Rapper Soulja Boy Selling Artworks on Rarible

American rapper Soulja Boy has made his first steps into the blockchain space by selling crypto artworks on minting platform Rarible. He's selling a creation portraying himself, titled 'Crank That', for 5 ETH or $6783 a piece. Out of twenty editions he already sold eight.

Soulja Boy's move into crypto art might come as a surprise, but is interest into blockchain technology sure isn't. In the past few weeks he's been actively posting on Twitter, asking fans and the crypto community about investment opportunities. He's been giving shoutouts to projects like Binance, Tron, Klever, Digibyte and Chainlink. In addition he received the wallet address souljaboy.eth, and now even has ambitions to start his own cryptocurrency.

Soulja Boy definitely isn't the first rapper to make their move into the crypto market. In December Lil Yachty announced his own YachtyCoin, while Meek Mill is showing serious interest in bitcoin.

The attention of celebrities into this space is wider than just cryptocurrencies. Avatar platform Genies, which is powered by the Flow blockchain, already signed up artists like Rihanna and Justin Bieber. In the crypto art space we've seen various DJs jumping into the rabbit hole, resulting in collaborations with various visual artists. 3LAU, Deadmau5, and Carl Cox are among the biggest names jumping into this field.

What is crypto art?

Crypto art or digital art has been around for many years. However, without the existence of blockchain technology it was impossible to verify authenticity and rarity. Now digital art is connected to a token on the blockchain. That way buyers can see how many copies of a certain artwork there are, and whether the product is original.

The concept of seeing a digital image as art, is one thing. However, for many people it will be a challenge to consider digital images as valuable. Consider this: The Mona Lisa is worth many millions of dollars. If I would paint the Mona Lisa in an exact copy, it would be worth only 50 dollars. Because we all know where the original version is. Being able to verify the authenticity and rarity of a piece of art is crucial.

Some people don’t care about the Mona Lisa. It’s just a painting. They are happy to download an image for Google Images, print it on canvas and hang it in their living room. Others want the real deal. The same rules go up for digital crypto art.