can I refer to you Mr Mr render I mean my artist name is Brenda yeah a self-taught 3D artist from Montreal he got in the nft space early and became quite popular his press team says his latest project generated over 36 million dollars in Revenue do you think you're an nft expert at this point I don't think anybody's an nft expert at all like it's so new everybody's learning every day while getting a tour around his immersive exhibit I learned he also has his own virtual world that he's building it's called lucidia so I would call him an expert and I wanted to know what guidance he could give someone buying nft art for the first time a lot of people know the associate nfts with the financial value which is very destructive to me he really killed the art in general so just buy something that you you like don't it shouldn't be based on if the artist is popular or anything if they if you like the art that's all that matters I thought nfts were just visual pieces but that's not always the case for his show he made this piece called Independence anyone could buy it during the exhibit for 69 even if you do not have any cryptocurrency or a wallet setup you can pay with credit cards so it's your first interaction with the blockchain without having to buy crypto so it makes it very easy to so for newcomers just to get in and understand this is a very good gateway to become an nft collector without the without the stress this was the first time someone showed me a way to buy nfts without setting up some special account to make a wallet and yes I absolutely did it the whole transaction was done on a website called Nifty Gateway and it was no different than buying a pair of shoes online I needed to wait a couple of days for it to appear in my account but I'm not the only one who has this there were 251 of these Independence nfts minted that many people also bought one at the show I did not think I was going to end my journey buying an nft I went in thinking nft art was a bit foolish but I ended this experience really thinking differently about it I like some of the aspects of what nfts can do for art and giving artists respect for their digital work still much of this does feel like folks are collecting and trading the digital equivalent of Pokemon cards some hoping their collection gains in value but I like buying art because of how it looks and I liked how some Blended in music and animation but figuring out how to show off the art is still very messy new territory and frankly we need software to make it easier we may see more places like the web 3 Gallery popping up to teach us how to navigate it all I can easily see how nfts can be part of our everyday lives in a few years but we have a long ways to go to make it smoother for folks to show off their nfts both in the digital and physical worlds all right there you have it Bridget Carey nft owner thanks for watching me on this journey tell me in the comments if you have a favorite nft artist or if you have questions I'm still learning like everyone else but I will try to answer until next time thank you for watching and uh let's see uh what I can do with this thing\n"