I’ve just minted my latest completed collage artwork and put it up for sale at my gallery wall which you can view here nftshowroom.com/julianhorack/gallery. The HIVE blockchain is my preferred place to mint NFTs since there are none of those heavy ETH gas fees to pay. And as a result I can sell my works at a more reasonable rate to the collectors and investors who are jumping on board the NFT train right now.
I put a lot of time and creative skill into making my original hand crafted collage artworks, so the buyer can be sure of a genuinely fine artwork for their collection. This is real art, totally unique, the style of which I haven’t seen much throughout the NFT art world. And instead of paying hundreds of dollars via the ETH blockchain on OpenSea or rarible.com, you can get these works for less than $50, for now. Prices are set to rise as more works sell. So the early investor is getting the best deal.
I view my NFTs as tokens, which is what they are. So they are coins, cryptocurrencies in their own right. The only difference is that they are one-of-a-kind, non-fungible tokens. At most I may mint three or six editions of one tokenized artwork, instead of millions of coins that are minted when a new cryptocurrency launches. This rarity makes the artwork more valuable.
Scarcity is what creates and helps to keep the value of any cryptocurrency or token. When a project launches a new coin or token, the more they make, the lower the price will always remain. For example bitcoin has a hard cap of 21 million coins or tokens. There will never be more than 21 million bitcoins. And the price is rising due to the increase in demand combined with this scarcity.
Fiat currency like the dollar, is being printed almost weekly nowadays, to the tune of hundreds of billions of them added to the supply each time. This is under the pressure of the current global economic recession. Ironically the printing of so many more dollars will obviously have the reverse effect of devaluing all the dollars in supply. So it’s a foolish and desperate temporary stop-gap measure of short term benefit but with long term devastating effects. That’s how broken the current global fiat system is right now.
As a result fiat currency is not the place to store or invest your wealth right now. The wealthy invest in scare commodities that will retain their value, like gold, silver and property. And of course art. This has been a safe haven for as long as you can imagine in the current global fiat system. And today investors are catching on that NFTs or tokenized artworks are just as valuable, especially since the amazing blockchain technology allows them to be verified and timestamped for originality and authenticity.
The actual concept is revolutionary so the masses will take time to catch on, but the tech savvy and particularly the crypto enthusiasts are all on board and experimenting or investing happily. I now run my own art gallery without the need for an agent, who in the old art world can sometimes take up to 50% or even more of the price of your artwork. You put in the hard work, and you are the source of the talent to create the work, but the agent or gallery owner takes half or more of the price paid. This is ridiculous.
And now thanks to blockchain technology and cryptocurrency, artists are taking back their power. Whether musicians or fine artists, we are all kicking out the unscrupulous middle man, agent or gallery owner, and selling direct to the public. The website where I show my work charges me only a smallest fee of 5 Hive tokens to mint 1 work, and 1 Hive token thereafter for each further minting or copy of that same 1 work. That’s $4 to mint 10 NFTs of a single work at today’s HIVE price. What a bargain.
On the Ethereum blockchain, at OpenSea or Rarible, or the higher end more exclusive blockchain galleries (Foundation, SuperRare), you are charged $50 -$100 just for gas fees to mint a work, which is unacceptable. Of course such art is sold for much more, all of which prohibits the small artist from entering the market as well as the small collector or investor, due to the inflated prices. That may well change soon with second layer solutions to the problem of ETH gas fees. Add to that the new platforms becoming available on TRON and Binance blockchains, and the NFT area will open up even further.
Buying a NFT artwork is like investing in any commodity or collectible. Most people buy to sell later at a profit. Some are just collectors who like to display their digital artwork online, or in their virtual world living room, or perhaps in a specific real world digital frame. These are available now, and are “plugged in” to be able to hang on the wall and display your digital artwork. So the art world and tech world are collaborating nicely all the time to bring out improved features.
As a result I’m inspired and hard at work producing more original artworks in my studio, so that I can upload and mint them as NFTs in my gallery. Today’s piece titled “Ganesh and the galactic Buddhas” is another in my series on religious iconography, this time from the east. The recurring gold and black color scheme is predominant. Gold is often used to suggest spirituality, even in old classical Catholic iconography of the European Middle Ages. The Christ, much like the Buddha, is often depicted in gold or surrounded by gold, suggesting a transcendent opulence or value, despite them both being figures of renunciation or “otherworldliness”.
My initial launch of this NFT today is priced at 108 HIVE coins. I like the number as it is often associated with the esoteric eastern traditions of India – the home of Vedic culture, from which Ganesh and Buddha originate. At today’s value that would equate to around $50, which is still a bargain for an original minted NFT made by hand to begin with. Compare this to the NFT artworks on the ETH blockchain, which sell for 1 ETH which today equates to $1800, and you can see the difference. Even if they sell for 0.1 ETH. That’s still over 3x my sale price. And that’s because I don’t need to pay the $50 gas fees that ETH demands.
You might not resonate with my particular art style but you will find numerous other artworks on the nftshowroom.com site which you may prefer. There are traditional works and digital ones, so I recommend taking a look and considering investing in these NFTs as a collectible asset, much like a cryptocurrency. It will retain value and you can sell them at a later date for a profit. In this way you can be an art collector and trader. Other artists mint their photography artwork in the same way, so the variety includes something for all tastes.