Links table
Abstract and 1 introduction
2 Methodology
3 results
3.1 cryptopunks
3.2 NFT Market
4 Discussion
5. Conclusion/statements/references
extension
A.1 Implementation details
A.2 Detailed NFT information and A.3 Google NFT search map
4. Discussion
We seek to determine the mechanisms that produce the different biases and why there is racial bias but not gender bias in NFTS prices. Most NFTs on the market, especially those with gender and race themes, represent avatars of avatars. These NFTs, especially expensive ones like Cryptopunks, can be used as a profile picture, and thus people may prefer NFTs that resemble themselves. We thus believe that the demographics of NFT investors are the mechanisms that produce these biases.
According to data by Statistica [2] [4]Among the age group (18-34) with the greatest interest in NFTS, men and women own NFTs on par with 24% of men and 21% of the total investing population. Thus, the fact that we do not observe gender bias in NFT prices may be because investors are roughly balanced across gender.
However, the distribution of white NFT buyers may be skewed, which would explain the presence of racial bias. Using Google searches as a proxy for the amount of NFT investors in a region, in the past five years, we found that the term “NFT” was searched in East Asia and North America and less searched in Africa and India. Hence, more lighter people are interested in NFTs compared to darker skinned people and this may be the reason why lighter NFTs are in more demand. The full map of Google searches can be found in Figure 7 in Appendix A.3.
