A picture of a monkey in different poses, a GIF of an invisible man wearing different outfits, or a cat doing funny things — these are all examples of what an NFT can be.
NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are digital assets that are essentially an extension of that same idea — broadly speaking, a special type of cryptographic token that represents something unique.
The use of NFTs is growing at a rapid pace. Applied to art, plenty of crypto artists are already making a name for themselves with works created solely to be displayed online. They use the same technology as cryptocurrencies, but unlike them, NFTs can't be split up or swapped for one another — though they can be bought and sold.
NFTs first emerged years ago on Ethereum, a digital platform built on blockchain technology, and their first collectibles were the CryptoPunks, created in 2017. Cryptokitties followed soon after — a game where players could buy and sell virtual cats. That was the start of a real revolution in the gaming world. Today, these kinds of digital creations are already being treated as genuine works of art, sold at auction houses.
We used to place value on tangible things we could touch and see — gold, stamps, works of art — and now we're increasingly doing the same for intangible things that we mostly just see, but likely can't touch.
FullOffice Learning has put together these key characteristics of NFTs:
Unique:
The owner can certify that they're the sole, genuine owner of the original work, even though it can easily be shared online (and it is). It's a curious situation, and a real shift in the value we place on physical versus digital art.
Not interoperable:
You can't use a Cryptokitties avatar or card in other similar games like CryptoPunk.
Indivisible:
Unlike cryptocurrencies, NFTs can't be split into smaller pieces — they hold their full value as a single, complete token, no more, no less. You can't own 1/1000th of a crypto-monkey.
Indestructible:
An NFT's data is stored on the blockchain through a smart contract, which means it can't be destroyed, deleted, or duplicated.
Absolute ownership:
Unlike music or film, if you buy one of these assets, ownership is entirely yours. You're not buying a license to watch a movie or listen to a song — that intangible asset is completely yours.
Verifiable: the blockchain makes it possible to verify something that's far harder to prove or certify in fields like art or stamp collecting.
The use of non-fungible tokens has grown enormously, making it nearly impossible to see where it will top out or how it will affect the global economy and the way we exchange goods day to day.
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