some thoughts on @beeple 5000.

1 / This is a line in art history. This is not a trend, fad or fashion, its the opening sentence in the second paragraph of NFT art history.

2 / The first sentence and paragraph started with Cryptopunks and a young crypto native community that gathered together around an art form and medium they loved.

3 / @beeple’s sale at @christies represents something all together more exciting structurally for the crypto art world.

4 / This second paragraph represents a validation of the whole space, a validation that started with Block 21, but with @beeple in a purer more native and real way.

5 / NFTs on their own can exist on art’s most elevated platform.

6 / The global exposure that #NFTs will received in the next 9 days will alert every contemporary artist worth their salt, every gallery director with a roster of digital and conceptual artists, every curator and museum director, every art journalist and critic.

7 / Some of the reaction won’t be positive. It never is. Contemporary art is largely a history of what the critics got wrong. Much of what will be written will also be right - NFTs at the moment breed artistic short termism which also breeds bad art.

8 / While the traditional fine art world is waking up (while choking on their coffee), this is a battle cry for the entire digital art space, commercial&creative to unlock a whole new generation of digital artists tied down to work by the inability to find a market for their art

9 / @Beeple’s sale shows an alternate path. Where a new crypto native collector group of the Decentralised Class functions as the bastion of taste (for better or worse), where for the 1st time you have a broad collecting class interested in the digital medium and its aesthetics.

10 / Expect to see a wholesale shift from talent out of digital industries and into art.

11 / The market and liquidity the Decentralised Class brings means 2 things:

12) A lot more artists and a lot more art. This is good and bad.

13)As @SatoshiLite said the other day NFTs do bring to an extent artificial liquidity, and while I do not agree with him, we will see soon a mismatch of many artists chasing few collectors.

14 / But as in anything, this will only serve to push creativity. Artists are competitive, just like anyone else. And the best art always finds the high-water mark, it has for 5000 ;) years.

15 / @beeple’s sale will usher in a Renaissance of creativity in the digital art and crypto space. As curators start looking, artists working with conceptual and intellectual depth will start to shine through, they will leap frog the short term-ists, the copyists and hype-ists

16 / We are on the cusp of major works of art being made in the space, works that will stand shoulder to shoulder with projects like Cryptopunks. And yes hashmasks will fade.

17 / Artists with a conceptual focus will start building collective collaborative on chain artwork that moves the dial on international cultural cooperation. Museums will raise funds for wider programming in the cyberspace and offline through NFT sales of their masterpieces.

18 / Works that explore value, and the themes of crypto: privacy, trust and decentralisation, will fundamentally challenge our perception of these terms.

19/ Curators will build out exhibitions that engage more of the public in crypto and the metaverse.

20 / All I can say is the art is just beginning.