Dare go against the grain, for maximum gain

Why invest in the work of unknown NFT artists?

Bet on the dark horses. If you could hop into a time machine right now and buy Bitcoin at a dollar, when @DaVincij15 was pleading with anyone who would listen to do so, how much of your current net worth would you invest? None of us can foresee the future, but we can speculate. Investing in promising artists early is the key. 2019–2020 was the last call to jump on the CryptoPunks bandwagon and back in 2017 they were given away for free. If you buy one of these works today, what can you expect? A two to three-fold return… if you are lucky. However, you could take that 400k and invest in 100 upcoming artists and even with a success rate of 10%, see returns north of 100 to 1000 fold your initial investment! Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Every investor takes chances when choosing projects in line with their appetite for success and risk tolerance.

How will these ‘artworks’ retain any value? Will they be worth anything in the future?

Art is an inherently scarce, appreciating asset class. Love is hardly a rational emotion. It is hard to quantify and at times even hard to justify, yet all people across all times and cultures know it when they feel it. It transcends all language and logical barriers. The love of art is no different. On the one hand, one could argue that art is not a necessity of life, while other philosophers postulate that life is meaningless and empty without it. Life without art is just a dull existence void of meaning.

From a stoic, logical perspective, it is likewise worthwhile to note that a discerning investor would do well to include art in their portfolio. Art accrues scarcity value and thereby appreciates in price over time, especially so, when contrasted against mundane, mass-produced objects, such as tools. The latter, typically, have no intrinsic value as artworks, because art, by its very nature is synonymous with scarcity. Mass-produced tools, such as weapons or apparel or even stationary, can increase in value with scarcity brought on by their history and diminishing supply of the mass-produced party. Art on the other hand, starts out as a scarce item with no alternative use than being art. Yes, millions of people hear Satchmo’s “What a Wonderful World” or Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” songs playing on the radio in the shopping centre, but owning the IP rights to amazing works such as these is… priceless and elevates the experience beyond words.

What are the hallmarks of promising artists?

Confidence and commitment to their craft. There are so many low-effort projects out there, from people shilling spoofs of popular NFT collections, to ripping out scenes from popular films, to stealing royalty-free images from Unsplash, Pexels, etc., and trying to pass them off as original photography. As the saying goes, always DYOR, do your own research. No budding artist is going to check all of the below boxes, as it is neigh-impossible for a lone wolf artist on a shoestring budget to be a great entrepreneur, writer, promoter, socialite and artist. However, two or more would be ideal:

Open identity and a track-record of creating art

Trust is crucial in this business. By disclosing their identity, the artist signals respect for the community and offers a bond of trust, by staking their personal reputation upon the altar of their commitment to their art.

Investing in an obscure person who decided to dramatically change their career path last week is not a winning strategy. That’s just gambling with odds of success in the range of slim to none. Typically, you want to find a person who has been making art for years, but is not yet famous or has a large sales volume. You want to find Beeple before his fist dozen sales.

Social media presence

This typically this is an organic phenomenon that engulfs the artist once fame and fortune find them. An unknown celebrity is an oxymoron. If the artist already has a fan army, you may surmise that you’re late to the party. Perhaps the exception to the rule are celebrities-turned-artists or famous artists forking their career path, such as actors, singers or dancers deciding to try their hand at painting or similar cases. If a renowned public speaker like Gary V chooses to mint and hawk his scribbles, you can indeed invest in an early release and expect a handsome return. However, media-controlling celebrities and fortune-fund babies is not what this article is about. A social media presence need not be strong, but it should not be non-existent.

Personal website

Any artist worth their salt has invested in creating a modern website. Given the significant effort and expense involved in creating a website, a well-executed website, on a professional domain, is easily a clear testament to the artist’s dedication, confidence and respect for their craft.

Mission, goals and milestones

When you buy art, you are not just buying the individual work, you are buying into the vision of the creator. For example, the Animusian BlockCat Collective was started with two goals:

1) Unite upcoming artists and help kick-start promising artists’ careers and

2) Found an animation studio and produce games and feature-length animated films based on the World of Animus franchise, a fantasy world, conceived as far back as 2009.

Thus, you need to understand the person behind the project and their individual “why”. Why did they choose to bear their soul to the world and embark on this perilous, barefooted journey across shards of financial insecurity? Why not invest all their time and energies into seeking refuge from the harms of the world in a cosy, insulated corporate career, with a steady income, guaranteed benefits and pension?

No, art is not a get-rich-quick scheme, but a journey of faith, measured in passion. So set stock in creators who have been honing their craft for a few years and beware of fair-weather con artists.

Appealing work

As mentioned, art is a very subjective medium and although it is, typically, a great store of value, it is not exactly a liquid asset. So before you buy a piece, seek to evaluate the emotions it evokes in you and assess whether you would be happy to own it, even if you could not sell it in the future. If your motivation to buy art is just to flip pieces for profit, you are not a collector, but a retail merchant and must stoically abide by the laws of supply and demand, in which case, personal aesthetic preference has nothing to do with the decision to buy. True collectors, however, those who value sincere passion of the creator captured in the work, typically buy with their hearts.

We are a collective of several artists new in the NFT space, but with a lot of art experience under our belts. You are most welcome to visit our stores for thought-provoking works such as:

• “Max ‘ScarceFace’ Montana”

• “Hello, World!” – Apollo 11 Moon Landing collection

• “Michael the Saylor Man”

• “Elon FUD”

As well as many others, watch this space for announcements of mini avatar collections dropping in October.

Good hunting!