FT Weekend: How NFTs shook up the art world
FT News Briefing
Forhecz Topher
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 24 September 2022
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
NFTs were a big sensation, but the market for them has crashed. This week, we invited a crypto-sceptic, FT columnist Jemima Kelly, to answer all the questions you were afraid to ask. What are NFTs exactly? What happened with them? And have they changed the way we think about art? Jemima hosts the latest season of our FT podcast Tech Tonic, which is all about the cult of crypto.
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Want to stay in touch? We love hearing from you. Email us at ftweekendpodcast@ft.com. We’re on Twitter @ftweekendpod, and Lilah is on Instagram and Twitter @lilahrap.
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Links and mentions from the episode:
– Tech Tonic is available wherever you listen to your podcasts, or at www.ft.com/tech-tonic. The episode on NFT mania is here
– Jemima’s most recent column, ‘Don’t believe the maximalists: bitcoin can’t be separated from crypto’: https://on.ft.com/3SaAAia
– Jemima is on Twitter @jemimajoana
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Special offers for FT Weekend listeners, from 50% off a digital subscription to a $1/£1/€1 trial can be found here: http://ft.com/weekendpodcast
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Original music by Metaphor Music. Mixing and sound design by Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The FT News Briefing is supported by Equinole, the UK's energy partner. |
| 0:06.3 | Learn more at equinole.co.uk |
| 0:22.0 | About a month ago, M&M and Snoop Dogg performed the VMAs. |
| 0:27.0 | The VMAs are the MTV Video Music Awards, and this is what it looked like. |
| 0:31.6 | Snoop is on a stage, he's smoking a massive joint, M&M is next to him, |
| 0:36.4 | and then suddenly, the two of them are presumably too high for this earth, |
| 0:40.4 | and they just shift into an alternate dimension. |
| 0:44.2 | They become cartoons, and then, they perform most of the set that way. |
| 0:57.8 | The avatars they've turned into are monkeys, or to be more specific, |
| 1:02.1 | there's something called board apes. |
| 1:04.6 | If you don't know what board apes are, they're these illustrations of apes that are |
| 1:08.0 | inspired by the band Gorillas. |
| 1:10.3 | And board apes are also NFTs, non-fungible tokens. |
| 1:15.0 | A little while ago, a board ape NFT might have cost you more than a million dollars. |
| 1:21.5 | A lot of the NFT culture is just the crypto culture, so the people who are buying, |
| 1:26.1 | the people who are pumping NFTs are the same people who've been pumping various like, |
| 1:29.8 | you know, the shit coins as they're called. |
| 1:32.2 | That's Jemima Kelly, she's an FD columnist, and she's hosting a new season of our sister |
| 1:38.4 | podcast, Tectonic, called a skeptics guide to crypto. If you're confused about how cartoons of |
| 1:44.8 | Snoop Dogg and M&M are also a digital token that people have become obsessed with, |
| 1:50.0 | welcome to the club, it's confusing. And today, Jemima is going to help us untangle the knot. |
| 1:56.4 | It's probably worth mentioning, she's not a fan. |
... |
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