CoinDesk’s Money Reimagined

Funding Culture and Empowering Artists With NFTs, Feat. Lethabo Huma and Cuy Sheffield

Can NFT technology break open the "Old Boys Club" of the art world, empower artists and let each of us speculate on (and monetize) culture? The short answer is YES.

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ABOUT

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This week on "Money Reimagined," we bring you the second part in our series on non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, the crypto-based digital scarcity solution that’s taking the art and entertainment worlds by storm.

After last week tackling the stage-setting theme of how access to information determines value in the art world and who gets to set it, this week we go to the thin part of the wedge and look at real-world use cases where NFTs are poised to blow up that centuries-old power dynamic.

To do that we talk to two trailblazers in the exploding field of Black digital art: South African artist Lethabo Huma and NFT collector Cuy Sheffield, who also happens to be the head of crypto at Visa.

See also: The Business of Art and How NFTs Will Change It, With Nanne Dekking

Can this technology break open the "Old Boys Club" of the art world?

Can contemporary artists use the new contractual terms behind NFTs and the power of social media to more directly reach buyers and build a reputation?

And how might it enable creative collaboration, not only between artists but also between artists and a new breed of algorithmic bots behind a brand new genre known as “generative art?”

We discuss this and more in this week’s episode. At a time when everyone from the National Basketball Association to Mark Cuban to Gary Vaynerchuck is diving into NFT mania, you can’t afford to miss this one.

Image Credit: Mariya Tarakhnenko/Unsplash modified by CoinDesk

HOSTS

Michael J. Casey

Michael J. Casey is Chairman of The Decentralized AI Society, former Chief Content Officer at CoinDesk and co-author of Our Biggest Fight: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age. Previously, Casey was the CEO of Streambed Media, a company he cofounded to develop provenance data for digital content. He was also a senior advisor at MIT Media Labs's Digital Currency Initiative and a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management. Prior to joining MIT, Casey spent 18 years at The Wall Street Journal, where his last position was as a senior columnist covering global economic affairs.

Casey has authored five books, including "The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money are Challenging the Global Economic Order" and "The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything," both co-authored with Paul Vigna.

Upon joining CoinDesk full time, Casey resigned from a variety of paid advisory positions. He maintains unpaid posts as an advisor to not-for-profit organizations, including MIT Media Lab's Digital Currency Initiative and The Deep Trust Alliance. He is a shareholder and non-executive chairman of Streambed Media.

Casey owns bitcoin.

Michael J. Casey