What are NFTs?
You’ve probably heard of the term NFTs or maybe you’re familiar with them but don’t know what that necessarily means for Blockchain Technology. In this post, I will break down exactly what NFTs are and the way it’s been shaking up the concept of asset appreciation.
NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token.
Fungibility is the right to exchange a product or asset with other individual products or assets of the same kind. A plain example is exchanging a good or service for money.
Non-Fungible is the opposite: it classifies as goods or assets that are unique, irreplaceable, and one of a kind. Like the buying or selling art that appreciates in value.
Tokens are proof that you own something. In the case of NFTs, that would be the blockchain. The blockchain serves as a digital certificate of authenticity, and holds a permanent record of the asset’s transactions.
So basically NFTs give people to ability to acquire digital assets! Several markets that are seeing NFT action including gaming, collectibles, arts, sports, and etc.
Let’s use Digital Art for example, since it is holds the most expensive NFT purchase to this date!
Digital Art is a one-of-a-kind limited edition piece encrypted with the artist’s signature as a part of the blockchain. Digital artwork comes in many different shapes and forms. It could be a digital image, an animated icon, short little video clips, and etc. Blockchain is opening the door to a new realm of art-collecting that the world has never seen before! And if you think this is a concept that isn’t going to bite, I’m here to tell you that it already has! There has been over 75,000 digital artworks sold and over 121 million dollars has been circulating in buying, owning, and selling digital art over the past couple of years!
We can’t talk about digital art without mentioning Beeple! Beeple (real name Mike Winkelmann) is already known for being a well-renown artist and currently has 1.8 million followers on Instagram. Beeple has collaborated with major companies like Apple, Nike, and SpaceX and has created visuals for Justin Bieber, Nicki Minaj, and Ariana Grande. NFTs has given Beeple the ability to further expand his revenue by bringing him into the digital art-space. Beeple has recently sold a collection of 20 works for a total of 3.5 million dollars! His most expensive piece of art “Everydays — The First 5000 Days” was the first purely digital work of art ever offered by a major auction house and he even accepted cryptocurrency as payment for the art.
As everything else created on the Blockchain, there are mixed opinions on the profitability of NFTs and whether or not the trend will last long term. In my opinion, I think NFTs have the potential to expand a lot of different industries and may have even better use-cases that have yet to be discovered. I do think that it may be difficult for people who aren’t already established to use the NFT space to market their digital assets they create. It’s seemingly more of a profitable route for people who are already established to use it as another source of income for their work. So it may be ideal for someone who for example is trying to become a well-known artist to gain credibility outside of the digital artwork space before their digital art becomes something that catches the eye of buyers. Yet and still, NFTs are pretty impressive and I’m looking forward to seeing what the growth of this space will do for Blockchain Technology becoming more mainstream!
