1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Hamiz Awan, Founder and Partner at Plutus21 Capital (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I have another example. It’s the example of Damien Hirst. He’s a very famous British artist. He jumped on the NFT bandwagon. He said he’s going to create a large number of artworks that are connected to NFTs. These are not digital artworks to begin with. These are physical artworks that have an NFT tie-in. That requires a different infrastructure. Have you seen this developing?

Hamiz Awan: NFTs are just a concept or a platform for people to innovate. Some people are going to say, “We’re going to have a physical item represented by an NFT.” Some are seeing them as experiences. Mike Tyson sold a weekend with him for $300,000. He would train you. That’s what he sold.

If tomorrow Taylor Swift comes out to launch an NFT. If you have her NFT, you’ll get front row seats. What do you think that’s worth? That’s worth a lot of money to a lot of people.

Sramana Mitra: These are two different use cases. The one with Mike Tyson is a weekend with him. You don’t need an NFT to sell that. You cannot resell that. Taylor Swift, that could be an NFT because that is a recurring privilege. There is value in buying and exchanging that. And auctioning that even. 

Hamiz Awan: It could even be simpler than that. She could say, “Whatever songs I launch, people in my NFT get it five days before anybody else does.” What’s happening with the Mike Tyson NFT is that the NFT that they sold will now be a memorabilia forever. There’s going to be all kinds of innovation. Some of it is going to stick; most of it will not. Whether they like the experience or not, the platforms are benifitting.

Sramana Mitra: If I’d put on your hat, I would look for a platform that would apply the NFT principle and facilitate doing these hybrid NFTs. The art world has a real problem. Fraud is rampant. The art world should anchor itself in the Blockchain infrastructure to get to a zero fraud solution. The base layer infrastructure exists. I think you need a couple of layers on top of that to make that possible. I would look for that solution.

Hamiz Awan: Absolutely. We can all imagine a use case. There’s a lot of hype here, but there are going to be a few use cases that stick. We just need a few of them to stick. You talked about rights of artists. You can enforce those rights within the NFTs. You can say, “Every time you play this song, the artist gets paid a certain amount.” If an art piece gets sold again, the artist gets a cut. You can enforce that using NFTs. 

Sramana Mitra: Just like you gave the example with NYSE, it’s full of intermediaries. The art world is full of bloat. It’s very difficult for artists to reach collectors. I have an article that I published on how I think that world should play out.

Hamiz Awan: That’s what keeps us excited about that space. Most of it is not going to work. Just a few of them need to work to transform how we do things.

Sramana Mitra: Very cool. This is a fascinating conversation. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Hamiz Awan, Founder and Partner at Plutus21 Capital
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