Why shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars for a digital image when you can download it for free?
That's the message behind a new site that has made thousands of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, available to download for free. Paying tribute to torrent site The Pirate Bay, the NFT bay has assembled an extensive collection of NFT images in an attempt to show the absurdity of digital art madness.
Proponents of NFTs, the verifiable and unique digital assets that are traded using blockchain technology, are innovative ways to exchange digital images and allow artists to profit from their work.
But critics argue that, at the end of the day, they are just images on screens surrounded by a culture of "get rich quick" schemes and cheat.
"What people are buying when they buy NFT art right now is nothing more than instructions on how to access or download an image." said Geoffrey Huntley, the nomadic Australian artist behind the site, which he calls an "educational art project".
NFT Bay contains 17 terabytes of NFT which equates to billions of dollars in sales, according to its founder.
The project comes after a series of NFT-related scams.
In a September incident, an employee of OpenSea, the $ 1.5 billion Mark Cuban-backed NFT marketplace, was arrested. buy certain pieces of digital art just before they were about to be displayed on the market home page, increasing its value.
And in October, investors spent millions on a series of NFT "Evolved Ape" from an anonymous developer who suddenly disappeared with $ 2.7 million in cryptocurrency. Vice reported in October.
"The greed / scam that is happening is disgusting," Huntley said.
On Twitter, critics of NFT praised the project.
"More than anything else I have seen or read, this torrent can finally disabuse anyone of the notion that NFTs have inherent value." wrote an user.
“Sell your NFTs to everyone; the party is over !" said other.
