{"name":"Beloved People: Sam Bankman-Fried","created_by":"Bay Fragile x sgt_slaughtermelon","description":"“Some of this decade’s greatest heroes will never be known, and some of its most beloved people are basically shams.” - SBF\n\nHis name is everywhere right now, you practically can’t get away from it.\n\nWhy should artists care about Sam Bankman-Fried? If you want someone to actually buy your art, be warned that he essentially deleted $40 billion in assets from the ecosystem. Of course not all of that was ever real money - a lot was hyper-pumped tokens that couldn’t be swapped for any meaningful currency at scale. As a result, lots of potential collectors find that they suddenly have no FTX account from which to withdraw if they wanted to buy some art - their FTT tokens turned out to be even more illiquid than some of rug-pulled PFP acquisitions. Add to that FTX’s aggressive media and promotional campaigns targeted at the outside world, and one can confidently assume they are predatory ponzi operators. If you read the statement by Mr. Ray (the lawyer from Enron who has taken over their accounts in bankruptcy) you’ll find that FTX was also ridiculously irresponsible with their book-keeping and their users’ money, using their exchange as a piggy bank for their trading entity Alameda Research. If all this weren’t bad enough in terms of making all crypto (and by extension your art tokens) look shady - they cast aspersion on their competitors at the same time that SBF was schmoozing with politicians and the SEC and trying to push forward his own vision of US federal regulation of crypto. Compounding all these insanely destructive events is one more that matters for artists: all NFTs created through FTX are essentially stuck there in perpetuity (as far as we know). Since they managed those assets instead of the users, many so-called “utility NFTs” including Formula One, Tomorrowland, and FTX’s own Coachella NFTs are all lost to a frozen exchange. Moreover, FTX’s importance to the overall Solana ecosystem has caused significant damage to the price of $SOL and the general market sentiment about the overall chain.\n\nConsider for a moment what all these factors mean for artists: the narrative of NFTs being owned by users and immutable was damaged when FTX kept control and then froze these assets. Popular art markets like Exchange.art and Formfunction.xyz on Solana can keep selling art for $SOL but FTX’s partial responsibility for Solana’s current decline means artists are having to constantly relist their items for higher $SOL prices. Given the token continues to decrease in price, artists are making increasingly less money for each sale. It’s like trying to sell furniture out of a house on fire. Because of this, at least a few of our collectors are probably reeling and trying to figure out what to do now that their stacks have been decimated. Opportunistic politicians will use the collapse of FTX and the bad optics of SBF colluding with the Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) as an excuse to push through anti-crypto regulation as fast and recklessly as they can.  Crypto-savvy collectors are now keeping an eye on the newsfeed for announcements that might freeze assets or select tokens to be labeled as securities or who-knows-what, exacerbating the ambient rot of “fear, uncertainty, doubt” that makes collecting art feel like maybe an endeavor for calmer waters.\n\nSure, you can still make it as an artist in this space - but SBF has made it a lot harder for a while.","attributes":[{"trait_type":"Artist","value":"Bay Fragile x sgt_slaughtermelon"},{"trait_type":"Collection","value":"Beloved People"}],"animation_details":{"bytes":7237385,"format":"MP4","duration":60,"sha256":"fd4046369379421af66f1cd78420633c0668cf7d90ec95cde80405071e39bfee","width":1080,"height":1440,"codecs":["H.265"]},"animation":"https://arweave.net/IvYIY6Xt8oH_rgu75oZa14h88T2a9AQU22z6j2Y4hpw","animation_url":"https://arweave.net/IvYIY6Xt8oH_rgu75oZa14h88T2a9AQU22z6j2Y4hpw","image_details":{"bytes":435003,"format":"PNG","sha256":"b39a1000692c009235c01820ec58f6c83d60bcd89c9d909b0425ae8ada07330c","width":1080,"height":1440},"image":"https://arweave.net/uoAK-OfYpOdaPDIFr_mghUP3Nqp7s-JRlHQTImxl3c4","image_url":"https://arweave.net/uoAK-OfYpOdaPDIFr_mghUP3Nqp7s-JRlHQTImxl3c4"}