This inaugural episode for Season 2 delves into the world of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and gives you a high-level overview of their use cases. We talk to Kristel Bechara, the award-winning Lebanese artist residing in Dubai about her experience being the first artist from the MENA region to mint and sell NFTs. Why do you need to know about NFTs? Because the underlying technology of NFTs could become ubiquitous sooner than you think and ultimately everything that we own could be made into and traded as an NFT.

Table of contents:

00:00​ | Loulou’s vision for the podcast

01:46​ | Introduction to NFTs (Beeple’s reaction to US$69M NFT sale)

07:58​ | Kristel’s journey as an artist with images from her latest collection Psychomachia

11:02​ | Kristel’s introduction to NFTs

13:34​ | How and where to create and sell an NFT (Smart contracts, platforms & wallets)

23:32​ | Investing in Ether and NFTs are here to stay

25:55​ | Would NFTs level the playing field for female artists?

29:10​ | Are there challenges specific to the ME region

29:57​ | Wrapping our heads around “collecting” digital art

38:59​ | Where can you buy Kristel’s NFTs and how to connect with her

40:26​ | Advice for artists

42:24​ | Closing Remarks

Special thanks to these wonderful gentlemen for offering their insights and research material on the topic.

Henri Asseily @rikkles

Karim Sarkis @kmsarkis

Toufii Saliba @toouufii

Elie Habib @elie_h

If you like to delve more into my research process below are some resources that provided valuable insights and background for this episode:

• Sway, Kara Swisher: What the Heck are NFTs? Let’s Ask Beeple.
• Prof G Show, Scott Galloway: Crypto, NFTs, and Blockchain ft. Raoul Pal.
• AZ16 Podcast: All about NFTs.
• Beeple’s Opus, Christie’s
• Rev Dan Catt, NFTs and crypto-art, from a practicing artist
• Vignesh Sundaresan a.k.a Metacovan on Payign US$69M for Beeple’s NFT
• Mohammed Ghalayini, Non-Fungible Tokens, Yep