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NFT, That’s What it is?

And why it is talked about so much

By Owais AbbasPublished 2 years ago 4 min read
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NFT, That’s What it is?
Photo by Bjorn Pierre on Unsplash

The NFT - the non-fungible token - is mine and I manage it. Right in the sea magnum of the web where everything is available, free, downloadable at no cost, here is the NFT mania. The latest to take advantage of this new form of "copyright" for online content was Jimmy Wales. The founder of Wikipedia, a few hours ago, put the first modification made on January 15, 2021 on his Wikipedia portal up for auction at Christie's. The screen where it says "Hello world" was frozen and immortalized in an NFT which was then put up for auction and its proceeds pocketed to the author. Of course, Wales will give everything to charity, but to understand, the NFT on this page would be worth, according to Christie's, between 100 and 150 thousand dollars. Those who purchase it by December 15 will also take home the iMac with which Wales worked at the time and will be able to modify the page as he prefers, as well as restore it to its original form. Strange? You can see that you do not frequent the world of games and crypto-art, as indeed when it comes to blockchain you roll your eyes and fall off your chair. But let's go in order.

What is an NFT? Let's take the classic definition written right on Wales' Wikipedia (before someone makes it another NFT): the "non-fungible token is a special type of cryptographic token that represents the deed of ownership of a single asset (digital or physical ); non-fungible tokens are therefore not mutually interchangeable. This is in contrast to cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin and many network or utility tokens, which are inherently fungible.

"In short, bitcoin can be replaced with another, but NFT is a unique piece that cannot be replicated or replaced. Again: an NFT can be a video, a photo, an audio file, a text (as in the case of the first page of Wikipedia designed by Wales) that is certified as original, just as there was the author's signature at the bottom. Obviously the NFTs - we will see other examples shortly - rely on the blockchain (usually Ethereum), a sort of digital register / archive on which the transactions of unalterable, unchangeable and even less eliminable data are stored with a generic blow of the delete key.

In short, it is like a digital notary who officially registers the uniqueness and non-copyability of the NFT. But be careful, explain the editors of The Verge in a bizarre piece on the theme: "NFTs are designed to give you something that cannot be copied, that is the ownership of the work, although the artist can still retain the copyrights and reproduction, just like with the physical artwork. To put it in terms of physical art collecting: anyone can buy a Monet print, but only one person can own the original

"Let's try to understand something more in practice. Between 2017 and 2018, NFTs exploded thanks to what happened around the online game CryptoKitties (cryptokitties.co) when players started being able to buy their crypto cats in the form of NFTs. Kittens can then be bought, raised and then traded / sold, and to do so they need to use a crypto currency. Each NFT kitten is unique and owned by the buyer / user who validated the purchase act through the blockchain and its value can increase or decrease based on the market value. CryptoKitties cannot be replicated and cannot be transferred without the user's permission even from the game developers. The highest value for a crypto kitten? 170 thousand dollars. Let's move on to crypto-art where this sort of highly speculative dual market channel (our addition), has nevertheless achieved excellent results in recent years. We cite an emblematic case where the use of NFTs has caused the value of the work to splash like never before in reality with physical pieces sold at auction. The digital artist known as Beeple - Mike Winkelmann-, someone who sold the prints of some of his works for a few hundred dollars, hit the ground running in March 2021. The digital collage Everydays - the first 5000 days has reached the Christie's figure of 69 million dollars. Those who have bought the work now have a digital file in their hands and can boast of owning the original, can publish it online and can set it on their profile. Then of course, the same thing can be trivially done by anyone with a digital copy of the same work: right click, then paste on their social profiles.

Of course, no dollar would turn around and no NFT would be registered, but above all over time, perhaps the file which will boast a resounding ownership. In short, depending on your point of view, we are between the ideon of the century and yet another speculative financial bubble.

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About the Creator

Owais Abbas

I will write anything that I like ❤️

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