Mike Blake/REUTERS
- Mick Jagger and 3D artist Extraweg collaborated on the audio-visual NFT, which is being auctioned for charity.
- Dave Grohl is featured on the NFT’s soundtrack and picked the supported charities with Jagger.
- The 24-hour auction will raise money for music and environmental charities.
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Mick Jagger and Dave Grohl have joined the crypto frenzy, collaborating with 3D artist Extraweg on a non-fungible token (NFT) that is being auctioned in aid of music and environmental charities.
Jagger and Extraweg collaborated on the audio-visual NFT, which includes a custom loop from Jagger’s lockdown-inspired song “Easy Sleazy”, featuring Foo Fighters frontman Grohl. Extraweg contributed the visual element, which shows a human figure running through human heads as they shatter.
The NFT is being sold at a 24-hour auction, which started on Thursday evening, through digital token trading site Nifty Gateway. At 07:45 ET, around 5 hours before the auction will end, the highest bid was $10,200.
The auction will benefit various charities, selected by Jagger and Grohl, including Back Up, the UK’s Music Venue Trust and the American National Independent Venue Association. Back Up supports “industry technical professionals, crew/production personnel and people working in the technical supply chain” in the UK financially, whereas the other charities aid independent music venues and their workers.
Further charities in the music and environmental sectors will also be supported, but they remain unnamed so far.
NFTs are visual and audio data units that are built on blockchain technology. They are unique and cannot be interchanged. NFTs are often treated as collector items and can usually be seen by anyone online – although just one person can own them.
Jagger and Grohl have become the latest celebrities to join the NFT craze.
“NFTs as elite art-forms are definitely here to stay: this is the beginning of a huge new trend” Viktor Prokopenya, founder of cryptocurrency trading platform capital.com, commented on Jagger getting involved in the NFT market.
DJ Steve Aoki sold an NFT through Nifty Gateway in early March which brought in almost $900,000. Also in March, the band Kings of Leon sold an album as an NFT for the first time. Shawn Mendes has sold digital versions of his signature accessories. And Snoop Dogg and Lionel Richie have committed to producing NFTs for the crypto exchange Crypto.com’s NFT marketplace.
After buying a Beeple artwork for a record-breaking $69 million early in March, the buyer said investing in the digital tokens was a “huge risk”. Beeple himself also told Coindesk TV that he believed NFTs were in a bubble.