Hey, you beautiful people I am back, I hope you are doing well and sending a lot of positivity.
I am back with an exciting topic. This one has made me think.
A month ago, my cousins and I were talking about investments, stock markets, and cryptocurrencies on my visit to Mumbai.
While we were talking about investments, finance, and the future in general, all of a sudden my cousin spoke about this thing called NFT. I was blank.
Being a curious guy, I immediately started researching about NFTs, and Oh! Boy, it just blew my mind.
This is the next big thing.
It’s a revolution.
It’s technological advancement and an integral part of the crypto universe.
In simple terms, it will change the way we see art, buy art, and most important paving a way for aspiring artists to make money.
Without any further adieu, let’s get into the topic and understand,
What is NFT?
Readers we need to talk about this piece of technology.
We kinda saw this coming but never expected it to be huge so soon.
Let’s talk about this technological advancement and how one guy just sold a bunch of pixels on the screen for $69 million and changed the way we look at art and design.
If you have no idea about it then this is the perfect blog post for you.
In simple terms, NFT or Non-fungible Token is a new digital asset class that is a unique, and non-interchangeable unit of data and is stored on a digital ledger.
There’s a fine distinction between fungible and non-fungible items.
Fungible items can be exchanged with similar items depending upon their value, just like a traditional currency where you can exchange for a specific item depending on its value.
On the other hand, non-fungible tokens are structured in such a way that it doesn’t have an equal value, they are unique.
An example of a non-fungible token could be let’s say, Mona Lisa, if I give you an original one and if you give me back a copy of it, then it’s not the same thing.
And this my friends lay the foundation for NFTs.
An NFT is a form of digital ownership represented as a token in the Ethereum blockchain.
NFTs are a block on a blockchain that stores additional information making them function differently just like regular cryptocurrencies.
It can be used to store and trade items such as photos, videos, audio, artwork, pixels, and other forms of art.
This has paved the way for opportunities for artists, and art collectors, and open markets.
Before we dive deep and know some fascinating things about NFTs, let’s look at the history of NFTs. Who started it and became a multi-millionaire.
Also Read:- Cryptocurrency:- Is this the future of the Internet or basically everything
History:-
So, sit back and relax cause it’s a fascinating story.
It dates back to 2012 when colored coins were attempted to use Bitcoins’ smallest unit of the cryptocurrency but failed massively because Bitcoin never allowed such a level of distribution.
Colored coins are tokens that represent real-world assets on the blockchain such as precious metals, cars, real estate, and even equities and bonds.
Although it was not a much-sophisticated idea to use blockchain technology to buy assets such as digital collectibles, coupons, properties, company shares, and more. Overall, this failed experiment laid the building foundation for NFTs.
In 2014, Counterparty, a peer-to-peer financial platform, and distributed an open-source internet protocol built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain.
Counterparty allowed asset creation and had a decentralized exchange and a crypto token with the ticker XCP.
And this decentralized exchange had numerous projects and assets which included trading for cards and memes.
This was the beginning.
Things started to shape up when in 2017, Ethereum paved the way and revolutionized this technology after noticing the growth of blockchain.
Ethereum Request for Comments 721 was released. Comments 721 is a cryptocurrency standard that was utilized and converted fungible tokens into non-fungible tokens.
And that was the beauty of it as it helped cryptocurrencies to convert into non-fungible tokens and was implemented for usage on digital platforms.
NFTs were easier to implement, shortly after NFTs hit the mainstream with Cryptokitties(video game) allowing its gamers to virtually trade rise and adopted virtual cats.
Non-fungible tokens are creating a new path for digital and non-digital businesses. Their scope is rapidly increasing.
Among the top adopters of non-fungible tokens include decentralized finance companies, virtual companies, domain traders, cryptocurrency museums, and art markets.
But there’s one question that pops up and that is,
Who Can Create NFTs?
Just like Cryptos, NFTs are also created.
It can be created by people from various fields of work such as artists, musicians, art advocates, corporations, writers, entrepreneurs, videographers, social media influencers, etc.
Well, it’s not rocket science to create an NFT, you don’t need to have a degree.
What matters is observing the markets, learning about the technology, and implementing.
No experience is needed, and as long as someone can prove they have created or legally own the content.
So, if you don’t know where to start, what tools are required to create an NFT, then check out this step-by-step guide on how to create an NFT.
Facts About NFTs:-
NFTs are a new piece that is creating a new market. Paving new opportunities. NFTs is changing the way we see art and is creating a new market for artists, and art collectors. So, let’s dive deep and understand this technology. Here are 5 astonishing facts about NFTs:-
Selling Pixels is not new, kind of:-
Hey, readers have you ever heard of skins in video games.
Remember the PUBG game where there were a plethora of options to buy skins.
It’s the same thing in the NFT space, you buy a skin to change the appearance of the character and you’ll be astonished that the market for it is huge and insane.
It’s a whopping $2 billion market and growing.
An example of it in the commercial space is the million-dollar homepage, someone made the website with one million pixels and sold each pixel for $1 each think of it like the internet’s billboard but now from a blockchain’s perspective and this is where it gets interesting.
Cryptokitties lead the way for NFTs:-
As mentioned above Cryptokitties is a digital game based on the Ethereum blockchain, and this is where NFTs started to gain attraction when pixel cats started to sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
This is a game in which you can buy breed and sell digital cats.
Each crypto kitty is a representation of NFT in the blockchain which means they are unique and can be sold within the community using Ethereum as the currency.
According to some reports, some crypto kitties are sold for around $300,000 per piece and this paved the way for the future for NFTs.
Who is Beeple?
Since we are having some idea about what NFT is and how it works, let’s talk about it further.
Mike Winkelmann aka Beeple, he’s a digital artist from Charleston, and according to his website, he’s an artist who works on a variety of digital artworks and includes short films, and VR AR work.
Not just he’s also worked in the sets of several high-profile artists including Justin Bieber.
He’s also the originator of the Everyday Movement, a trend in which he created pictures every day for the past ten years without skipping a day.
He’s storming the world of art.
You can check out his work, you’ll be amazed.
One of the most expensive NFT was sold for $69 million:-
This fact is astonishing, on March 24, 2011, Beeple sold the original collage of the first 5000 days of his artwork for a whopping $69 million in the form of an NFT.
It became a historic moment and the sale happened through Cristie’s Auction and marked two first-time events, the first auction sale of a digital artwork piece and the second the first auction sale that happened through Ethereum blockchain.
People have sold a video of a digitally illustrated Donald Trump for $6.6 million. Isn’t the world crazy readers?
It’s the way to the future of art:-
Since the world is moving forward faster with the rise of the internet, it’s creating new jobs and opportunities.
Various industries are changing.
One such industry that is changing is the art industry.
With the birth of the NFTs, it’s possible to create art that is vibrant and of course digital.
The traditional art of art is not dying, but it’s fading as technology is embracing.
Now with the help of the internet, you can create your art copy and it’s transparent, but at the same time your piece of art can get copied over and over, then it starts to lose its value.
Once you post your artwork on social media, it gets difficult to monetize or keep track of its original creator.
With NFTs, this changes drastically and acts as a non-duplicate digital certificate and this gives you the digital rights to resell, distribute or license the digital asset as you please.
It gives the artist full liberty on how they want to sell, distribute and monetize their artwork without involving a third party.
But the question that pops up is why would someone buy NFT of something when they could just get a free copy online, well this is where the trick is, the value of the original is more as compared to the duplicate copy of an artwork.
Buy an original Mona Lisa versus buying a duplicate one. Does it make sense readers?
Well, that’s a wrap, 5 facts about the NFTs.
Not just that, NFTs have created decentralized commerce, a marketplace where each transaction happens through smart contracts on a distributed ledger network like Ethereum, meaning no big player can manipulate the market, push products on the front page, and buy fake reviews. And no one can scam you.
That’s what is exciting me.
Isn’t it readers? This is the future.
Conclusion:-
NFTs are an interesting piece of technology and this is the future.
It’s a medium for creating a new form of artwork.
It’s helping artists and creators to make money and take their skills and talent to another level.
So, if you are someone who loves art and want to invest in buying artworks then this is for you.
What do you think about NFTs, will they survive? Let me know in the comment section below.