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You must have heard of the word NFT or in detail, Non-fungible tokens, one of the most recent events in the digital world. If you haven’t heard of it or simply can’t understand what it is, well we are here to explain it in simple language.
A digital-only artwork was sold at the famous auction house Christie’s for a surprising $69m - but the winning bidder will not receive a sculpture, painting, or even a print.
Instead, the winning bidder will receive a digital token known as an NFT.
If Bitcoin is hailed as the digital answer to currency, NFTs are now being introduced as the digital answer to collectibles.
Christie’s auctioned “Everydays -The First 5000 Days”, by the crypto artist Beeple and after just two weeks of bidding, the final sale price was $69,346,250. People were shocked!
So now it’s evident that NFTs are huge and they are here to stay. To jump on the NFTs bandwagon, let’s first explain what it is exactly!
According to CNN, NFTs are "one-of-a-kind" assets in the digital world that can be bought and sold like any other piece of property, but they have no tangible form of their own. The digital tokens can be thought of as certificates of ownership for virtual or physical assets.
If people in the 20th century used to collect stamps and store them, NFTs are definitely a 21-century version of stamps!
To better understand the movement, the Mona Lisa painting is considered one of a kind, there is only one version in the world and it is currently displayed in a Museum. You can take a picture of it or print a mock-up. However, you can never get hold of the original version. That’s exactly how the concept of NFTs is made.
NFTs are digital content. Transactions are done online, through blockchains. These non-fungible tokens are considered creative content, from images to works of art. Simply, any creative content that isn’t money.
For art lovers and artists who have had their work duplicated and unethically used on various platforms, NFTs can be quite the act for them.
Artwork can be "tokenized" and therefore, a digital certificate of ownership can be created so people can buy or sell it.
nonfungible.com, a website that monitors the market, reports that in 2020, over 220.000 people bought and sold crypto art, for a total rough value of $250 million. Compared to the previous years, the numbers have peaked tremendously.
It seems like this trend will live in 2021 and continue for the years to come. In fact, the website reports a total number of sales up to 5449374 for a total money volume of $501.596.060,22.
Before the record-breaking event, Mike Winkelmann - which goes by the name Beeple - commented if this will only be a bubble and will soon vanish: "I actually do think there will be a bubble, to be quite honest. And I think we could be in that bubble right now."
The man himself has expressed his uncertainty on the continuation of this movement and many are even more skeptical. Critics believe that it’s overvalued. However, people who appreciate art seem to appreciate digital art. To them, this is an investment and people have been looking at ways to keep this trend alive.
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