Why Collectors Buy NFTs and How to Get Started – Artsy

For Bell, crypto art is a visual language that communicates the ideals of cryptocurrency and its potential to cultivate a social and financial revolution. A former investment banker who became disillusioned with “crony capitalism and the powers that be,” Bell began investing in Ethereum in early 2017. That summer, he became an early collector of MoonCats, one of the first Ethereum-based NFT collectibles.

Currently, Bell’s personal collection totals somewhere around 2,000 NFTs, the majority of which he plans to donate to the museum over the next decade. “The reason I collect crypto art goes back to the reason I’m here to begin with: I believe cryptocurrency is a more superior and powerful technology than the current monetary system that we have,” he said. Thanks to use cases like NFTs, cryptocurrency, once associated with illicit activity, has already come a long way in terms of public perception. NFTs have effectively shown the value of crypto to be what Bell calls “an exercise in self-sovereignty.”

Most significantly, the opportunities presented by the technology to facilitate free expression and autonomy for artists are the primary drivers for Bell’s—and many other early collectors’—engagement in the space. “It’s a way for you to express yourself without censorship,” he said. “It’s a free and open-access network by which you can upload your creativity and prove your ownership over it.”

Miguel Faus, a filmmaker based between Barcelona and London, whose NFT collection includes notable PFP (profile picture) projects including a CryptoPunk, a Bored Ape, and Cool Cats, shares a similar sentiment. As an artist, the concept of NFTs “clicked instantly as a long-awaited revolution that would mitigate a lot of the problems that creators of all kinds have faced on the internet since its inception.” He explained, “I think that’s the promise of Web3 in a nutshell: redistributing value towards creators and audiences, rather than towards intermediaries and gatekeepers.”

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