New York NFT is the world’s largest and most popular NFT event. This year’s conference was held from April 12 to 14, and the director of Endemic, Stipe Plejić, took part in it. He shared with Bloomberg Adria details from the conference, which showcased a number of innovative projects and platforms, such as Adidas’ ALTSbyAdidas ecosystem and the Genesis NFT drop, highlighting the impressive growth and creativity within the NFT ecosystem. “Future industry trends were created there,” Plejić believes.
How did you feel about the organization of NFT New York?
When it comes to the NFT field, it is definitely the most prestigious conference in the world, it was great to participate in the panels and discussions where the future trends of the industry are created. The USA as a market still leads the way when it comes to the quality of production, marketing and presentation. And these are some of the prerequisites for a good NFT collection.
Which collections do you think have attracted the most attention and why?
Web3 companies, collectors, galleries and other institutions responded in large numbers, constantly working to improve the technology and market of digital assets and its characteristics. The conference showcased a number of innovative projects and platforms, such as Adidas’ ALTSbyAdidas ecosystem and the Genesis NFT drop, highlighting the impressive growth and creativity within the NFT ecosystem. The presence and display of innovation highlighted the growing importance and maturity of NFTs in the creative and technology industries.
How do collectors choose their NFTs, how important are trends?
As in any market, trends are key, they are what drive and create markets and market cycles. It is the same in the art market, in this case about NFT collectors. There are artists, ie content creators who have a significant reputation, whose style is recognized by collectors, either significant private or institutional collectors such as auction houses, galleries, art foundations, and funds that invest in art. The methodology and evaluation is similar to that of traditional art forms. When a certain style or artist is recognized by the industry, then the value of existing works increases significantly.
Another reason for the popularity of the NFT collection comes down to the community, if a wider population benefits from holding or using an NFT, it increases demand and raises its value.
How justified is the fear of initial investors towards minting NFTs?
This is primarily about the technical barriers of people who have not yet encountered blockchain technology and those who have not yet made an on-chain transaction, which means that they do not have a digital wallet, nor do they know how to use it. This is the most significant barrier. Namely, many content creators and artists as well as collectors and institutions are not skilled in using technology, so this creates functional difficulties for them in participating in the NFT market.
The next barrier is recognizing the quality of the artistic content or NFT collection that has utility. This group includes web3 active participants, who, from the aspect of valuable, or beautiful, or curated digital art, lack the knowledge to analyze style and art that has value.
How challenging was it for you as an NFT trader to attend the conference?
It was certainly challenging. It was necessary to thoroughly analyze everything, make appropriate strategic decisions from the perspective of the business cycle, trend analysis, but also professional decisions in accessing curated artistic digital content, and finally accompany it all with sophisticated technology and good marketing. I would not neglect the educational segment either, we invest a lot in education and informing the professional, as well as the wider interested public.
What obstacles did you face when starting an NFT trade?
Endemic is an NFT marketplace for digital curated art, with elements of a social network that encourages interaction, education, promotion and information about said content.
The main obstacles were of a technical nature, people who are not users of blockchain technology have a practical technological barrier. We responded to this barrier with education and workshops. When everyone is proficient in using the technology, we will talk about normal use and that will be the phase of mainstream use. The next barrier, which is actually the Endemic business case, is bringing in credible art institutions, artists and collectors and exhibiting their content on the Endemic NFT marketplace. There is also the problem of ignorance of technology and all its advantages. But recently, we have the mitigating circumstance that large companies, although they may not fully understand the technology, realize its advantages and want to enter the web3 space. So we have the most prestigious museums in the world, auction houses such as Cristies and Sotheby’s that have their own NFT marketplace and participate in the web3 industry. Also, there are numerous regulatory ambiguities in this young innovation market.
Where do you see NFTs in two years, how does your project fit into that story?
I see NFTs as a form of complex, even changing digital record that will be able to change its own characteristics as the circumstances affecting the specific digital record change. That would be a dynamic NFT. We will have and store various forms of assets in the NFT standard and exchange them as such. Also, the concept of digital ownership is something we will hear and consume more and more often.
The role of the Endemic NFT marketplace is the intersection of all art communities, a place that will gather curated art from all parts of the world presented by art market actors such as galleries, museums, auction houses and other institutions, as well as artists and collectors.