More and more people, platforms, and artists are jumping on the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) trend, but art collector Avery Andon, founder of ArtGrails, says NFTs are more than a fad. He joined Yahoo Finance Live to discuss ArtGrails exclusive debut today of Nicky Diamonds’ NFT—Diamond Supply Co. & Nike Tiffany SB Dunks.
The Nike (NKE) Dunk SB Low Diamond Supply Co. is considered by many to be a “holy grail” of shoes. Nicky Diamonds is the founder and the designer of Diamond Supply Co. and has worked with brands such as Nike, Coca-Cola, Puma, Chevrolet, NBA, ASICS, Basquiat Estate, and Warner Brothers, among many. He teamed up with ArtGrails, a standalone NFT platform, to turn his much-coveted shoe into an NFT.
But this NFT comes with a twist. Grammy Award-nominated rapper Wale released a new song alongside a motion-graphic with the drop.
The Dimond SB X Wale NFT will come in in both an open edition, which will retail for $500, and a "Grail Edition," which will be limited to 25 NFT's priced at $5,000 each.
So what do you get when you buy the NFT? “You’re not essentially buying reproduction or licensing rights, you’re buying an investable token. So rather than investing in saying, Oh, I’m going to buy this Diamond Supply NFT. And then I’m going to get revenue when that’s reused or someone licenses the Diamond Supply logo. No, you’re buying an individual token that has its own investability as a standalone item,” Andon said.
“There was always a lot of murkiness with record labels and movies with their residuals royalties. But with NFTs, you see in the public domain every time that NFT changes hands. So the artist receives a royalty in perpetuity. Every time it changes hands, whether you buy it for a $1000 and sell it for 5,000, then that person sells it for $10,000. The creator is paid each time. It changes hands.”
When it comes to the possibility of major sneaker brands like Nike getting into the NFT game themselves, Craig Russo, NFT and Blockchain expert and co-founder of Polyient, believes it's only a matter of time.
"The shoe market is primed for the adoption of the NFT asset class. Shoes and other luxury goods are already actively traded on digital marketplaces like StockX, and the introduction of NFTs will facilitate a more robust system for authentication and trading," he said.
"I believe major brands will make their way into the NFT market and we saw an early indication of this trend back in 2019 when Nike filed a patent for using NFTs as a way to link real-world physical shoes to digital representations. I fully anticipate this movement to accelerate now given the mainstream interest around the asset class."
Reggie Wade is a writer for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @ReggieWade.
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