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NFTs
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Hong Kong artists say NFTs are both empowering and challenging as cryptocurrency volatility affects income

  • Many Hong Kong artists experimenting with NFTs say they like setting their own prices and having a direct relationship with fans
  • The NFT market and culture remains a challenge for some as they navigate preferred aesthetics and cryptocurrency valuations

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Upside Down Mongkok by Hong Kong artist Tommy Fung, also known as SurrealHK. Fung, one many local artists experimenting with NFTs, said the technology allows artists to reach their fans directly. Photo: Tommy Fung
Xinmei Shen
Many Hong Kong artists experimenting with non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are finding the technology gives them more control over their artwork, but some say it is challenging working within the complex and volatile world of cryptocurrencies, according to interviews with the South China Morning Post.

NFTs, which refer to data stored on a blockchain that guarantees a digital asset is unique and immutable, took the world by storm last year, as people snapped up cartoon avatars, virtual property and digital artworks that cost millions of dollars.

In Hong Kong, profile-picture NFT projects took over the city’s prime advertising spots, as major auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s sold NFT artworks for millions. The tokens also proved to be a boon for many individual artists, who found a new market for their art.

“Digital artworks previously had no value, nobody was willing to pay for it,” said Felix Ip, a local comic artist and illustrator. “Now they have a value just like physical artworks.”

Ip, whose work combines elements of old Hong Kong and steampunk, first learned about NFTs in March last year, when he was commissioned by the industry group Bitcoin Association of Hong Kong. The resulting work was an illustration of a bitcoin-themed tram hovering in the sky over the city. Start Art Gallery, a physical gallery for crypto art, invited Ip to exhibit the piece and sell it as an NFT.

With the gallery taking care of minting, the process of creating an NFT by adding data to a blockchain, Ip had five limited NFTs of the illustration ready for sale. But Ip and his manager Eva Yang did not know what to expect because they were “so unfamiliar with the territory”, Yang said.

“On the gallery’s opening night we sold three of them. We were totally in shock,” Yang said. Prices for the three sold pieces varied from 1.8 ether to 2 ether, and a fourth one was later sold for 2.8 ether, she added. Ether, the cryptocurrency traded on the Ethereum blockchain, was worth about US$3,000 when the gallery opened in late September. It has since lost nearly a fifth of that value amid a cryptocurrency sell-off this year.

“It’s a totally different world,” Yang said. “We kept thinking how much one ether is in Hong Kong dollars, and they just decided [to buy] in the snap of a finger.”

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