Want to join into the NFT gold rush, but can’t make art? There may be an easy way out if you’re quick-witted. A new website lets you create an NFT (non-fungible token) for free, but it is up to you to figure out how to sell it – because the website self destructs the second you click away from it. ‘Tokenize This’ generates a unique URL that shows an image that isn’t very much different from some of the other NFT artworks being sold online. The photo is a basic gradient, fading from one colour into the other, with an alphanumeric code resembling a cryptographic hash superimposed over it. Something you could create on paint, perhaps. The catch, however, is that the URL is impossible to make into an NFT. As soon as you close the tab, the site self-destructs and yields a 404.
The website is ironically titled ‘Tokenize This’ as the images cannot be tokenized, because the web page containing the image disappears when you try to share or upload it. NFTs in general often simply reference images elsewhere on the web, so if an image is taken down at the source, then the NFT appears broken. This is exactly what Tokenize This achieves by self-destructing.
The creator of the website, Ben Grosser, explains it is “A generator of unique digital objects that can only be viewed once.”
“Tokenize This is a net artwork that proposes one possible structure of resistance against the threats posed by NFTs,” he explains in his blog. He also explains his reason behind creating the site.
“A central construct of the booming cryptoart market is the creation of artificial scarcity through the “tokenization” of digital objects using NFTs. These certificates of ownership act as indexes to digital artworks, pointing anyone to the objects themselves (e.g., an image file on a server) and making possible the easy sale and resale of (presumed) ownership rights. This push towards commodification not only comes with high ecological costs (due to the energy use incurred with each cryptocurrency transaction) but also threatens to reconfigure the focus of many digital/software/net artists into the production of saleable and non-threatening work that is easily recognizable as “art” to the speculative finance crowd.”
Elon Musk may have opted out of the ongoing NFT gold rush, after he initially made an NFT on a techno song about NFTs – and then opted out of it. The rest of the world, however, appears to be in the process of cashing in. After art and auction houses, (and billionaires) news organizations and galleries also seem to be joining in on the trend. Quartz has converted an article into an NFT, a digital asset that essentially serves as its own certificate of ownership and authenticity. They’re, however, not the first. Associated Press sold its non-fungible token artwork on March 11 for a hefty sum only eight days putting it up for auction. The artwork, titled “The Associated Press calls the 2020 Presidential Election on Blockchain – A View from Outer Space,” sold for roughly 100 ETH (+3.79%) ($180,000), according to data from NFT marketplace OpenSea. News organizations aren’t alone.
The curve is also just starting – the first NFT artwork to be auctioned was by Christie’s. The first Oscar-nominated movie to be released as an NFT was Adam Benzine’s “Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah.” The first tweet by Twitter’s Jack Dorsey was sold as an NFT. The first NFT album was ‘Kings of Leon’s ‘When You See Yourself.’
So what really, really is an NFT? NFTs are not physical assets but digital properties that exist in the blockchain. An NFT essentially symbolises ownership of a certain physical item. Since it’s stored in blockchain, it is transparent and thus cannot be copied or stolen. James Murphy, CEO of Future Fallout, writes that that just like a concert ticket symbolises the ownership of the space of a seat in the concert arena, and a Bitcoin represents the underlying value of the digital currency in physical currency, an NFT symbolises the ownership of an item that has been digitised.
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