Thousands of fans flocked to the Top Shot online platform to buy short videos of dramatic images of professional basketball games, while a new virtual market enjoys an astonishing good fortune among collectors, sports enthusiasts and art lovers.
For the inexperienced observer, a video clip featured NBA superstar LeBron James in one of his most impressive moves; However, it lasted no more than a few tens of seconds. However, in Top Shot, it became a collectible item that sold monday for $208,000.
The video series is an “NFT”, a non-expendable token, a virtual object whose identity, authenticity and traceability are theoretically undeniable and unerring, thanks to the same generation of blockchain used for the security of cryptocurrencies as the incredibly popular bitcoin.
Released in early October through Canadian company Dapper Labs in partnership with the National Basketball Association, Top Shot consumers acquire and sell those short videos, called “moments,” at costs that vary by call and rarity.
Dapper Labs selects and sells clips, in numbers ranging from a bachelor copy to lots of “moments. “Once the sale is recorded on the platform, the clips can replace the hands, from one collector to another, an unlimited number of times.
Dapper Labs charges a small commission for the sale, and a percentage is shared with the NBA and the Players Association.
National Basketball Association superstar LeBron James noticed a game in San Antonio, Texas, on December 30, 2020 Photo: GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Ronald Cortes
After a slow start, Top Shot’s business has soared since January, generating more than $200 million in transactions since the beginning of the year, according to a Dapper Labs spokeswoman.
On Wednesday, Top Shot will reach its 100,000 most sensitive buyers, he added.
Momentranks’ website, which states that it provides “accurate and real-time evidence of the moment,” estimates the existing market at $1. 8 billion.
Paradoxically, most of the video clips sold can be viewed loose on the Internet, basically on YouTube.
“I fully sense the initial reaction to ‘I don’t perceive’ or ‘Sounds stupid,'” wrote Jonathan Bales, who spent $35,000 for a ‘moment’, on his Lucky Maverick blog.
“But guess what? There is a total generation of other intelligent young people who have grown in a fundamentally different way from mine and you, while ‘get’ or not the long term, no matter how it develops. “
Steve Poland, author of the Mighty Minted website, recalled his own initial reaction.
“I signed up for an account, and then instantly, just clicked, it was like, it’s the future. And it’s now. And that’s what collectibles will do in the future. “
A Christie auction space for sale in November 2017 Photo: AFP / TIMOTHY A. Clary
NFT enthusiasts see them as an option for classic collector markets that are unregulated and opaque, whether it’s baseball card sales or master art.
“The generation is bigger than the offline world,” Poland said. “I mean, there are Picassos there, there’s Van Goghs out there (when) it’s proven that those are real. “
On Thursday, Christie’s was the first main auction space to sell a painting through NFT: “The First 5,000 Days” through American virtual artist Beeple, whose real call is Mike Winkelmann.
“We see this as a turning point for the long-term new media and even for the practice of collecting,” Noah Davis, Christie’s expert on fresh, postwar art, said in a statement.
The sale, which opened at $100, temporarily reached a maximum of $3 million and closes on March 11.
Davis compares the emergence of this form of collection with that of street art, which in a few decades has gone from being a little noticed and even illegal practice to a primary trend in the collection of fresh art.
Art on the NFT, Davis added, is “about to fit into the next ingeniously disruptive force in the art market. “
NFT also has a long history in world sport, Poland says.
On Thursday, French platform Sorare announced that it had raised $50 million from investors.
And the Italian company Panini, which has long been concerned in the commercial and collectible card sector, said it had also created its own blockchain-based website.
Poland believes that the new generation will paint with the most sensible brands like the NBA, which are well known to the public and confer a sense of trust in this absolutely new and unknown universe.
When it comes to costs, are we more likely to see violent fluctuations, such as cryptocurrencies?
“Some costs are a little unbalanced,” Poland said, “and I think there will be some kind of correction. “
But “NBA Top Shot costs are likely to be cheap right now,” he said, and will seem even less expensive in 10 years.