代幣霸權：炒作和 NFT 市場崩潰的一年

在本書的 12 章中，Small 引導讀者了解 NFT 炒作的過山車，以及與加密貨幣的繁榮與蕭條以及監管問題的關聯。

Art and finance have a salacious appeal, a fact noted by writers from Danielle Steele to Steve Martin, the latter stating wryly toward the end of his novel, An Object of Beauty: “Art was still art whether it was tied to money or not.” Yet Rembrandt died in penury, as New York Times reporter Zachary Small recounts in the introduction to Token Supremacy, their newly published book on the 2021 NFT market bubble and its aftermath.

藝術和金融具有淫蕩的吸引力，丹妮爾·斯蒂爾（Danielle Steele）和史蒂夫·馬丁（Steve Martin）等作家都注意到了這一事實，後者在他的小說《美麗的對象》的結尾諷刺地說：“無論是否與金錢掛鉤，藝術仍然是藝術。 ”然而，《紐約時報》記者扎卡里·斯莫爾(Zachary Small) 在他們新出版的關於2021 年NFT 市場泡沫及其後果的新書《Token Supremacy》的介紹中回憶道，倫勃朗死於貧困。

Small notes this while describing the infamous 17th-century Dutch tulipomania, an apt comparison to the NFT boom, and one that artist Anna Ridler, represented by Nagel Draxler, first made in her video series Mosaic Virus (2018 and 2019), though neither she nor her work are mentioned in Small’s book. Several artists making work about or with blockchain in the technology’s early years addressed its potential and the problems with its underlying financial model: Simon de la Rouviere, Simon Denny, Sarah Friend, Rhea Myers, Martin Nadal, César Andaluz, and Martin Lukas Ostachowski, to name a few. Small’s book recounts the two years of media-driven interest and inflation, but omits this backstory and wider scope, limiting readers’ understanding of what that moment was truly about, and thus, where it might be going.

Small 在描述臭名昭著的17 世紀荷蘭鬱金香狂熱時注意到了這一點，這與NFT 熱潮進行了恰當的比較，以Nagel Draxler 為代表的藝術家Anna Ridler 首次在她的視頻系列《馬賽克病毒》（2018 年和2019 年）中製作了鬱金香狂熱，儘管她兩者都沒有斯莫爾的書中也沒有提到她的作品。幾位在該技術早期就區塊鏈進行創作的藝術家探討了其潛力及其潛在財務模型的問題：Simon de la Rouviere、Simon Denny、Sarah Friend、Rhea Myers、Martin Nadal、César Andaluz 和 Martin Lukas Ostachowski，僅舉幾例。史莫爾的書講述了兩年來媒體驅動的興趣和通貨膨脹，但忽略了這個背景故事和更廣泛的範圍，限制了讀者對那一刻真正的意義的理解，從而限制了它可能走向何方。

Across the book’s 12 chapters, Small guides readers through the roller coaster of NFT hype, and its associations with the boom-and-bust and regulatory concerns of cryptocurrencies. Tyler Hobbs, Mike Winkelmann (aka Beeple), Justin Aversano, and Erick Calderon, the founder of generative art platform Art Blocks, are Small’s protagonists of the 2021 boom, taking readers from Christie’s record-breaking auction of Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5,000 Days to the unexpected synchrony, a year and half later, between Art Blocks’ Open House in Marfa, Texas and Sam Bankman-Fried’s resignation from FTX, the now-bankrupt crypto exchange and hedge fund.

在本書的 12 章中，Small 引導讀者了解 NFT 炒作的過山車，以及與加密貨幣的繁榮與蕭條以及監管問題的關聯。泰勒·霍布斯(Tyler Hobbs)、邁克·溫克爾曼(Mike Winkelmann，又名Beeple)、賈斯汀·阿維薩諾(Justin Aversano) 和生成藝術平台Art Blocks 的創始人埃里克·卡爾德隆(Erick Calderon) 是《Small》2021 年繁榮的主角，他們帶領讀者觀看佳士得破紀錄的《Beeple's Everydays: The First 5,000 Days》拍賣會。舉行的開放日與Sam Bankman-Fried 從現已破產的加密貨幣交易所和對沖基金FTX 辭職之間出現了意想不到的同步。

Small’s telling contains engaging anecdotes and the occasional digression to art historical antecedents—the evolution of photography and Donald Judd settling in Marfa—that provide obvious cultural references to anchor readers in this emergent technology. But for someone who participated in and was a close observer of the NFT boom, Token Supremacy seems mostly to reiterate popular magazine articles without providing significant new research or insights. This deficiency is underscored by Small’s goal, outlined in the introduction, to contribute to the history of cultural economics and the dynamics of speculation. There is much to say about the gnarly web that links artists, platforms, hedge funds, venture capitalism, regulation, and global finance, but it is not to be found in the four case studies and breezily recounted recent history that form this book. The shortfall between the book’s stated aims and its execution led me to wonder if Token Supremacy had not tried to fulfill the demands of two audiences: to present the art world’s particular usury in its dealings with crypto for those with some knowledge of both art and crypto and, at the same time, provide a Vanity Fair-esque retelling of NFTs that could credibly be a beach read.

史莫爾的敘述包含引人入勝的軼事，偶爾還涉及藝術史的前身——攝影的演變和唐納德·賈德在馬爾法的定居——這為讀者在這一新興技術中的錨定提供了明顯的文化參考。但對於參與並密切觀察 NFT 熱潮的人來說，Token Supremacy 似乎主要是在重申流行雜誌文章，而沒有提供重要的新研究或見解。斯莫爾在引言中概述的目標強調了這個缺陷，即為文化經濟學的歷史和投機的動態做出貢獻。關於連結藝術家、平台、對沖基金、風險資本主義、監管和全球金融的粗糙網絡，有很多話要說，但在本書的四個案例研究和輕鬆敘述的近期歷史中卻找不到它。這本書的既定目標與其執行之間的差距讓我懷疑《Token Supremacy》是否沒有試圖滿足兩個讀者的需求：向那些對藝術和加密貨幣都有一定了解的人展示藝術界在處理加密貨幣時的特殊高利貸行為。

The demands of the latter lead Small to truncate important events, eliding their deeper complexities. For example, in the book’s first chapter, while Small recounts the desires of and the difficulties faced by the Christie’s employees driving the Beeple auction in March, they bypass telling how, several months earlier, Metapurse, the crypto-focused venture capital fund, sold fractionalized ownership stakes in 20 Beeple works as part of its B20 coin investment scheme. It isn’t mere trivia that Metapurse was then the buyer of Everydays for nearly $70 million, but material to why they had a vested interest in driving up Beeple’s prices. And while Everydays served as a kind of advertisement for B20, those works were not added to the coin investment scheme, as initially reported by Amy Castor. The B20 coin and Everydays would be an ideal case study in speculative tokenomics, and might have been used to explain how insider knowledge and “rug pulls” (where a group draws investors, only to abandon the project) operate within NFTs and crypto markets. Small, however, does not illuminate this connection or its implications.

後者的要求導致斯莫爾截斷了重要事件，忽略了它們更深層的複雜性。例如，在本書的第一章中，雖然斯莫爾講述了3 月份推動Beeple 拍賣的佳士得員工的願望和麵臨的困難，但他們忽略了幾個月前專注於加密貨幣的風險投資基金Metapurse 是如何出售的。 Metapurse 當時以近 7000 萬美元的價格收購了 Everydays，這不僅僅是一件小事，而且是他們在推高 Beeple 價格方面獲得既得利益的重要原因。正如 Amy Castor 最初報導的那樣，雖然 Everydays 是 B20 的一種廣告，但這些作品並未添加到代幣投資計劃中。 B20 幣和 Everydays 將成為投機代幣經濟學的理想案例研究，並可能被用來解釋內部知識和「拉動」（一個團體吸引投資者，但最終放棄該項目）如何在 NFT 和加密市場中運作。然而，斯莫爾並沒有闡明這種聯繫或其意義。

Further, there is no discussion of the dangers or negative impact that centralized marketplaces like MakersPlace or OpenSea had, nor the model they are based on: the decentralized platform Rare Pepe Wallet, established in 2017, which evolved from the Pepe the Frog, the cult internet meme that went from slacker icon to far right co-optation and, eventually, subsequent reclamation, partly via two Asian projects.

此外，沒有討論像MakersPlace 或OpenSea 這樣的中心化市場的危險或負面影響，也沒有討論它們所基於的模型：2017 年成立的去中心化平台Rare Pepe Wallet，它是從邪教Pepe the Frog 演變而來的。

Another important financial feature deserving of greater analysis is resale royalties—Hobbs took in $9 million after an initial $400,0

另一個值得進一步分析的重要財務特徵是轉售特許權使用費——霍布斯在最初的 40 萬美元之後獲得了 900 萬美元。