Recently, Argentine designer Andrés Reisinger made more than $450,000 selling 10 pieces of furniture in the span of 10 minutes as part of an online auction called The Shipping. The catch? None of the objects Reisinger made and sold physically exist—at least not yet. Reisinger’s surreal pieces of virtual furniture, or “impossible objects,” were purely digital and were initially revealed on and created for his Instagram account. They were then sold through Nifty Gateway, an online auction house trafficking in the sale of digital objects.
So how does one go about “owning” a purely online objet d’art? It has a whole lot to do with the blockchain, that complex digital ledger you might be familiar with in the context of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Essentially, digital collectibles are exchanged for cryptocurrency through marketplaces like Nifty Gateway, and the blockchain records the transaction in a universal, unalterable ledger. That lets anyone verify who owns a particular “nonfunigble token” (or NFT, as these digital items are known), giving individuals a sense of ownership over otherwise publicly available commodities like digital furniture, NBA highlights, or even particular tweets.
While some NFT buyers are in it purely for the satisfaction of owning a piece of viral art, Reisinger’s patrons have made a relatively more practical purchase. Owners can use the digital versions of his impossible objects as they see fit, whether that means flaunting them as status symbols in online games like Roblox or including them in augmented reality spaces. And in case you just can’t stand the idea of people paying real money for fake furniture, rest assured that Reisinger is working to create physical versions of five out of the 10 pieces, each of which will be delivered to its respective digital buyer. Given that NFTs have only been hot for a few weeks, it’s far too early to tell how much staying power these pieces of real and virtual furniture will ultimately have. Still, there’s a decent chance that this new conception of online design is more valuable than you might think.
