VERMILION, Ohio — Vermilion artist Richard Scheufler has been producing art and electronic music under the pseudonym Free-Hy for over 20 years. He’s taking his art to the next level with the launch of his cryptocurrency NFT art collection.
But what exactly is NFT? NFT stands for "non-fungible token," and it is basically a way of assigning value to a unique digital commodity, such as an art piece or music file.
Non-fungible means unique, rare, one-of-a-kind. So where does the token come in to play? That’s the signature piece of art you see, encrypted with an artist’s trademarked stamp, and some are selling these NFTs for millions of real American dollars.
The token or art piece exists on what’s called a blockchain. The artist can sell their piece for a certain amount of money, and no matter how many times it’s sold after that first transaction, the artist will get a piece of every sale that extends from the first sale up to 10%.
“Really it's very similar to eBay,” Scheufler said.
He has been studying the art for more than a year and knows the most important part of it all is protection.
“Today's technology — we're pretty advanced. It's built to be safe from counterfeiting, hacking, and that's the biggest thing,” he said.
Some of Hollywood’s biggest stars are getting into the NFT Game.
“You're having music artists like Housey Diplo all the way to Snoop Dogg who is actually releasing his own NFT.”
With everyone wanting to hope on this hot commodity, the question remains.
Will this flood the NFT market and make these tokens once worth millions be worth that of a baseball card?
Scheufler said while it is an ever-changing industry, he believes the sky is the limit.
“Right now you're seeing just this huge rise. It's never-ending and when you think it's all, it's hit the peak, whoa, there's something else but just get ready and buckle up. There's going to be some really, really cool things coming,” he said.
Find more info on his collection here.
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