Presentation: Speculation, Art and NFTs

Markets simultaneously read and rewrite realities, existing as a distributed conversation amongst speculators driven by profit (and prophet) motives. Boom and bust cycles appear to be a universal feature of the zero-sum game of trading – be it in shares, derivatives, or cryptocurrency and Web3. As the art world is eaten alive by digital tokens, who are the winners and losers in this Brave New Non-Fungible World? Are crypto-believers’ calls promising emancipation for underpaid creatives credible? This talk by researcher Wassim Z. Alsindi will connect histories of financial bubbles, speculation and capital skullduggery through to the present moment of Bitcoin, NFTs, DAOs and 'tokenising the world'.