All Mode
During 2020 a little-known element of blockchain commerce, the non-fungible token or NFT market, tripled in value to over $250 million. Many who had previously never heard of an NFT – briefly described as a digital certification of the uniqueness of a file – were suddenly immersing themselves in the market, purchasing ownership of digital art, music, and even media created long before the blockchain existed.
Image: Digital art by Beeple selling at Christie’s.
Artist Beeple, aka Mike Winkelmann, sold a digital collage entitled “Everydays: the First 5000 Days,” represented by an NFT, at auction for $63.9 million, the third-highest price paid for a work by a living artist and the highest yet paid for an NFT. This opened the floodgates.
Lust Leans In
On such markets and exchanges as Ethereum, Binance, and Gemini’s Nifty Gateway, NFT purchases became so prevalent it earned widespread media attention, becoming a curiosity and a meme as much as a rapidly developing branch of cryptocurrency economies. Adult performers, as usual, wasted little time jumping on board the NFT train, keen to utilize the tech to personalize their viewers’ experiences further. One such performer, Welsh pornstar Sophie Dee, leapt at the chance to offer NFTs to fans, creating unique adult videos for fans to bid for at auction. The clearest attempt by a pornstar to tie her name to NFTs (along with her BaeBay marketplace cohort Joanna Angel), Dee’s custom creations declare their non-monetary value very clearly:
Image: Welsh Pornstar Sophie Dee has entered the NFT market.
Exclusivity is intimacy. 1 for 1 NFT created with inbuilt functionality. Access to two collages built for your eyes only and one on one digital sessions with Sophie Dee. Get your Virtual Girlfriend Token and access the world’s first digital asset backed with digital intimacy from one of the largest adult content creators in the world.
NFT vs. Kanye’s Law
Image: Kanye West in his role as creative director of the 2018 PornHub Awards.
Webcammers and custom clip creators have been producing porn for individual viewers for many years now, though many products also saw a more-or-less public release via platforms like ManyVids and OnlyFans. Obviously, production budgets would place VR porn out of reach of most independent creators, but that won’t prevent a fluid exchange between deep-pocketed viewers, their favorite stars, and major VR porn studios, and an NFT transaction that a single person owns but many, many more can also enjoy. Porn fans love personalization. They crave it. It’s almost impossible to conceive NFT-verified personalized VR scenes with top stars falling flat among the adult fanbase.
Rare porn, custom fetish content, prematurely retired scenes from major studios, and even celebrity sex tapes are easy to imagine being sold as NFTs. The estate of late rapper XXXTentacion is set to release a series of his unheard tracks and never-before-seen tour footage as NFTs in mid-May, bringing even more mainstream attention to the marketplace and the tech that drives it. And as Kanye’s law states, what benefits rappers benefits porn.
Yes, we need time to get used to it.
I’m still lost when it comes to all of this crypto. I still think cash is king.
Crypto I get, but I am not buying into the NFT craze.