How artists can best leverage NFTs: Vijay Pravin Maharajan, CEO, bitsCrunch

BitsCrunch puts together comprehensive insights around NFT-related scams like wash trading, copyright infringement and provides an accurate value for digital assets. In this interview with Adgully, Vijay Pravin Maharajan, founder & CEO, BitsCrunch, talks about the role that AI plays in creating non-fungible digital assets, the need for artists to be aware of this technology, the reason why celebrities invest in this technology, etc. Excerpts:

What role do AI and technology play in creating non-fungible digital assets?

Web 3.0 is slowly penetrating and trying to bring a paradigm shift across technologies. NFTs and digital assets are no exceptions. Non-fungible Tokens and digital assets are created on blockchain technology, and AI plays a vital role in analyzing the trends of these NFTs in the marketplace like pricing trends, buying patterns, listings, scams occurring around each collection, and so on.

Why should artists be aware of this technology?

Worldwide, many artists have moved towards digitizing and monetizing their art to fight the copyright issue. NFTs are a blessing in disguise to these artists. Thanks to the underlying blockchain technology for this uber-cool invention and AI that came along to help study the NFT trends. Artists should ideally understand how these technologies work hand-in-hand as it holds data points to support the scope and remuneration of their NFT collection. This is eventually paving the way for the creators’ economy.

Why are celebrities investing in this technology?

We have seen celebrities holding stakes in startups, and now the trend is with NFTs. NFTs present a new business model and acknowledge talents across the globe. This means artists from various parts of the world have been finding new paths to establish their creations through NFTs. Some NFTs of celebrities have also been used as avatars or characters in games. It is another way of creating digital content/assets for themselves.

How bitsCrunch is playing an important role in this industry? How do you stand out from your competitors?

bitsCrunch aims at putting together comprehensive insights around NFT-related scams like wash trading, and copyright infringement and provide an accurate value for digital assets. Our tools offer data-driven insights at a granular level that makes us stand out from the competitors.

For example, our flagship product Unleash NFTs allows access to data like:

• Price Estimation for 30 million and above assets across chains - Ethereum, Polygon, Avax, etc.
• Forgery Detection for 1 million assets (in the beta).
• More than 15+ wash trade patterns identifying wash traded collections / NFTs.

How can social media influencers and creators be benefited by NFTs?

The current social media monetisation plan is expected to level up with NFTs in place. With social media NFTs, influencers and content creators can directly list their NFTs through their account feeds for sale. All they need to do is connect with their crypto wallets. Instagram is rigorously working on implementing this feature; it will be rolled out soon for end users.

For substantial benefits, ownership, easier auditing and tracing of purchase history, this thriving change shall be embraced by creators and influencers.

Recently you tied up with MasterCard and PawnFi. How will these partnerships impact your existence in the market? How will it be beneficial for the users?

With MasterCard, our partnership is for onboarding Web2 users to the NFT space. We ensure their purchases are authentic and legitimate through our fraud detection methods.

PawnFi and bitsCrunch will closely work on helping people collateralize their NFTs to get loans. This is how the partnership works: We provide our wash trade stats that give insight on whether an asset owned by a user is wash traded or not, and also provide price estimation of that asset, based on this information, PawnFi’s lending decision becomes easier to accept/ reject loans.

Any future developments in terms of expansion or funding?

As of Q2 2023, we have our Token Generation Event on cards. We also started our first phase of decentralisation by decentralising API query layers.