Digital Assets Known as "Non-Fungible Tokens" Being Sold for Millions
takyon writes:
What's An NFT? And Why Are People Paying Millions To Buy Them?
The artist Grimes recently sold a bunch of NFTs for nearly $6 million. An NFT of LeBron James making a historic dunk for the Lakers garnered more than $200,000. The band Kings of Leon is releasing its new album in the form of an NFT.
At the auction house Christie's, bids on an NFT by the artist Beeple are already reaching into the millions. And on Friday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey listed his first-ever tweet as an NFT.
[...] It stands for "non-fungible token." Non-fungible, meaning you can't exchange it for another thing of equal value. A $10 bill can be exchanged for two $5 bills. One bar of gold can be swapped for another bar of gold of the same size. Those things are fungible. An NFT, though, is one of a kind.
[...] What exactly do you get when you buy an NFT? This question unleashes a fury of debate among NFT enthusiasts. The answer is not simple.
Are you buying what amounts to an Internet trophy? Clout? A feeling? A digital collector's item? Perhaps, but you are also purchasing a kind of barcode, almost a certificate of authenticity that serves as proof that a certain version of something in uniquely yours.
"The underlying thing that you're buying is code that manifests as images," said Donna Redel, who teaches courses on crypto-digital assets at Fordham Law School. "You're buying a different format of art."
It's not a scam, it's just liberating money from people with too much of it.
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