New NFT Survey Finds 50% of People Say NFTs Are Bad for Physical Art

A new NFT survey carried out by Privacy HQ, an online privacy knowledge base, has unveiled some interesting findings. The site recently published findings from a 1000-person survey on NFTs, as well as an auction experiment comparing NFTs to physical art. Overall, while many respondents see NFTs as a natural evolution of art, nearly as many believe that NFTs are harmful to artists creating physical work.

New NFT survey suggests that despite NFTs going mainstream, we are still early

To sum up, the Privacy HQ team surveyed 1,000 people. The first part of the survey involved asking respondents some general questions about their relationship to NFTs. Privacy HW also conducted an experiment asking respondents to compare NFTs to famous traditional art pieces.

The findings from the survey seem to fall in line with numbers from similar past surveys. For example, out of 1,000 respondents, 35.1% said they were very familiar with NFTs. 28.9% said they were somewhat familiar, while 36% said they were not very familiar.

Unsurprisingly, there was somewhat of a correlation between age and familiarity with NFTs. Indeed, respondents between the ages of 25 and 45 all fell around the 40% mark for how many were very familiar. In contrast, this number dropped down to 29.2% for the 46-55 age range, and 15.2% for people 56 and over.

The negative narrative around NFTs still lingers

Significantly, the survey also showed that many people are still dubious about the effects of NFTs. To that end, 46.6% of all respondents said that NFTs reported a belief that NFTs were “concerning for the environment.” At the same time, 47.7% of respondents said that “NFTs are detrimental to artists who produce physical pieces.

It’s important to note that over half of the respondents, 53.3%, answered that NFTS are “the natural, digital evolution of art.” Given all that, the survey seems to point to a growing acceptance of NFTs as more than just a passing fad. Even so, it is clear that concerns about NFTs’ environmental impact and their effect on traditional artists, still abound.

To be sure, the issue of NFTs and the environment is well hashed at this point. More interesting perhaps, is the attitude that NFTs are harmful to artists who create physical art. It’s easy to understand why people may think that.

In reality, however, many major physical artists and art institutions have embraced NFTs with open arms. As a matter of fact, there are reasonable arguments that NFTs have created more opportunities for all kinds of artists, not just digital artists.

Privacy HQ’s online art auction experiment

There was another fascinating element to the new NFT survey from Privacy HQ. Basically, the company held an “online auction” with respondents. The way this worked is that it presented respondents with 10 famous paintings and 10 NFTs.

Participants were then asked how much they would bid on each piece to buy it. This experiment bore some very interesting insights. Firstly respondents’ bids mostly came in considerably lower than their last selling price. Although, the three artworks whose bid prices were closest to their real prices were all NFTs.

This new NFT survey is certainly worth checking out for the insights it gathered. You can find the full report on Privacy HQ’s website.