Collectors

When we talk about the early NFT movement, we often talk about the artists. But there was another group of people who played an important part in the story. The collectors.

In the early days, collecting digital art was still a strange idea to many people. Why would someone spend money on something that could be viewed online by anyone? What did it mean to own a digital artwork? And how could a collector know which artists and artworks would still matter years later?

A small group of collectors began asking those questions very seriously.

Some were already interested in art. Others came from technology, gaming or cryptocurrency. Some remained anonymous, becoming almost as recognisable by their online names as the artists they collected.

Cozomo de' Medici

Perhaps no collector became more closely associated with the idea of the digital art patron than Cozomo de' Medici.

Cozomo appeared on Twitter in 2021 and began building a collection that included CryptoPunks, generative art and one-of-one works by digital artists. The collection grew quickly, and the pseudonymous collector became a familiar voice in discussions about digital art and collecting.

What I find particularly interesting about Cozomo's story is that the collecting journey began with a CryptoPunk and then moved into other forms of digital art. In a 2023 conversation with Christie's, Cozomo described discovering the wider digital art community through CryptoPunks before becoming interested in generative art and one-of-one artworks.

The collection eventually moved beyond the blockchain itself. In 2023, Cozomo donated 22 blockchain artworks to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, giving digital works a place within one of America's major art institutions. (Christie's)

That feels significant when we look back now.

The idea that a digital collection could eventually become part of a museum collection was still relatively new.

WhaleShark

WhaleShark was another important early collector. Beginning to collect NFTs in 2019, WhaleShark became known for building a very large collection across digital art, gaming and virtual worlds. The collector also created a public-facing digital vault to showcase some of the collection.

WhaleShark's collecting reflected something important about the NFT world at the time.

NFTs weren't only about art.

They were also becoming part of gaming, virtual worlds, digital identities and online communities. Collectors such as WhaleShark were interested in this much broader digital ecosystem.

Pranksy

Pranksy was one of the collectors who had been around before NFTs became a mainstream phenomenon.

The story began with CryptoKitties in 2017. Pranksy has said that a friend told him people were paying large amounts for digital cats, leading him to buy about $600 worth of Ethereum to experiment with them. He continued collecting and became one of the better-known anonymous figures in the NFT world. (Cointelegraph)

By the time the NFT boom arrived in 2021, Pranksy had already spent years experimenting with digital collecting.

That makes the story particularly interesting.

He wasn't someone who suddenly appeared when NFTs became fashionable. He had been there while the idea was still relatively small.

gmoney

gmoney became particularly associated with CryptoPunks and the culture of the NFT profile picture.

In early 2021, he bought a CryptoPunk for 140 ETH. His Punk became part of his online identity, and he became an influential voice around the idea that an NFT could become much more than something sitting in a digital wallet. (gmoney)

This was one of the big changes that happened during the NFT boom.

People weren't only collecting art.

They were beginning to use NFTs as a way of saying something about who they were online.

A CryptoPunk, Bored Ape or other PFP could become an avatar, a status symbol, a membership card and a way of finding other people within the community.

gmoney became one of the people who helped articulate that idea.

Metakovan

Then there was Metakovan, the pseudonymous collector behind the Metapurse project.

He became particularly well known after purchasing Beeple's Everydays: The First 5000 Days for US$69.3 million at Christie's in 2021. The sale was one of the defining moments of the NFT boom and brought enormous attention to digital art.

But Metakovan's interests went beyond a single artwork.

Metapurse explored the idea of creating a shared collection of digital works and virtual experiences. The project also involved buying NFTs connected with virtual worlds and creating a kind of digital museum around the collection.

It was another example of collectors trying to work out what a collection could look like when the art existed online.

Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile

Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile was another collector part of the story, particularly through his early interest in digital artists and video art.

His collection included work by Beeple and other digital artists, and his involvement helped demonstrate that collectors were beginning to take digital art seriously as an art form rather than simply as a new type of cryptocurrency asset.

His early purchase and later resale of a Beeple artwork became one of the stories that helped illustrate just how quickly the market was changing.

The importance of the collector

The relationship between artists and collectors was always important in the NFT world.

A collector buying an artwork could bring attention to an artist who might otherwise have remained relatively unknown. A tweet from a prominent collector could introduce an artist to thousands of people. A major acquisition could change the way other collectors viewed an artist's work.

This created opportunities that digital artists had not always had before.

An artist could be working from a bedroom or studio anywhere in the world and suddenly find themselves being collected by someone on the other side of the world.

There was something quite exciting about that. But there was another side to it too. When a small number of collectors had a great deal of influence, their choices could affect the market. The artists they collected received attention, while others could easily be overlooked. This is not particularly different from traditional art.

Collectors, galleries, curators and institutions have always played a role in deciding which artists receive attention. The difference was that NFT collecting happened very publicly. The purchases happened on the blockchain. The collectors often talked about their acquisitions on Twitter.

And everyone could watch.

For a while, the collector became part of the artwork's story. Looking back now, I think that is one of the most interesting parts of the NFT movement. The artists were creating the work. The collectors were helping decide what would be remembered, and the blockchain was creating a record of both.

Some of those collections have survived. Some have changed hands. Some collectors disappeared. Some of the artworks that seemed unimportant at the time became much more interesting later, and some of the things that seemed certain during the NFT boom look very different now.

That is why the collectors belong in the history of NFT art too. They were not simply the people buying the work. They were part of the conversation about what digital art could become.