- Alcaraz breezes into third round of Shanghai Masters
- Gaza cultural heritage brought to light in Geneva
- 'Bullet for democracy': Trump returns to site of rally shooting
- Italy targets climate activists in 'anti-Gandhi' demo clampdown
- South Korean cult-horror series 'Hellbound' returns at BIFF
- Nepalis fear more floods as climate change melts glaciers
- Honduras arrests environmentalist's alleged murderer
- Padres pitcher Musgrove needs elbow surgery
- Supreme Court lets stand rules to curb mercury, methane emissions
- Boston beat Denver in NBA exhibition season opener, but Jokic says omens are good
- Chagos diaspora angry at lack of input on islands' fate
- Biden says 'not confident' of peaceful US election
- US trade chief defends tariff hikes when paired with investment
- Lukaku stars as Napoli beat Como to hold Serie A top spot
- Ohtani set for MLB playoff debut as Dodgers face Padres
- Pogba's drug ban cut to 18 months from four years
- Devine leads New Zealand to big win over India in Women's T20 World Cup
- Bosnia floods kill 16 people
- EU court blocks French ban on vegetable 'steak' labelling
- Prosecutors seek dismissal of rape charges against French rugby players
- Meta AI turns pictures into videos with sound
- Bolivia's Morales says claims he raped a minor are a 'lie'
- MLB Reds hire two-time champion Francona as manager
- Daniel Maldini receives first Italy call-up for Nations League
- US dockworkers return to ports after three-day strike
- Ancelotti points finger at Madrid's 'lack of intensity'
- Haiti reeling after 70 killed in gang attack
- Five Czech kids in hospital over TikTok 'piercing challenge'
- What happens next in Iran-Israel conflict?
- Country star Garth Brooks denies rape accusations
- Stubbs hits maiden century as South Africa make 343-4 against Ireland
- DR Congo to begin mpox vaccination campaign Saturday in east
- Odegaard injury has forced Arsenal to be 'different', says Arteta
- Ratcliffe refuses to guarantee Ten Hag's Man Utd future
- Meta must limit data use for targeted ads: EU court
- Mauritius to hold legislative election on November 10
- Britain qualify for America's Cup final after 60-year wait
- IMF asks Sri Lanka to protect hard-won gains
- Morata returns to Spain Nations League squad after injury
- Irish regulator to probe Ryanair use of facial recognition
- Public allowed to see video evidence in France mass rape trial
- US hiring soars past expectations in sign of resilient market
- Under-fire Ten Hag 'together' with Man Utd hierarchy
- Guardiola talks of Man City love affair as financial hearing rumbles on
- De Bruyne out of Belgium Nations League squad
- Japanese trainer Yahagi hopes Shin Emperor achieves 50-year-old Arc dream
- UK's Starmer hails 'landmark' carbon capture funding
- As EU targets Chinese cars, European rivals sputter
- Bosnia floods kill 14 people
- Tennis world number one Swiatek splits with coach Wiktorowski
Pricey pixels: Why people spend fortunes on NFT art
Thousands of artists beaver away every day creating images to sell as digital tokens (NFTs) in online exchanges. The market is booming, the most popular pieces can sell for millions, but outsiders may wonder why anyone would pay anything at all.
No physical pieces of art exchange hands in these transactions. Buyers use cryptocurrencies and receive their NFTs -- a unique piece of computer code related to the artwork that is stored on a blockchain, a kind of digital ledger that cannot be changed.
Driven by high-profile auctions, the market for NFTs exploded in 2021 with sales worth more than $40 billion, according to analytics firm Chainalysis.
Any sense that last year's prices could not be sustained in 2022 has already been dispelled -- to take one example, popstar Justin Bieber paid more than $1.3 million last week for an NFT from the collection known as "Bored Apes Yacht Club".
The collection, which features 10,000 cartoon images of apes with algorithm-generated variations to the background and other details, enjoyed a record January, shifting dozens of NFTs each day for an average price of roughly $250,000.
Critics say pure profit motivates the big transactions, with major financial players using technospeak and celebrity endorsements to disguise their aims.
But fans have an almost cultish devotion and see the technological complexity as an inherent part of the value.
Malaysian artist mumu_thestan says it is a varied landscape.
"You can't treat the whole NFT community as one," she tells AFP in a telephone interview.
"The mainstream audience thinks NFTs are about selling a jpeg for millions or making a monkey picture. That's not all it is."
- Punks to apes -
Mumu, a 33-year-old illustrator who declined to give her real name, labours over her creations, from constellations of flashing pixels to lush fantasy-style images of women and dragons, selling them for a few hundred dollars a piece.
She has worked to create a niche, refusing to sell on the main exchanges because of their use of the energy-hungry ethereum blockchain.
Artist David Leonard collects works by artists like Mumu because he believes she does great work and deserves the support of a community.
"As an artist, I want to be the kind of collector that I wish I had... I wouldn't want my collector base to be thinking about their bottom line," he told AFP.
Yet one of the main narratives around NFTs is one of the speculators making crushing profits by flipping their assets.
Booms and bubbles are fuelled by social-media hype and celebrity endorsements.
Last year, the must-have collection was CryptoPunks -- blocky images of 1970s style punks. Some sold for millions, with owners including Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg and YouTuber Logan Paul.
Now it is Bored Apes -- Bieber posted his ape image to his 200 million Instagram followers, giving powerful promotion to a collection already hyped by the likes of tennis star Serena Williams.
Most NFT creators can only dream of that kind of publicity.
"The average artist is actually losing money on their NFTs," says software developer Stephen Diehl, a vocal critic of cryptocurrencies.
He says the small players who make single editions of an original artwork generally pay out any profit in fees and costs -- and that is the lucky few who sell anything at all.
- 'I don't want to sell' -
Mumu acknowledges a debt of gratitude to her own celebrity endorsement -- Mike Shinoda of US rock group Linkin Park is a fan.
But the rest has been hard work -- building enough of a following through her art and activism so that she can afford to do NFTs full time.
She has 13,000 followers on Twitter compared with the 600,000 who follow Bored Apes.
The key to the success of both ventures is maintaining a buzz around the work -- whether it is meticulously constructed original artwork or algorithm-generated ape pictures.
This community-building has obvious parallels with the traditional art market where young artists often work as hard on garnering a following as they do on their work.
Esteemed auction house Christie's has helped cement this connection, selling an NFT by American artist Beeple for $69 million last year, making him the world's third-most expensive living artist.
The buyer could have bagged a Van Gogh or a Monet, works by both going under the hammer for similar money last year.
Also like the art market, the smaller players in the NFT world believe there is much more to their industry than mere money.
Brian Beccafico, a French collector, managed to get hold of a Beeple work for $1 at an online auction in 2020.
It is probably worth more than $100,000 now, but he is not interested in selling.
"I know that I wouldn't be able to buy another one," he says.
S.Caetano--PC