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The Art of Finance, the Finance of Art, and the Great Crypto Crash of 2022
by Zachary Small
A New York Times investigative reporter wades into the murky, pixelated waters of the multibillion-dollar NFT market—the virtual casino that sprang up overnight in 2020 and came crashing down, with all its celebrity hucksters, just two years later. A vibrant and witty exploration of the increasingly blurry line between art and money, artist and con artist, value and worthlessness.
In 2021, when the gavel fell at Christie's on the sale of Mike Winkelmann's Everydays series—a compilation of five thousand digital artworks—it made a thunderous announcement: Non-fungible tokens had arrived. The ludicrous world of CryptoKitties and Bored Apes had just produced a piece of art worth $69.3 million (at least according to the highest bidder). On that day, the traditional art market—the largest unregulated market in the world—put its stamp of approval on a very new and carnivalesque digital reality. But what did it mean for these two worlds to collide? Was it all just a money laundering scheme? And come on, what was that piece of digital flotsam really worth anyway?
In Token Supremacy, Zachary Small works through these and other fascinating questions, tracing the crypto economy back to its origins in the 2008 financial crisis and the lineage of NFTs back to the first photographic negatives. Small describes jaw-dropping tales of heists, publicity stunts, and rug pulls, before zeroing in on the role of "security tokens" in the FTX scandal. Detours through art history provide insight into the mythmaking tactics that drive stratospheric auction sales and help the wealthy launder their finances (and reputations) through art. And we cast an eye toward a future where NFTs have paved the way for a dangerous, new shadow banking system.
A wild and spellbinding tour through a world that strains belief.
"This masterful exposé enthralls." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[A] meticulously documented exploration ... Small profiles a diverse range of digital artists as well as other influential and often shadowy players across the finance, entertainment, tech, and gaming industries. They also expand the context with forays into pivotal movements in art history, a summary of the 2008 financial crisis, and the rise of the crypto economy. Throughout, Small sharply critiques the erosion of art collecting's prestige by sellers and investors driven by insatiable greed." —Kirkus Reviews
"A fascinating tale about NFTs, the art market, and investment for curious readers ... NFTs are a complicated subject that Small explains well, without oversimplifying." —Library Journal
"A delirious chronicle of a deranged era." —Felix Salmon, Chief Financial Correspondent, Axios, and author of The Phoenix Economy
"A riveting dispatch from a digital dream world, Token Supremacy unravels the complexities and contradictions of a bubble in which venerable auction houses sold digital monkey cartoons for millions of dollars. Zachary Small doesn't just laugh at the absurdity of NFTs—they bring the reader up close to the artists and hustlers who rode the wave to ridiculous fortunes and art-world fame." —Zeke Faux, author of Number Go Up
This information about Token Supremacy was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Zachary Small is an investigative reporter on the dynamics of power and privilege in the art world for The New York Times. Small has a master's degree from The Courtauld Institute of Art in London and a bachelor's in art history and political science from Columbia University. They live in Manhattan.
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