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Title details for Token Supremacy by Zachary Small - Available

Token Supremacy

The Art of Finance, the Finance of Art, and the Great Crypto Crash of 2022

by Zachary Small
Gabby Beans
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
A New York Times investigative reporter wades into the murky, pixelated waters of the multibillion-dollar NFT market—the virtual casino that sprang up overnight in 2020 and came crashing down, with all its celebrity hucksters, just two years later. A vibrant and witty exploration of the increasingly blurry line between art and money, artist and con artist, value and worthlessness.
“A perfect book to understand and to laugh at the craziness of the art world today." —Jerry Saltz, author of How to Be an Artist
In 2021, when the gavel fell at Christie’s on the sale of Mike Winkelmann’s Everydays series—a compilation of five thousand digital artworks—it made a thunderous announcement: Non-fungible tokens had arrived. The ludicrous world of CryptoKitties and Bored Apes had just produced a piece of art worth $69.3 million (at least according to the highest bidder). On that day, the traditional art market—the largest unregulated market in the world—put its stamp of approval on a very new and carnivalesque digital reality. But what did it mean for these two worlds to collide? Was it all just a money laundering scheme? And come on, what was that piece of digital flotsam really worth anyway?
In Token Supremacy, Zachary Small works through these and other fascinating questions, tracing the crypto economy back to its origins in the 2008 financial crisis and the lineage of NFTs back to the first photographic negatives. Small describes jaw-dropping tales of heists, publicity stunts, and rug pulls, before zeroing in on the role of "security tokens" in the FTX scandal. Detours through art history provide insight into the mythmaking tactics that drive stratospheric auction sales and help the wealthy launder their finances (and reputations) through art. And we cast an eye toward a future where NFTs have paved the way for a dangerous, new shadow banking system.
A wild and spellbinding tour through a world that strains belief.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 21, 2024

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593824597
      • File size: 294614 KB
      • Duration: 10:13:46

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from March 11, 2024
      “The contemporary art market has served as an economic laboratory for the rich to develop a shadow banking system of alternative assets and hedged liquidity,” according to this trenchant debut investigation. New York Times reporter Small argues that non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are “financial tools branded as digital art” and traces the rise and fall of the NFT market through vivid profiles of artists swept up in it. For instance, Small describes how crypto entrepreneur Erick Calderon battled a skeptical art establishment to create an online NFT marketplace where he sold algorithmically generated pieces by himself and others. However, the 2022 crypto crash imperiled his business by provoking traders to illicitly circumvent the royalty system on secondary NFT sales, rendering moot the main incentive for artists to work in the medium. Stories about notable collectors are just as colorful, as when Small describes how Mexican businessman Martin Mobarak burned a Frida Kahlo drawing worth $10 million to drive up the price of an NFT he created from it. Small assembles their finely observed character portraits into a troubling analysis of how the financialization of the art market has reduced culture to commercial tokens whose value depends on their ability to provide a return on investment. This masterful exposé enthralls. Agent: Howard Yoon, WME.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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