A picture of the future

Last year, NFTs were still new to the majority in the art world. But digital artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, took the art world by storm when his NFT, titled Everydays: The First 5000 Days, got more than $69 million at an auction at Christie's in March last year. The record-smashing sale of a JPEG file of a collage of 5,000 images made Beeple one of the "top three most valuable living artists", according to Christie's.

Zhang Lei, founder of Topholder, an online platform that trades NFT art, says many artists came to him to inquire about NFTs and blockchain technology after Beeple's auction. Zhang cooperated with an art fair in Beijing in 2019 to provide blockchain technology for artists presented in the fair. However, few knew about the technology or showed interest in it back then.

"Compared to established ones, young artists are more likely to embrace NFTs," says Zhang.

On Zhang's platform, there are more than 1,000 artists creating NFT-related art. Zhang selects them mainly through the internet and only meets some of them offline. In contrast, traditional galleries select artists by meeting and talking with them in person.

Buyers on Topholder are mostly those in their 20s who regard digital art as a future trend, satisfying their aesthetic tastes, says Zhang.

"For many, whether NFTs are collectible is still to be discussed. Some buy it to show their support and believe that people will spend more time in the virtual world."