NFT

 

As people are getting consciously more immersed in the virtual flat world, NFTs or Non-Fungible Tokens have taken the digital elites in the meta-verse by storm. There’s nothing holding us back to get into the eye of this cyclone which has made its landfall on the digital community. NFTs are digital assets that represent a certain art, collectible, video, gif, tweet, or even a fart sound audio which sold for $89. They are a unique unit of data stored on a digital decentralized ledger. They can represent infinitely reproducible items but not interchangeable, that is, the unit of data can’t be transmuted unlike some characters in the Harry Potter series, so Professor McGonagall’s human image as an NFT won’t showcase the transfigured cat form of hers overtime. An NFT can be sold for money or Cryptocurrency and the token’s asset transfer is recorded in the Blockchain to establish who currently owns it.

An NFT’s value is determined by its rare-bird quotient and the pool of interested consumers. Jessie J once sang, “It’s not about the money, money, money”, even if it’s not, the cha-ching of ~$69 million unicorn sale of Beeple’s 5,000 image montage at Christie’s auction house can make anyone burst into a spin and a flip. The NFT-based video games like “Axie infinity” and collectibles like NBA top shot are surging in popularity which might raise the potential of utility-based projects, down the road.

“Ya si quieres dinero” (Now if you want some money)… let’s look over some of the means by which individuals and companies are making money off this current gold rush. Public responsiveness in NFTs began with the success of the game CryptoKitties. Blockchain-based games allow the purchase of in-game items as NFTs which can further be bred and traded. Art collector, Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile, flipped a digital art piece almost 1,000 times its initial price. Thus, as a collector with a critical eye, one can speculate on the pieces for the prospects of making money in a future resale. The NFT fundamentally functions as a digital certificate of authenticity and ownership which gives the digital creation its value even though it’s reproducible. Therefore, monetizing the oeuvre is the most straightforward way to go about it, like the Nyan Cat Gif that went viral in 2011 being sold as an NFT in February 2021 for 300ETH equivalent to $600,000, at the time. NFTs, in addition to bragging rights for the buyers, offer setting terms within it for the creators, such as, a certain specified amount or percentage will be given to the original creator upon each resale of the asset. There are several other untested applications and unlike the Blockchain-enabled Cryptocurrencies, they can facilitate a lot more complex things like an NFT minting NFTs. Hence, “lo siento, no tengo” doesn’t seem to come up as of now.

The value of an NFT is a result of the socially determined perception of it. The bubble may burst or it may place itself as an integral method of engagement. It’s all about the distinguishing factor of if it’s a banana duct-taped to a wall or the ‘Comedian’.