- You have to pay to have your work in the “marketplace”.
NFTs have unique valuations set by the highest bidder, just like a Rembrandt or a Picasso. If you want to sell your work as NFTs, you have to sign up with a marketplace, then “mint” digital tokens by uploading and validating your information on a blockchain (typically the Ethereum blockchain, a rival platform to Bitcoin). Usually, costs anywhere between $40 and $250. You can then list your artwork for auction on an NFT marketplace, similar to eBay.
- Competition is at its highest.
Your work is tossed into a vast sea of other pieces, so you still need to bring it to the attention of potential collectors.
- Big Returns mean also Big Scams.
The fact that with NFT big-money collectors are paying six to eight figures for works that can often be seen and shared online for free, several are the speculators that are attracted by the big opportunity. There have been examples of artists that have had their work minted as NFTs and listed for sale without their permission. Because anything can be tokenised on the blockchain anything can end up as an NFT, even if the creator of an artwork isn’t the person selling it online for Ethereum.
Like Bitcoin, Ethereum requires computers to handle the computations, known as "mining," and those computers require a lot of energy. An analysis from Cambridge University found
mining for Bitcoin consumed more energy than the entire country of Argentina. Ethereum is second to Bitcoin in popularity, and its power consumption is on the rise and
comparable to the amount of energy used by Libya.