When I started visiting Japan I made it a habit of keeping track of the yen to dollar and was always doing the math in my head every time I bought anything so that I knew how many dollars I was spending. That made sense because while I was “visiting” in yen, I “lived” in dollars. After I moved to Japan I quickly realized that stressing out that the ramen I paid $5 for last week costing $5.25 this week was pointless and I should instead just enjoy my 500 yen ramen and stop worrying how much it was costing me in dollars. I was getting paid in yen, and paying for things in yen. I needed to get comfortable with yen and stop pining for dollars.
6 months ago 1 Ethereum (Ξ) converted to about $400, today it’s over $2100. In that time I’ve seen artists price their works in Eth matched against the dollar conversion they think is reasonable, only to lower the Eth price weeks later when Eth went up in value. I kind of cringed when I saw it happen several times but I couldn’t put my finger on why exactly. I mean, I get it – if you think your work is worth $500 one week it stands to reason you would think it’s worth $500 the next week and the value of some cryptocurrency shouldn’t impact that. Right? Earlier today I was looking at the value of Eth and thought about some work that I minted last week and thought I should probably lower the asking price since Eth has going up significantly since I listed them. So I did. And then I felt sick. And I knew exactly why.
Back when I used to have an art gallery how artists should price their work was a constant topic of discussion. The rule of thumb is simple, you can always increase a price but you can never decrease it. The logic being, if collectors see you lower a price they will never think your work is worth the listed price, and will always think they can get a discount or if they just wait a little longer the price will come down further. Conversely, if you only raise prices an interested party will quickly realize that if they are leaning towards something they should jump now because if they wait it will cost them more.
I keep saying that NFTs are a new medium and artists and creators should think of them that way, and embrace it. And the native currency of this medium is Eth. Sure some marketplaces take credit cards or other cryptocurrency but the dominant payment is Eth. And adjusting the Eth price to keep it matched to the dollar price still looks and feels like lowering the price. Because it is. We might have been “visiting” Eth before while “living” in dollars, but it doesn’t take more than a few weeks to start feeling like a local, and if you now “live” in Eth, then you should stop pining for dollars. An artwork valued at Ξ1 should remain valued at Ξ1 no matter what value Eth has to dollars. That’s a bold position and I get that, but in a way this is walking the walk. NFTs are crypto native, and if we’ve moved from tourist to resident, then we should embrace all that comes with that. That’s going to be a hard sell for many people, and realistically I know we’re not there yet. But we should see it on the horizon, and know what direction we’re heading.
On a personal level I’ve always been terrible at taking my own advice and can be firm with others but often second guess myself. In part because I can be sure of other people’s talents but I struggle recognizing my own. Call it imposter syndrome or insecurity or whatever but I know I’m not alone in that and many artists wrestle with what value to put on their own work. That said, I feel like I fucked up adjusting my pricing to compensate for Eth appreciating. I feel like I devalued my work. It’s not something I’m going to do again.