NFTs: the great rush may be over – but are they in actual decline?

Jack Dorsey’s first tweet sold for $2.9m in 2021 then could not get past $14,000 at auction last month. But some projects have thrivedIt was described as the Mona Lisa of the digital world and it came with a connoisseur’s price tag: $2.9m (£2.4m) for the first tweet by Twitter’s co-founder. This was March 2021 and non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, were...

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Egon Schiele painting of his uncle rediscovered after over 90 years

Portrait last seen in 1930 will go on display in Vienna and also be part of a non-fungible tokens collectionA painting by Egon Schiele depicting the artist’s uncle and legal guardian has been rediscovered after being missing for more than 90 years, a museum has said.Leopold Czihaczek at the Piano (1907) was found within a Viennese private collection...

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Yuga Labs apologises after sale of virtual land overwhelms Ethereum

Cryptocurrency smothered by congestion due to high demand for plots of land in multiplayer game OthersideA multi-billion dollar cryptocurrency company has apologised to users after its sale of “metaverse land” sparked a frenzy that temporarily overwhelmed the Ethereum cryptocurrency.Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Ape NFTs beloved of Jimmy Fallon...

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Body shock: why Cronenberg’s kidney stones could be the saviour of NFTs

He’s been incubating his latest work for the past two years. Now the Canadian film-maker is auctioning it off to the crypto community – and what an incredible bargain it isNothing on earth is quite as depressing as the moment a celebrity starts getting into NFTs. There you’ll be, quite happy following them on social media when, bang, up pops a sub-Banksy...

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Hack on Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs leads to $3m simian oblivion

Latest mass theft of digital art assets is carried out by phishing post on Instagram Yuga Labs, the multibillion-dollar collective behind the infamous Bored Ape Yacht Club non-fungible tokens, has been targeted by another hacking attack, leading to the theft of millions of dollars worth of the simian NFTs.BAYC’s series of algorithmically generated...

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‘Painting is like a cockroach or a shark, perfectly evolved’: artist Seth Price

He’s made films, written books and is excited by NFTs. So why has the technology-loving New York artist decided to break out his easel? Seth Price is slippy. Since the 1990s the artist has been producing genre-defying works that cross film with technology, photography with archaeology, sculpture, map-making and even zoology – all while making music...

Apr 2022

Rishi Sunak asks Royal Mint to create NFT

Treasury wants to show Britain is at cutting edge for new technologies with cryptoasset launch by summerThe Treasury has asked the Royal Mint to create a non-fungible token, or NFT, as it attempts to show Britain is at the cutting edge for new technologies by launching its own cryptoasset.It said the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, had asked the 1,136-year-old...

Apr 2022

The big idea: should other species have their own money?

Are digital wallets for orangutans and a ‘Bank for Other Species’ harebrained fantasies, or genius ways to boost conservation funding?Only about 120,000 orangutans remain in the wild, and despite the whopping $1bn that has been spent on protecting them since 2000, their numbers continue to decline. The orangutan is the most endangered great ape, but...

Mar 2022

Are NFTs really art?

Collectible and cartoonish, these digital multiples, traded in cryptocurrency, confer membership of an exclusive club – sometimes literally. But do they have any aesthetic value? A critic weighs inIn January, a clip from The Tonight Show featuring Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton went viral: not because either had said anything particularly interesting...

Mar 2022

Ukraine to launch NFT to mark history of the Russian invasion

Digital assets will be used to fund war efforts and media activitiesRussia-Ukraine war: latest newsThe Ukrainian government is to launch a non-fungible token marking the history of the Russian invasion with unique digital art, in its latest use of digital assets to fund its war efforts.The country’s deputy minister of digital transformation, Alex Bornyakov,...

Mar 2022