This year, the term NFT caused no less excitement than the word “bitcoin” did in its time. In both cases, we are talking about large sums of money that seem to have fallen from the sky. But while bitcoin owners got rich from a sharp rise in the exchange rate, with NFTs, people started selling their drawings, internet memes, and even screenshots for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
So what is an NFT? It is a non-fungible token on the Ethereum platform. We understand that this does not make it any clearer, so we will explain it using cards. Literally, cards with autographs of baseball players, which are also worth thousands of dollars among collectors. An NFT is a unique token that exists in a single copy in the world. Like an exclusive autographed baseball card. That is, unlike Bitcoin, which you can exchange and get exactly the same, an NFT token will always be one of a kind. Roughly speaking, it is a unique certificate of ownership of a digital work.
What can be turned into an NFT? Anything that can be digitized. Drawings, movies, music, a photo of your cat or your own selfie, even this article. There have been precedents, by the way. Recently, a New York Times journalist sold his column at a crypto auction. Initially, he intended it to be a joke to demonstrate that anything can be sold using NFTs, but a screenshot of his article was actually purchased for 350 ether (approximately $568,000 at the current exchange rate).
What else has been sold using NFTs? Among the most famous lots are the NyanCat GIF, which was bought for $590,000, and the first tweet by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, which went under the hammer for $2.9 million. One of the records was set by an artist known under the pseudonym Beeple, who made a collage of his works, turned it into an NFT token, and sold it for $69 million at Christie’s auction. This is the largest revenue in the short history of crypto art so far.
What happens to the work after it is purchased? Is it deleted? No. The sold painting, meme, song, or video remains on the internet and can still be downloaded by anyone and used as they wish. For example, for illustrations for this article. Or you can organize an exhibition of NFT art.
Why would collectors want this? Collectors are generally enigmatic people, and it is often unclear why they would spend huge sums of money on a particular item. But in the case of NFTs, there may be several reasons for purchasing crypto art. First, it is the desire to own something unique. As we mentioned, NFT certificates exist in a single copy. But can’t anyone download the same image? Yes. But anyone can also buy a reproduction of a Van Gogh painting, the original of which exists in a single copy owned by a single owner.
Second, digital art is bought because of hype, as was once the case with Bitcoin. That is, it is used as a digital asset in the hope that its price may increase over time. Third, collectors buy NFTs as a form of patronage to support talented authors. After all, it is not only celebrities who sell their works at crypto auctions, but also ordinary artists, musicians, and photographers.
Finally, as is often the case among collectors, crypto artworks are bought simply because they can afford to spend a lot of money on something useless and flatter their ego. After all, an NFT token is essentially nothing more than a digital souvenir. When buying it, the collector does not purchase the copyright to the work itself. Yes, nominally, they are considered the owner of a conditional meme, but they cannot influence its further distribution or use in any way.
