Through an NFT, Non fungible token, you buy the ownership of a digital object, a receipt that you own, for example, a picture or a film that is available online.
The phenomenon has exploded over the past year, with NFT artists such as Pak and Beeple.
An NFT collage of pictures signed Beeple was sold last year at the auction house Christies for almost 650 million Swedish kronor.
The latest trend among celebrities is to buy digital ap avatars for millions of dollars in the NFT series Bored ape yacht club.
But while prices are skyrocketing, many critics say that what is being sold is just air and that the NFT boom is a bubble.
Converted painting to NFT
But more traditional artists are now jumping on the NFT trend.
Damien Hirst has made an NFT collection, and at the Affordable art fair in Stockholm in the autumn, NFT certificates were sold together with physical works.
The artist Estelle Graf, who usually paints paintings in oil, has recently made a collection of NFT works.
They have since been sold on an auction site that specializes in NFT items.
The model is one of her paintings.
- What made me curious was that I really did not understand anything at all, and I may still not understand anything.
But I was too curious not to test, she says.
What do you say if people say that NFTs are not real art?
- I think they are absolutely right. It is not about a direct translation, that physical art is now digital.
I think you should look at this as something independent, says Estelle Graf.
She believes that many who buy NFT's are looking for the collection itself rather than owning a work of art.
- It's more like how to collect Pokémon cards in middle school.
It is not a specific work you are looking for, rather you want a work in a large collection, says Estelle Graf.