NFTs Are Here To Stay

NFTs have taken the art ecosystem by storm since the start of 2021. These fast-growing digital assets were created to give a sense of unique virtual ownership of digital artwork, videos, and even sports trading cards.

NFTs can be traded via blockchain, offering the exact digital distributed ledger mechanism around crypto assets like Ethereum and the pioneer crypto, Bitcoin. Though, unlike Bitcoin, NFTs are not interchangeable with each other because their underlying effects are unique in some ways and can't be easily exchanged. No two NFTs are the same, but every Bitcoin is the same just like every dollar bill has the same value.

NFTs were born about a decade ago but came to prominence in the early part of this year (2021). After that, the digital industry became the next big thing, especially in March when a non-fungible token for a digital artwork by an American artist nicknamed Beeple sold for almost $70 million.

In early May, the fast-growing market hit a 30-day sales record of $325 billion. Though June 2021’s recent data shows the market cooled significantly, it was still able to post about $10 million in sales per week.

Customers can easily buy or lease digital art and display them on a screen knowing that there is no issue with originality because the NFT ensures their ownership is authentic.

The disruptive technology also enables a record of all transactions connected to the non-fungible token and any asset it represents. In the case of art sales, this could provide a provenance of existence that always traces back to the creator.

NFTs also facilitate intelligent contracts, which can automatically take actions under specific instructions and become handy for many practical dealings.

Like any technology, these crypto-assets can provide more structured ways of conducting highly sensitive processes like contracts, stock shares, titles, deeds, bills of sale, logins for cloud-hosted software apps, and more.

Although it has unarguably brought some excitement and a significant number of uses in the booming art industry, critics compate it to the early days of the internet where there was a lot of hype and speculation, then a massive bubble that subsequently burst. Fans of NFTs, however, discount such bias on the account that didn't destroy the role and importance of the internet afterward. The internet continues to be an increasingly important part of day to day life.

NFTs usefulness in the art industry is already gaining immense popularity, expanding the horizon to newer areas such as art-based tweets, memes, and more. They solve age-old problems by authenticating art, preventing plagiarism, preventing theft, and giving creators pertinent royalties to sell their works. So it’s hard to believe that NFTs will disappear any time soon. It seems increasingly likely that NFTs will become a normal part of every day life, perhaps in ways we can’t even see yet.

Author: Buffalo Chase

Written June 2021