Home > Inspirations > Culture > NFT : Two experts answer our questions
Benoît Couty and Thuy-Tien Vo, co-founders of MoCA, the first French Museum of Crypto Art, explain how NFTs work and their influence on the art of today and tomorrow.
NFT, blockchain, metaverse… Welcome to the world of “crypto-art”. Here, everything is traded in cryptocurrency. People create, buy and sell drawings, images or 3D objects… virtually. In 2018, in response to digital art becoming increasingly widespread, Benoît Couty and his partner Thuy-Tien Vo founded the first French museum in the Cryptovoxels metaverse, the Museum of Crypto Art (or MoCA). Their impressive collection of digital works includes more than 800 NFTs and was displayed at the Pierre Cardin Museum last December. They also run 0x4rt, a digital art consulting company that advises its clients on virtual investments. These two visionaries explain what NFTs are, how they have impacted the art market and what this means for the future.
Benoît Couty: NFT stands for “non-fungible token”. They are certificates of electronic ownership of a digital file, which could be an image, music, or a 3D file. This certificate is registered on a blockchain (editor’s note: a technology for storing digital information), which means that everyone on the Internet can see who owns it. So, if I purchase a digital work, I have an NFT to prove that I am the owner. Thanks to this certificate, which is registered in my name, I can keep, transfer or sell someone my NFTs and therefore the works I own.
Thuy-Tien Vo: But it’s much more than that. NFTs are mainly seen from a financial investment perspective. Everyone seems to be constantly buying and selling them, in the same way that people dabble in the stock market. However, NFTs also provide an opportunity to create a portfolio of digital assets over the long term. One can build up a digital portfolio that will have a certain value, like traditional “real world” assets.
Benoît Couty: Absolutely! Brands can create digital files, for example digital images or 3D clothing, that can be traded on the Internet. In a recent partnership between Prada and Ubisoft, clothing and camouflage can be purchased that can be used to dress the avatars of characters in the Riders Republic virtual game’s world. Previously, in game environments, you could acquire special weapons or clothing, but such items could only exist in the game. With NFTs, you become the owner of these items and you can take them to other virtual worlds called metaverses. For example, a cool outfit that you won in one game can now be exported to another game or sold. NFTs allow a kind of portability that was not previously possible. However, major brands are creating clothing in the form of NFTs before they can even be used in virtual worlds. It’s a “promise” for the future. Once you’ve purchased the digital clothing, Prada then has to integrate it into all the various virtual worlds, since for the time being, it can only be used in the Riders Republic game’s world. And adapting these purchases for multiple virtual worlds necessarily requires further IT development.
Benoît Couty: In my case, out of a portfolio of about 800 NFTs, 700 are works of art. Other people collect less art and more game items, like football cards. It’s the same principle as Pokémon collections (laughs). There is nothing stopping you printing a digital image and putting it on your wall. 3D files can be deployed in virtual worlds or augmented reality worlds, or simply displayed at home. With a little software, you can place your virtual 3D object on a table at home: you don’t see it directly on the table, but if you look at the table through your phone, we will see the object as if it were in the room. Because NFTs are digital files, they can easily be viewed from any digital device, such as a phone.
Thuy-Tien Vo: And of course, you can put the files on TV screens or screens that are made especially for NFTs. Samsung and a growing number of other companies are developing frames to display digital art at home. These are essentially telev