The Oscars' Chadwick Boseman NFT shows another issue with cryptoart


NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are taking the world of the rich by storm. Despite their colossal environmental impact, NFTs are currently the “it thing" for those with the dough to splurge. There are plenty of issues with this emerging world of Cryptoart, but a new Chadwick Boseman NFT highlights another problem with the platform.

What is the Chadwick Boseman NFT?

Created as part of an Everyone Wins Nominee Gift Bag, the Chadwick Boseman NFT was made by online artist Andre Oshea. The piece shows a gold-textured replica of Boseman's head being built up and surrounded by flowing plants.

Despite every Oscar Nominee getting a copy of the video file, the Oscars are selling the file as an NFT. The file sold for an equivalent of $1.2 million; 50% of the proceeds are donated to The Colon Cancer Foundation charity. At least some good was done, even if it was at the expense of the planet.

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What's so bad about this NFT?

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, many are seeing the creation of this NFT as a way of profiting of the death of a famous person. Whether or not that's true is not up to us, but many have used the opportunity to profit from Boseman's unfortunate passing.

Stolen NFTs are an issue. In fact, the massive lack of regulation for NFTs is allowing anyone to tokenise anything – even if it doesn't belong to them. For example, tweets can be tokenised. One of the most despicable and disguising cases of this is tied to Chadwick Boseman. One person tokenised the death announcement of Boseman in an attempt to sell it.

However, what most are having issue with is the fact that Oshea's NFT of Boseman isn't a completely original work. In fact, it's hardly original at all.

Spotted by Twitter user Kotalketz, the model of Boseman's head that was used isn't an original creation. Actually, the head is a $50 3D model available for anyone to buy online – one who's official store page has a comment claiming that it was stolen in the first place. Possibly even worse, hordes of people are claiming that the artist didn't purchase the model in the first place. However, this could all be conjecture.

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Does this really honour Chadwick Boseman?

Whatever the intention, the Chadwick Boseman NFT doesn't really honour the late actor. For starters, the 50% charity donation is great, but that money shouldn't be raised via such a planet-destroying method. Secondly, if all the effort Boseman is worth is a $50 head, then it's scummy to pretend The Oscars truly cares.

This was a huge moment for Chadwick Boseman. As upsetting as it is, this Oscars nomination was the last time the actor could ever be nominated. Unfortunately, The Oscars saw that opportunity and fan excitement to profit off a beloved man. Even worse, they chose the worst possible way to do it.

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