‘I Don’t Get the Appeal' Of Some NFTs: FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried

Read the full article by Scott Chipolina here

Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, admitted he was perplexed by the "visual aesthetics" of the burgeoning NFT market.

Key Points:

  • Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has admitted he doesn’t fully understand the appeal of the non-fungible token (NFT) market.

  • That's not due to any flaw in the technology, though; Bankman-Fried noted that he struggles to grasp the "visual aesthetics" of artwork in general. "I personally don’t understand the appeal of a Rembrandt painting," he told Axios earlier today. "So when I see NFTs, part of me is like… I don’t get the appeal of some of these."

  • NFTs are cryptographically unique tokens that provide proof of ownership over digital and physical assets; they can be linked to images, videos, audio, or just about anything in between.

  • The exchange launched its very own NFT marketplace last month, hot on the heels of Bankman-Fried’s own NFT auction; an image depicting the handwritten word "test", which sold for the staggering sum of $270,000 on FTX.US.

  • “But the Mona Lisa compared to somebody writing ‘test’ as a JPEG?” the Axios reporter asked Bankman-Fried, to which he replied, “Well, how about those paintings that are like six lines that cross with each other, how much would that be worth? I think they all look dumb to me.”

  • The FTX CEO also conceded that while NFTs—and traditional works of art, even world-famous pieces—all "look dumb" to him, they "mean a lot to the people buying them."  Which, the evidence suggests, is true.  NFTs—and the avatar trends they have spurred on social media—represent a form of community in a digitizing world
    The ongoing NFT boom

  • The first half of this year saw total NFT sales swell to $2.5 billion

  • Major name brands like Visa and Budweiser have jumped on the NFT bandwagon, too, as have many of the world’s most famous sports names like Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski

  • But as much momentum as NFTs have in the online world, they are also beginning to feature in the real world, too.

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