Arab Press

بالشعب و للشعب
Monday, Aug 11, 2025

Non-fungible tokens are revolutionising the art world – and art theft

Non-fungible tokens are revolutionising the art world – and art theft

Artists have been dismayed to find their work ending up in the ‘control’ of others

When the virtual auction bell rang at Christie’s on Thursday, Mike Winkelmann, a digital artist better known as Beeple, made history: he had sold a “non-fungible token” representing his piece Everydays: The First 5,000 Days, for $69.4m.

But while the new cryptocurrency craze may have brought the high-end art market into the 21st century, it’s also modernising another aspect of the industry: art thieves.

At their simplest, non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, can be thought of as “bitcoin for art”. Just as bitcoin created the ability to spend and save a sort of digital money without any centralised authority, so too do NFTs allow for pictures, videos, music, or anything else that can be digitally represented, to be wrapped up in a format that can be traded, stored or authenticated without needing to turn to a gatekeeper.

Once an NFT is created, it can be digitally traced for ever. And unlike a simple image file, for instance, an NFT can’t be duplicated, giving it a similar cachet to an original artwork, and enabling the sort of transactions that have seen the field garner mainstream interest over the last month.

But while the very technology of NFTs prevents them from being duplicated without permission, there’s nothing inherent to the sector that controls who can make an NFT in the first place – a fact that has caused dismay to some artists, who have found their work ending up in the “control” of people who had nothing to do with its creation.

Simon Stålenhag, the Swedish illustrator whose Tales from the Loop has become an Amazon Prime original, is one. On Wednesday, he found that one of his artworks had been turned into a “MarbleCard”, a type of NFT that allows users to make and trade tokens representing web pages. “I guess we must do a daily google if we’ve been NFT:d from now on,” he said. “Thanks Silicon Valley!”

MarbleCard isn’t the only NFT service that makes it trivial to “tokenise” other people’s content. Another, Tokenized Tweets, lets users turn any tweet into a tradable digital asset simply by sending a message on the social network, and artworks posted to the site have been a popular target for tokenisation. “Now people can sell your tweets all without your permission,” warned the artist RJ Palmer, whose own images were tokenised without his permission.

Emma Price, an artist and designer based in Margate, cited Palmer’s experience, as well as the enormous environmental damage of the cryptocurrency sector, in taking a stand against NFTs. “Very quickly it became clear that a lot of non-creative, often faceless, entities were jumping in to exploit all manner of ways to create and distribute NFTs, with little care afforded to an originator’s ownership of a digital item.

“There’s no oversight here, and seemingly no understanding of or respect for copyright. The unscrupulous way that it allows artists to be ripped off is maddening.”

While NFT systems that encourage users to tokenise web pages or tweets they do not own were always likely to invite trouble, even more conventional systems that allow for artists to tokenise their own works have caused controversy. The Wu Tang Clan’s foray into the area last week was aborted after the artist Kevin Alexander objected that the animation was similar to an artwork he had posted online in 2013.

Sometimes, the boundary blurring is deliberate, as with the Burned Banksy NFT. This token, which sold for around £300,000, is an image of a Banksy print titled Morons, which was sold in an edition of 500. But the specific print that has been tokenised, number 325, was publicly burned as the token was minted, a move the anonymous creators argue “moved the value of the physical piece on to the NFT”.

The burning of the Banksy print Morons. Photograph: Burnt Banksy


Even for those digital artists who view 20th-century copyright norms as outdated, though, the trend is raising concern. “In a sense, the NFT sector should be more attentive to what is offending and upsetting people – especially the artists whose work is attracting interest to their field – than strictly what is technically or legally possible,” says Parker Higgins, a New-York-based artist and activist who has campaigned for copyright reform.

“In many other creative areas, norms and customs are more influential than the specific contours of copyright law, where the price of transgression is not necessarily a lawsuit but still very real. Sure, people in the NFT space can choose to ‘move fast and break things’ through those considerations, but they risk coming across as antisocial weirdos that nobody wants to associate with.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

Arab Press
0:00
0:00
Close
Armenia and Azerbaijan to Sign US-Brokered Framework Agreement for Nakhchivan Corridor
British Labour Government Utilizes Counter-Terrorism Tools for Social Media Monitoring Against Legitimate Critics
WhatsApp Deletes 6.8 Million Scam Accounts Amid Rising Global Fraud
Texas Residents Face Water Restrictions While AI Data Centers Consume Millions of Gallons
India Rejects U.S. Tariff Threat, Defends Russian Oil Purchases
United States Establishes Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile
Thousands of Private ChatGPT Conversations Accidentally Indexed by Google
China Tightens Mineral Controls, Curtailing Critical Inputs for Western Defence Contractors
JPMorgan and Coinbase Unveil Partnership to Let Chase Cardholders Buy Crypto Directly
British Tourist Dies Following Hair Transplant in Turkey, Police Investigate
WhatsApp Users Targeted in New Scam Involving Account Takeovers
Trump Deploys Nuclear Submarines After Threats from Former Russian President Medvedev
Germany’s Economic Breakdown and the Return of Militarization: From Industrial Collapse to a New Offensive Strategy
Germany Enters Fiscal Crisis as Cabinet Approves €174 Billion in New Debt
IMF Upgrades Global Growth Forecast as Weaker Dollar Supports Outlook
Politics is a good business: Barack Obama’s Reported Net Worth Growth, 1990–2025
UN's Top Court Declares Environmental Protection a Legal Obligation Under International Law
"Crazy Thing": OpenAI's Sam Altman Warns Of AI Voice Fraud Crisis In Banking
Japanese Prime Minister Vows to Stay After Coalition Loses Upper House Majority
President Trump Diagnosed with Chronic Venous Insufficiency After Leg Swelling
Man Dies After Being Pulled Into MRI Machine Due to Metal Chain in New York Clinic
FIFA Pressured to Rethink World Cup Calendar Due to Climate Change
Iranian President Reportedly Injured During Israeli Strike on Secret Facility
Kurdistan Workers Party Takes Symbolic Step Towards Peace in Northern Iraq
BRICS Expands Membership with Indonesia and Ten New Partner Countries
Elon Musk Founds a Party Following a Poll on X: "You Wanted It – You Got It!"
AI Raises Alarms Over Long-Term Job Security
Russia Formally Recognizes Taliban Government in Afghanistan
Saudi Arabia Maintains Ties with Iran Despite Israel Conflict
Mediators Edge Closer to Israel-Hamas Ceasefire Agreement
Germany Seeks Taliban Deal to Deport Afghan Migrants
Emirates Airline Expands Market Share with New $20 Million Campaign
Robots Compete in Football Tournament in China Amid Injuries
China Unveils Miniature Insect-Like Surveillance Drone
Marc Marquez Claims Victory at Dutch Grand Prix Amidst Family Misfortune
Iran Executes Alleged Israeli Spies and Arrests Hundreds Amid Post-War Crackdown
Trump Asserts Readiness for Further Strikes on Iran Amid Nuclear Tensions
Qatar Airways Clears Backlog of Passengers Following Missile Threats
Iran's Parliament Votes to Suspend Cooperation with Nuclear Watchdog
Trump Announces Upcoming US-Iran Meeting Amid Controversial Airstrikes
Trump Moves to Reshape Middle East Following Israel-Iran Conflict
NATO Leaders Endorse Plan for Increased Defence Spending
U.S. Crude Oil Prices Drop Below $65 Amid Market Volatility
“You Have 12 Hours to Flee”: Israeli Threat Campaign Targets Surviving Iranian Officials
Oman Set to Introduce Personal Income Tax, First in Gulf
Germany and Italy Under Pressure to Repatriate $245bn of Gold from US Vaults
Trump Praises Iran’s ‘Very Weak’ Response After U.S. Strikes and Presses Israel to Pursue Peace
WATCH: Israeli forces show the aftermath of a massive airstrike at Iran's Isfahan nuclear site
We have new information and breaking details to share about what is shaping up to be a historic air campaign tonight
Six Massive Bombs Dropped on Fordow; Trump: 'A Historic Moment for the U.S., Israel, and the World'
×