Seven years ago, New York artist Kevin McCoy unwittingly laid the groundwork for what would become one of the most widespread and controversial art trends in recent memory: the NFT. 

An NFT 一 shorthand for non-fungible token 一 is a unique non-interchangeable digital asset that exists on a blockchain, making it scarce, secure and valuable. A blockchain is an immutable digital ledger that is duplicated and distributed across all of the computer systems that connect to it, creating a vast network of identical copies that constantly cross-reference one another with something called a consensus mechanism to ensure that it has not been tampered with. 

McCoy’s piece, titled “Quantum,” was the very first artwork to become an NFT. At precisely 9:27 p.m. on May 2, 2014, it was “minted,” or verified, on the Namecoin blockchain, thus enshrining itself as the forefather of perhaps the single most environmentally damaging art movement in human history.

McCoy’s synthesis of visual art and blockchain technology has since taken the contemporary art world by storm. The old guard may be acting as if everything about this digital medium’s explosion in popularity is unprecedented, but that could not be further from the truth. 

Art and technology have been closely intertwined since human history began. Their relationship has only strengthened as both become bigger parts of our lives. It was only a matter of time before artists realized they could use the blockchain to develop new methods of creating and exhibiting their work. Thanks to the driving forces of capitalism, it was also only a matter of time before a market sprung up around the burgeoning art form.  

There were $2.5 billion in NFTs sold in the first two quarters of 2021 alone. When one considers that there were only $94.86 million sold in all of 2020, the sheer scale of its rise to prominence becomes overwhelmingly apparent. Everyone from Paris Hilton to Taco Bell attempted to capitalize on the trend.  

Whether they were drawn by the creative potential NFTs promised or the billions of dollars they had generated, the established conceptual artists of the high art world began to follow suit. When digital artist Beeple’s piece “Everydays — The First 5000 Days” sold for a record-breaking $69.3 million in March, the NFT world was sent into a frenzy. 

Self-proclaimed “professional troublemaker” and gallery artist Dread Scott was among the stream of “blue chip” artists adapting their work to this new media. His recent NFT titled “White Male for Sale” consists of a looping video of a white man standing atop an auction block somewhere in Brooklyn. 

At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with “White Male for Sale.” It may be one of Scott’s least formally interesting works, but its interrogation of contemporary race relations through the iconography of the slave trade is thought-provoking. 

It is rather the context in which “White Male for Sale” was created that renders the NFT medium problematic. In an artist statement Scott made to Christie’s regarding the piece, he discussed at length how the “concept of having non-fungible tokens and talking about art suddenly being non-fungible” was an idea he found interesting and directly tethered to capitalism.

If the fact that “White Male for Sale” is an NFT is disregarded, it could be argued that the critique of capitalism Scott is presenting with the piece is effective. The image of a modern white man waiting to be auctioned off is striking, and it serves as a stark reminder that the economic system that created the slave trade 200 years ago is still in place today. 

Yet when the role that NFTs and the blockchain in general play in capitalism’s unfeeling devastation of human life is taken into account, the piece quickly falls apart. 

The high level of security that the blockchain’s decentralized structure provides does not come without cost; blockchains that utilize proof-of-work consensus mechanisms 一 meaning that they employ the individual processing power and electricity of “miners” to maintain the continual validation process that the system demands 一 annually consume more energy than most countries. 

Ethereum 1.0, the blockchain where “White Male for Sale” and the majority of other NFT exist, consumes about 77.03 terawatt hours annually, which is equivalent to the power consumption of the entire nation of Chile. Its carbon footprint 一 approximately 36.59 metric tons of CO2 一 is comparable in size to New Zealand. 

I need not detail the extensive human consequences of global warming. The displaced populations, catastrophic weather events and general decline in quality of life speak for themselves. The direct contribution that Ethereum 1.0 and other blockchains like it have made to these problems cannot be understated. 

Thus, the irony of “White Male for Sale” becomes painfully apparent. How an artist so purportedly self aware as Dread Scott could fail to recognize the hypocrisy of condemning capitalism while simultaneously participating in one of its most destructive processes escapes me. This gross oversight overshadows any poignancy “White Male for Sale” could have had, leaving it seeming either painfully naive or actively deceitful in its intent, depending on one’s perception of Scott. 

Unfortunately for Scott, neither interpretation is very flattering. It is deeply disheartening to see the man responsible for such deeply moving anti-capitalist pieces as “What is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag?” and the awe-inspiring “Slave Rebellion Reenactment” so flippantly indulge in the very system he supposedly seeks to oppose. 

I do not wish to disavow Scott as an artist. The raw, rhetorical power he is able to command with pieces like “Money to Burn” and “A Man Was Lynched by Police Yesterday” continues to inspire me. One misstep could not possibly invalidate his entire body of work.

That being said, his failures with “White Male for Sale” prove a very, very important point: until Ethereum 1.0 and other proof-of-work blockchains reduce their frighteningly large carbon footprint, it will remain fundamentally impossible to denounce capitalism through the medium of NFTs.