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Following last week’s article on art, some noticed that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were named after the Renaissance artists. Good catch! I referred to da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael, but I didn’t mention Donatello (aka the purple one), a sculptor and also from Florence.
Get your Friday morning (almost weekend) cup of coffee ready and enjoy this week’s edition. As always, if a Building Block doesn’t strike your fancy, skip to the next.
Art today
A few weeks ago, I wrote about talent stacking. Here’s a great example of how knowledge of two seemingly unrelated skills can combine into something useful or profitable. Conveniently for me, it relates to two topics we’ve covered in this newsletter – art and crypto.
Let’s commence this story with Nyan Cat.
In February, a one-of-a-kind digital rendition of this meme (from 2011) sold for about $600,000 in an online auction. And it was paid for using, you guessed it, crypto. 300 Ether (Ethereum), to be exact. This is an example of the boom in sales of non-fungible tokens (NFT).
Non-fungible tokens…huh?
By using blockchain technology, NFTs make it possible to prove ownership of digital assets like art, songs, videos, collectable sports cards; you name it. Each NFT is verifiable and unique and can be traced back to its creator. This makes it possible to identify, verify and sell unique digital assets. This is different from iTunes, for example, where you buy a license to listen to music, but you don’t own the original digital asset.
In the domain of digital creations, it’s like being able to identify and buy the original Mona Lisa, where we were previously only able to own copies.
Beeple
As you can imagine, this opens an entirely new realm of possibilities for digital artists and creators. Christie’s is the first global auction house to auction an entirely digital artwork called “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” by the artist Beeple. The work is a digital collage of 5000 images created on 5000 consecutive days — starting on May 1, 2007 through January 7, 2021. Bidding currently stands at $3m. Here’s the artwork:
If you zoom into the digital artwork, under each of these tiles is an image like this. (The individual pieces are also sold separately, and this specific one sold for $77 777).
Behind Beeple is a guy called Mike Winkelmann, a computer scientist who only began researching NFTs in mid-October of 2020. Then in December, he made $3.5 million in a single weekend from selling his artworks. To date, his artworks have sold for over $22m, with one selling for over $6m. He looks like an ordinary dude.
But he is not a lone success story in the NFT world. Many artists are raking in millions. If you’d like to check out the big artists and artworks, head on over to Cryptoart.io.
No doubt this all seems rather bizarre, but remember, our parents probably don’t like rap music, and their parents probably didn’t like rock. As per last week’s letter:
There are many art movements, each with a distinct style and characteristics that reflect the influences of the period from which they emerged.
The world is changing, and Covid has irreversibly shifted our worlds into the digital realm. Maybe NFTs will be remembered as the Renaissance of this era.
Anchoring and cognitive bias
We make more than 30 000 decisions each day.
When your alarm goes off in the morning, will you snooze or get up? Eggs or yoghurt for breakfast? Coffee or juice? What brand of toilet paper to buy at the store? Is this new person I’ve been introduced to a friend or foe? You get the point.
If we had to be thoughtful or analytical in making each of these decisions, we’d be paralysed. As a result, our brains rely on a host of mental shortcuts called cognitive biases that allow us to make automated and rapid decisions. Here they are, grouped according to their main use (your computer/phone’s zoom function will be useful here).
Although these biases are generally helpful, they can lead to unconscious errors in judgment and can be exploited by others to influence our opinions and behaviours. Let’s look at an example to illustrate.
Anchoring effect: The first piece of information we are given has a disproportionately high weight when making a decision.
This is the cognitive science behind the saying: “you never get a second chance to make a first impression”. Logically though, why should a second impression not count as much as the first?
Anchoring is also frequently used by clever salespeople and marketers by showing customers the most expensive product first as it makes others seem reasonably priced, or even cheap. Discount tags are equally effective. An item that’s marked as 50% off seems like a bargain, regardless of the price. But don’t think these tricks are limited to sleazy sales types. Watch how arguably the greatest marketer of all time gets the crowd excited about the price of the first iPad.
Understanding the various cognitive biases will take time, but will gradually sharpen your thinking and persuasion capabilities. Seems like a worthwhile addition to your stack of Building Blocks.
Seasons
Relocating from South Africa to Amsterdam, the weather has taken some getting used to. One wonderful aspect of the weather though, is the stark contrast in seasons. With the end of the European winter on the horizon, I captured a few photos in a beautiful park close to our home during a morning run this week. In appreciation of the splendour of nature, I’ll be sharing updates on this picture every couple of weeks.
If you enjoyed this week’s letter, please share it with family and friends.
And as always, your feedback and comments are much appreciated. Have a great weekend. See you next week.
If you’re on Twitter, you can also follow me at @robsturge.