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Fraile is highly confident that digital artworks are well placed to hold their significance and value as well as traditional physical artworks do in the long term.“This movement will be of more importance than any artistic movement we have witnessed in our lives. I strongly believe that the most important digital works will be of a lot more significance than most of the tier one creators today,” he said.

On the other side of the argument, experts cite a range of issues with the technology and the smart contracts it underpins as undermining the overall value of many digital assets.

“They [NFTs] don't give you any rights other than bragging rights,” Nicholas Weaver, a lecturer in computer science and a researcher at UC Berkeley’s International Computer Science Institute.

“[An NFT] doesn't actually convey any ownership rights. You don't gain copyright over the NFT. In reality, it's more like a baseball card. It's a cute little piece of paper. But the thing is, is since you don't actually have the baseball card itself on the blockchain, but just a pointer to it, it can actually disappear at a moment's notice,” he explained.

These limitations, however, do not appear to be putting a dent in the growth of the market for NFTs.

In addition to high-dollar sales, the overall market for NFTs has grown exponentially in recent years. Between 2019 and 2020, the amount of dollars transferred through NFT sales grew by 2,800% year-on-year, according to Nadya Ivanova, chief operating officer at foresight business L'Atelier BNP Paribas.

\"PHOTO:
Tyrone Siu/Reuters
PHOTO: Humanoid robot Sophia, developed by Hanson Robotics, draws on a piece of paper before auctioning her own non-fungible token (NFT) artwork, in Hong Kong, China March 16, 2021. Picture taken March 16, 2021.
>

Ivanova sees the possibility that both the market and the technology that underpins it evolving over time in a way that could allow it to operate in a way that conveyed more value to buyers.

“What you're buying is certain rights that come from ownership. So, for example, you can buy it [an NFT], you can sell it, you can rent it down the line … not necessarily have the right to reproduce it commercially.

“That doesn't mean, though, that you can't do that. The technology is so versatile that it allows you to encode into that sale, into the smart contracts that manages the NFT. It allows you to encode all kinds of things if you want, so you can actually put a copyright clause there that then specifies how you can actually use that NFT,” she said.

Away from the multimillion-dollar sales, many smaller artists and even hobbyists say that the evolution of the market has been empowering for them.

One such artist is Jay, who preferred not to use his full name in print, a Dublin-based creator in Ireland of pixel art – a style that evokes the graphics of vintage video games -- under the name Genuine Human Art.

Describing his digital art as a creative outlet rather than a full-time job, Jay told ABC News that he has sold around 20 unique pieces, some of which he has sold multiple editions of, for around $4,000 to $6,000 worth of cryptocurrency.

He feels that the emergence of the NFT art market has been game-changing for artists such as him.

Blossom Breeze. I didn't tweet this piece enough. Mostly because I minted it and it was picked up so quickly. I need some outdoor vibes with people. And dogs.#pixelart #ドット絵 pic.twitter.com/NXvAyyxxl6

— Genuine Human (@GenuineHumanArt) April 21, 2021

“I can't overstate how much of a difference this makes,” he told ABC News.

“For me what matters is the emergence of a new digital art market. For years, artists have been trained through social media to see their art as disposable, valueless. This movement changes that. It's changing the lives of young artists in particular. In what have been very difficult years, it's bringing income to artists in a way that just hasn't happened before. Not like this,” he added.

Whether the NFT art boom is a symptom of a major shift in cultural norms around the ownership of intangibles or, as some critics suggest, an economic byproduct of the pandemic, with bored people holding large amounts of appreciating crypto-wealth and looking for new ways to invest, will ultimately be determined by the market.

For the time being, however, if you’re looking to spend thousands or even millions of dollars on a JPEG, there is not shortage of opportunities to do so.

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