NFT: As hot as a Buffalo Wing

For the past few weeks, news media and many other articles have covered NFTs quite a lot. Often in the news, you may have heard of some digital arts are being sold for millions of dollars, which is insane amount of money to pay for a digital art. So, why are those digital arts worth so much money and more importantly what is NFT?

NFT is a Non-Fungible Token

A fungible asset is something that can be interchanged with something else, for example money or Bitcoin. One dollar note is the same as the other one dollar note. Non-fungible asset means it exists only one in this entire world. It is unique and cannot be replaced with anything, for example a Mona Lisa painting. Although you can have as many copies as you want, there is only one owner in the world.

NFT assets are unique and exist only one in the digital world. Those digital assets can be bought and sold like any other assets such as properties, cars, or paintings. You can think of NFT as a digital certificate of ownership for your digital artworks. NFT exists in the Blockchain network. So, the currency that is used to buy and sell NFT assets are in cryptocurrency such as Ethereum.

How do NFTs actually work?

People pay millions for paintings because they are one of the kind in the entire world. Some paintings are priceless, such as Mona Lisa. So, you can see from here that uniqueness has its value.

Unlike physical artworks, digital artworks can be easily duplicated and distributed across the Internet. Over time, it loses the ownership of those artworks. With NFT, those artworks can be tokenised in the Blockchain, especially in Ethereum Blockchain, to certify the ownership of the artwork. That token is very unique. Just like cryptocurrency, the value such as who own this artwork is stored in the Blockchain. Everytime when NFTs are bought and sold, the transaction is recorded in the Blockchain. Therefore, the ownership of the artwork stay with it.

People are paying millions of dollars for NFTs

It is true that a lot of people are paying huge amount of money to own that token. Famous people like Tesla Boss, Elon Musk and Twitter founder, Jack Dorsey are involved in this NFTs as well. Now you can tell how hot NFTs are. There are many digital artworks that are being sold for a ridiculous amount of money, which you probably have never imagine it would be worth that much.

People are usually into collecting things such as paintings, historical items, cars, or even Pokenmon cards. So, it is the same concept in this crypto world. There are many crypto enthusiasts who are willing to pay huge amount of money to own that piece of art on the Blockchain and put it into their collections.

Most expensive NFTs ever sold

Everydays - The First 5000 Days NFT By Beeple

Beeple's "Everydays - The First 5000 days NFT" was sold for $69 million USD (approx $90million AUD). The artist, Christie, had been creating this digital drawings since 1st May 2007. The bids for that NFT started at $100 USD. But, the price quickly skyrocketed and ended up selling for $69 million.

There are many NFT marketplaces where you can shop for NFT arts or create your own NFTs for your artworks, such as OpenSea and Rarible.