SuperRare: John Craig’s speech on the NFT market

During the Metaforum conference, which was held on 13 June, attendees were able to listen to the keynote by the famous John Crain, CEO and co-founder of one of the most important NFT platforms, SuperRare.

CEO of SuperRare in Lugano at the Metaforum event

The event, organized by Finlantern in collaboration with The Cryptonomist, was attended by more than 500 people and, given the success of the initiative, plans are already underway to organize the 2023 edition.

In any case, one of the most anticipated speeches of the event was precisely that of Crain, who had come all the way from the States to attend.

During his speech, John traced the history of SuperRare since it was founded by him in 2018, leaving his stable job at Consensys. 

During his speech, Crain explained:

“What I saw in ERC721 was the opportunity of a lifetime. That sort of thing happens very rarely and when it does it is super important and so I decided to go all in. I felt like ERC721 had the opportunity to revolutionize the economics of human creativity”.

During the startup‘s first year, SuperRare earned only $90,000, which obviously was not enough to even support a single employee. Fortunately, the team did not give up and kept working on it, until in 2020 SuperRare came to earn its first million dollars.

In 2021, SuperRare made ends meet, reaching over 200 million NFTs sold and with a token, RARE, that currently has a market capitalization of over $20 million. 

After discussing the history of SuperRare, the speech goes on to elaborate on how NFTs are revolutionizing the art world. In this regard, Crain cites a 2022 UBS study that explains that the art market is worth $65 billion, but with only 10 thousand collectors. An incredibly small number. The reason is quickly stated: little data, little verifiable data, and little information on lesser-known artists.

The art market revolution driven by NFTs

With NFTs this changes: everything is transparent on the blockchain and users can control the sale and purchase prices of each work. In addition, another important opportunity created by NFTs, as Crain explains, is revenue on every sale on the secondary market as well, which gives artists potentially lifetime earnings. 

Overall, this is a new business model for the art world, which is why NFTs are here to stay.

Watch John Crain’s entire speech here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ2oj0Qi1Lw