ArtGrails to present Nicky Diamonds' debut NFT

Avery Andon, Founder of ArtGrails and Art Collector, joined Yahoo Finance Live to discuss ArtGrails exclusively presenting Nicky Diamonds' debut NFT—Diamond Supply Co. & Nike Tiffany SB Dunks.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: Turning our attention to ways you can make money. And there's lots going on in the world of NFT, with Diamond Supply. Let's bring into the stream right now Avery Andon, founder of ArtGrails and Art Collector, as well as Reggie Wade, because the world of Nike is about to hit the world of NFT, Reggie, help us understand this.

REGGIE WADE: Yes, well everyone knows NFT is all the rage right now. You might have seen SNL even did an NFT song on their latest episode. Well, Avery, he's getting together with Diamond Supply Company to make an NFT of the famous Nike Tiffany SB Dunk. So Avery, welcome to Yahoo Finance. How are you? And what got you started in NFTs?

AVERY ANDON: So as a longtime art dealer and collector, I started buying my first NFTs years ago by CryptoPunks, which are the founders of the NFTs. And we partnered looking, we founded ArtGrails, looking for very exclusive special releases. And the Tiffany Dunk, in my opinion, is the grail of Grails when you look at sneakers. So we are releasing the first ever Nicky Diamonds NFT, for this historic sneaker, the diamond supply. And it just so happens that Wale, one of my personal favorite rappers, simultaneously reached out and is releasing a song called "Tiffany [? Doakes." ?] So we're going to be premiering a version of that as well.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Avery, my question, and I'm not going to throw shade on people who are buying and selling NFT because I think, look, there's a market here, my question is about, if I own the token, do I own the licensing rights to the use of that digital image? Because it would seem incredibly difficult to go after everybody worldwide who might print it out or use it somehow. How do I ever collect on the value of what I've bought?

AVERY ANDON: So you're not essentially buying reproduction or licensing rights, you're buying an investable token. So rather than investing and saying, Oh, I'm going to buy this diamond supply NFT, and then I'm going to get revenue when that's reused, or someone licenses the diamond supply logo. No. You're buying an individual token that has its own investability as a standalone item. So I guess there might be a little disconnect there. But there typically isn't licensing or trademark reproduction rights assigned with NFTs.

SEANA SMITH: Avery, it's Seana here. I guess following up on that then, what's the relationship, if you sign on with these deals, whether it's an artist, whether it's a celebrity, and the list can go on and on and on, whoever is making these deals, what kind of payback do they get? Do they receive royalties I guess every time that a transaction then takes place?

AVERY ANDON: Yeah, one of the beauties of NFTs is that it's one of the most transparent forms of transaction in entertainment. There was always a lot of murkiness with record labels and movies with their residuals and royalties. But with NFTs, you see in the public domain every time that NFT changes hands. So the artist receives a royalty in perpetuity every time it changes hands, whether you buy it for $1,000 and sell it for $5,000, then that person sells it for $10,000. The creator is paid each time it changes hands.

REGGIE WADE: Avery, you and your brother, Alec Monopoly, have been in this game for a long time. You've seen trends come and go. Is this just a trend within the art space, NFTs, or are we looking at the future?

AVERY ANDON: I think that in some capacity, we are looking at the future. Because essentially, what NFTs have done is remove the physicality of the art. One of the most important things, as you know, Reggie, in street art is, everyone wants the COA, they want to know that it's authentic. And NFTs have removed that without a shadow of a doubt. You have all of the metadata on there so you know what you are purchasing is 100% authentic. And I do see it, in one way or another, will have applications in the future of art.

ADAM SHAPIRO: But if I the buyer of the token don't get licensing fees, I mean, why is someone going to pay more for it in the future? I get that the artist is going to get a portion of the sale. But if there's no way to generate revenue off of the owning of the original token, what good is it?

AVERY ANDON: It's an investor. It's just the same as buying a piece of art. It's based on scarcity. So for instance, we're dropping one of the additions for the Diamond Supply release, there's only 25 of those entering the marketplace.

ADAM SHAPIRO: But it's not scarce. It's not scarce. I can copy the digital image without repercussion.

AVERY ANDON: Of course, but you're not buying the actual NFT that has investable token to it. Anyway look, no one's arguing that you could take a JPEG and have the same exact image, you could copy the video. But that's not going to be tokenized. It's not going to be within the blockchain. So it's not an investable commodity. They really are two different things.

REGGIE WADE: Avery, I don't know if you're keeping it a secret, but is this the only sneaker NFT you're doing or do you have something else in the pipeline?

AVERY ANDON: We have several with Nicky in particular, he's just such an iconic sneaker designer. And honestly, he's come up with some of my favorite Grail sneakers in history of sneaker collecting. So we have several more, none that I can announce yet. But this is a really exciting one. If you know you look on StockX, the Tiffany Dunk is it. It's the grail of Grails for sneakers. So we're really excited to enter it into the digital marketplace as an original NFT.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Avery Andon is the founder of ArtGrails and Art Collector. Thank you so much for being here. We look forward to having you come back. We want to keep talking about NFTs. Reggie Wade, always good to see you. We'll be right back after this.