NFTs on the news: Mega-whale Pranksy brings collectible highlights to the fore

As NFTs once more capture mainstream attention, one prolific collector is leading the charge

by ANDREW THURMAN for Cointelegraph

On the evening of Jan 25, longtime non-fungible token (NFT) collectors, developers, and believers witnessed a bizarre, but likely validating piece of blockchain history: legendary collector-whale Pranksy was interviewed on the Fox 5 New York evening news during a segment on NBA Topshot, an NFT-backed collectible highlights project. 

NFTs on the nightly news is the culmination of a variety of intersecting trends. For one, it’s a testament to the developmental progress the NFT space has made since CryptoKitties, the last blockchain-based collectibles project to attract a hint of public attention in 2017. The interfaces are sleeker, transactions are easier, the prices often much, much higher — and in Topshot, a use case long thought as niche or secondary is gaining real mainstream traction due to an unusually snug product-market fit.

… Artist Kevin Abosch, who often uses blockchain as a medium, told Cointelegraph that he’s frequently approached by both real-world and NFT funds cooking up schemes, and warned that new entrants to the market should be wary of marketing and hype. 

“There are thousands of self-proclaimed ‘crypto-artists’ or ‘NFT-artists’ who see the headlines of big sales on the NFT auction platforms and understandably think there's a gold-rush. It’s important to recognize that there’s an engineered vacuum being created and inside the vacuum it’s easy to make it seem like there are a few hyper-successful artists in the space and that a sophisticated market is emerging,” said Abosch. 

“While I'm obviously deeply involved in the space, I have to tune out all the money-talk. At some point it's vulgar. Art is for lovers and the art market is for hustlers,” he added.

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