NFTs, bitcoin, cryptocurrency, blockchain — and how a local artist is making a digital splash | Money

And … what does it all mean?

A Treasure Valley artist who goes by the name “Planet Darth” reached out to the Idaho Press with a fantastical story.

“Hello, I am a local independent artist that has been creating characters from potatoes,” he wrote in an email. “I recently released my first collection to the public as NFTs and the five potatoes sold out for almost $10,000. I am not sure if this would be relevant to you but since I live here, make potato art, and NFTs seem to be a popular talking point I thought I would reach out.”

Since then, one of Planet Darth’s potatoes was resold by twitter@punk4156 “in a farmhouse-themed audio-only clubhouse auction for the charity givecrypto.org,” Planet Darth said.

The pieces were auctioned off by Zack Zumstein of the Treasure Valley Livestock Auction.

When Planet Darth first sold the five potato-themed non-fungible tokens, NFTs for short, he pocketed about $2,000, as the original owner. But every time one is resold, he gets a royalty. And, the images (one is a gif) can be used by anyone — in fact, the more the images get around on the internet, the more valuable they become.

Planet Darth, who is a graphic artist by trade, said he knew he wanted in on the ground floor when he first heard about NFTs. “think of them as (digital) trading cards,” he said. “Really, what I’m drawn to is the technology,” he said. “It is really a new take on intellectual property.” It has to be authorized, verified for authenticity. And now, “if anybody can see a ‘spud’ online, they can trace it back to my digital wallet” for verification purposes.

His original idea for a collectible image was meat and potatoes. “I wanted to do something different. I thought, what’s Idaho like? it’s just a lot of meat and potatoes.’ … But googly eyes on a raw steak did not look good. So it turned out to be just potatoes,” he said.

“When I sold these spuds, what I did was, I created five different characters with different attributes and personalities and and photographed them in four different angles. Then sold them as bundles. … to the original purchaser who believes in me and my work. They were able to buy four. In the future, they can sell them in shards or fractional ownership — and still own a piece of the original investment that may increase in worth.

In addition to being able to make more money if one of the images is resold — for instance if a potato company, say, wants to make Darla, one of the spuds, a mascot for the company — the more the image gets simply passed around on the internet, the more valuable the original NFT becomes. With her googly eyes and oh-my-goodness mouth, Darla has become a reactionary gif for shocking news.  And, if Planet Darth grows as an artist, so, too, does any art that is already out there.

“The block chain is the technology being used behind the NFT. Any kind of crypto currency is inside the block chain,” he said. ‘With crypto currency, if you want to use bitcoin or dogecoin, that transaction has to be verified by a computer.”

“I like that my art is being used as a living, breathing meme.”