In January of 2014, I tweeted some digital images that I had designed that one could easily say were a precursor to Non-Fungible Tokens, which are all the rage today. I was trying to design content that could not be forged.
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST - As That Which Cannot Be Forged. [Digital Image. 256 x 256 pixels. A.G. (c) 2014] pic.twitter.com/nxMaeHq24d
— A.G. (@antisignal) January 31, 2014
I came up with names like the "ALEXCOIN", because I had been studying the rise of Bitcoin and the Blockchain for many years and believed that I could create art that was not capable of being forged, using blockchain technology. I didn't have the technical skill to actually make what would today be called NFTs, so I did it my way via Twitter.
ENTER THE ALEXCOIN Perfectly Unreadable Napoleon Antiface. [Digital Image. 256 x 256 pixels. A.G. (c) 2014] pic.twitter.com/dSsUphKyml
— A.G. (@antisignal) January 31, 2014
Another name I used was the "ANTIFACECOIN". The concept of "Antiface" and the "Antiface Strategy" are things that I had been working on for over a decade at the time. The idea was really to create art that could not be forged, art where I could be the only possible creator. At the time, I thought that I had succeeded with these little images. This one, in particular, was an actual painting done in acrylic. The others are digital designs meant to be self-portraits. That was one of the aspects of my concept, that these "Coins" were also self-portraits, or self-referring in a sense.
INTRODUCING THE ANTIFACECOIN. [Mixed media on canvas. 5 in x 7 in. A.G. (c) 2014] pic.twitter.com/JUubvL5bFW
— A.G. (@antisignal) January 31, 2014
Here in the following tweet, I am calling them "AntifaceCards". I saw them as collectibles. I was really ahead of my time!
COLLECT THEM WHILE THEIR HOT!. [AntifaceCards by A.G. (c) 2014] pic.twitter.com/49I5qizi7r
— A.G. (@antisignal) January 31, 2014
Here is proof, in any case, that I was working on the concept of NFT or Non-Fungible Token as early as January, 2014. I don't know if the term NFT even existed then. But certainly I was thinking at the time of the idea of art that could not be forged, using a technological support or backbone such as the Blockchain.
NB: It turns out that I beat the first NFT by several months, the first NFT being created in May, 2014, and mine being created in January, 2014.
"The first known "NFT", Quantum, was created by Kevin McCoy and Anil Dash in May 2014, consisting of a video clip made by McCoy's wife Jennifer. McCoy registered the video on the Namecoin blockchain and sold it to Dash for $4, during a live presentation for the Seven on Seven conference at the New Museum in New York City. McCoy and Dash referred to the technology as "monetized graphics". A non-fungible, tradable blockchain marker was explicitly linked to a work of art, via on-chain metadata (enabled by Namecoin). This is in contrast to the multi-unit, fungible, metadata-less "colored coins" of other blockchains and Counterparty." - Non-fungible token - Wikipedia
