• 20 Minutes

    and the Piasa auction house are teaming up for a historic sale of an NFT from the

    20 Minutes

    newspaper

    .

    The amount collected will be donated to the security fund of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ).

  • From September,

    20 Minutes will

    document all the stages of this digital epic through a series of articles entitled “Diary of an NFT”.

  • Crypto-arts will hold no secrets for you.

20 Minutes

and Piasa make crypto history. The free newspaper decided to sell its own NFT in a charity auction * organized in October by the Piasa auction house. A first of its kind in France. Since March,

NFTs

,

non-

fungible tokens, have been blowing a wind of revolution on the contemporary art market.

Let's start from the beginning.

NFTs are virtual works with indisputable and inviolable identity, authenticity and traceability.

Basically, any digital object (tweet, photo, animation, video, source code, etc.) can now be acquired thanks to a token, which materializes this object and proves its authenticity.

The digital certificate of authenticity emanating from the ethereum blockchain irrevocably proves that it is indeed the original work and not a replica.

The "Journal of an NFT" from September

To refresh your memory: on March 11, a virtual work by American artist Beeple, titled

Everydays: The First 5000 Days

, was sold for $ 69.3 million in the form of NFT. A few weeks later,

New York Times

columnist

Kevin Roose sold one of his articles digitally for $ 560,000. In early July, the World Wide Web source code of Tim Berners-Lee - known as the inventor of the Web - sold for over $ 5 million in the form of NFT. And the list is still long. Admit that it's hard to watch such a tidal wave without being a little curious.

On the lookout for emerging phenomena,

20 Minutes

wanted to document this technological revolution by trying to sell its own NFT. Through this sale, the newspaper wishes to question the value of quality information.

20 Minutes

is a free newspaper for its readers, but the information comes at a cost. The sale of an NFT appears to be an excellent way to reflect on this question while making crypto-arts intelligible to as many people as possible.

From September, the

20 Minutes site

will publish, at the rate of one article per week, the series "Journal d'un NFT" which retraces, in a subjective tone, all the stages of the creation of its NFT: from choice of the digital object to the creation of the token, including making contact with Piasa and the thorny question of the

smart contract

...

A collector's NFT

After a vote of Internet users,

20 Minutes

chose to transform into NFT the supplement "The crazy years 2020" which, with hindsight, seems almost prophetic. Published on January 13, 2020, two months before the arrival of the Covid-19 on French soil, it explores the disenchantment of a society tested by the fantasies of the end of the world. Pure virtual object, this thematic supplement has never been printed. A perfect “collector” NFT. But several questions (which will be developed in each of the episodes) have blocked the road of this digital epic.

In France, the digital representation of a work (such as an NFT), because it has no physical consistency, remains intangible movable property, and, as such, cannot be part, on its own, of 'a voluntary sale at public auction in France.

To overcome this legislative obstacle,

20 Minutes

and Piasa will offer a physical object to accompany this sale.

No spoiler!

You will discover the behind the scenes of this historic sale from September.

* The money collected will be donated to the Safety Fund of the International Federation of Journalists

(IFJ)

Culture

What are NFTs, the tokens that allow you to buy tweets and works of art on the Internet?

High-Tech

The robot Sophia will sell its first digital work at auction (and thanks to NFT)

  • Technology

  • NFT

  • Culture

  • Auction

  • Newspaper