Token Supremacy: The Art of Finance, the Finance of Art, and the Great Crypto Crash of 2022

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A New York Times investigative reporter wades into the murky, pixelated waters of the multibillion-dollar NFT market-the virtual casino that sprang up overnight in 2020 and came crashing down, with all its celebrity hucksters, just two years later. A vibrant and witty exploration of the increasingly blurry line between art and money, artist and con artist, value and worthlessness. In 2021, when the gavel fell at Christie's on the sale of Mike Winkelmann's Everydays series-a compilation of five thousand digital artworks-it made a thunderous announcement- Non-fungible tokens had arrived. The ludicrous world of CryptoKitties and Bored Apes had just produced a piece of art worth $69.3 million (at least according to the highest bidder). On that day, the traditional art market-the largest unregulated market in the world-put its stamp of approval on a very new and carnivalesque digital reality. But what did it mean for these two worlds to collide Was it all just a money laundering scheme And come on, what was that piece of digital flotsam really worth anyway In Token Supremacy, Zachary Small works through these and other fascinating questions, tracing the crypto economy back to its origins in the 2008 financial crisis and the lineage of NFTs back to the first photographic negatives. Small describes jaw-dropping tales of heists, publicity stunts, and rug pulls, before zeroing in on the role of "security tokens" in the FTX scandal. Detours through art history provide insight into the mythmaking tactics that drive stratospheric auction sales and help the wealthy launder their finances (and reputations) through art. And we cast an eye toward the future of NFTs-in mortgages, restaurants, securities, and loans-that could outlive cryptocurrencies, becoming a new and dangerous shadow banking system in its own right. A wild and spellbinding tour through a world that strains belief.

Reviews

"A delirious chronicle of a deranged era."Felix Salmon, Chief Financial Correspondent, Axios, and author of The Phoenix Economy

"A lot of cultural phenomena fall into the 'smile and nod' categorywe hear about them, we read about them, we might even have opinions about them, but deep down we dont really understand how they came about or what they mean. Zachary Smalls rip-roaring account of the NFT boom and bust is a path out of 'smile and nod' and toward true engagement. It shows us that any story about business and cultureas long as it is well toldis actually a story about people in all their flawed, ambitious, and curious glory." Julia Halperin, former executive editor of Artnet News

"Zachary Small is the perfect, sardonic guide to the meteoric rise of NFTs and the dumpster fire sparked by their fall. Their gripping narrative pulls apart the NFT's unholy mixture of idealism and greed, squiggles and dick jokes, techno-utopianism and bug-ridden tech to reveal the kaleidoscope of ever-changing grifts produced by the latest collision of art and finance."
Erin Thompson, author of Smashing Statues andart crime professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice

"A rollicking journey through the phantasmagoric landscape of NFTs, cryptocurrencies, DeFi and art, with side jaunts into video games and the healthcare industry. Small manages to make the brain-muddling concepts behind all of these things not only legible to the average reader, but animated by a dizzying cast of characters . . . Afun read that proves the old chestnut: life really is stranger than fiction." Sarah Douglas, editor in chief of ARTnews

Author Bio

ZACHARY SMALL is an investigative reporter on the dynamics of power and privilege in the art world for The New York Times. Small has a master's degree from The Courtauld Institute of Art in London and a bachelor's in art history and political science from Columbia University. They live in Manhattan.