You’ve probably seen one fantastic headline after another in recent days when it comes to NFTs, from people buying memes to artists selling digital artworks for millions of dollars to brands jumping on the bandwagon and releasing “limited edition NFT only” products.
It can be overwhelming, especially since each Google search feels like you’re going down a rabbit hole with no end in sight.
I thought that I’d give you a simple rundown of what NFTs are and what they potentially mean for creators, brands, and industries.
Let’s start with the basics: what’s an NFT?
NFT = Non-fungible token aka a non-transferable record of ownership of a digital item that’s purchased using the Ethereum cryptocurrency blockchain
Great, what does that mean?
That doesn’t mean that you can’t continue to download and use or reuse anything that’s been purchased, it just means there’s only one official owner.
Huh?
Think of it like this: It’s like having a physical art collection. Anyone can buy a Monet print but only one person can own the original.
It seems like there’s a huge bubble that’s expanding way too rapidly; it’s only a matter of time before this bursts and then we’ll have to deal with the fall-out, the same way we had to deal with the multiple financial crises over the past several years.
In the meantime though, here are some NFTs that have made recent headlines:
Pringles releases new NFT ‘flavour’ that – as of this post’s publication date – has already garnered bids of $2,500 and counting.
An NFT of Twitter’s founder was sold for $2.9M
Christie’s auction house sold a digital artwork by American artist Beeple called The First 5000 Days for $88.6 million work of Ether cryptocurrency. It features 5,000 images representing about 13 years worth of work.
