NFTs can really be anything digital (such as drawings, music, your brain downloaded and turned into an AI), but a lot of the current excitement is around using them to sell digital art.
What is an NTF Market?
The NFT market has diversified since 2017, with its value expected to reach $2.37 billion in 2024.
Some of the most expensive NFTs ever sold include famous artists or unique features.
Experts predict that metaverse integration and enhanced interoperability are key future trends for NFTs.
As of April 2024, the most expensive NFT in the world is The Merge, the NFT collection created by digital artist PAK for $91.8 million.
Most recently, the CryptoPunk #3100 NFT was sold for 4,500 Ether, worth over $16 million in March 2024.
What does NFT stand for?
Non-fungible token
“Non-fungible” more or less means that it’s unique and can’t be replaced with something else. For example, a bitcoin is fungible — trade one for another bitcoin, and you’ll have exactly the same thing.
A one-of-a-kind trading card, however, is non-fungible. If you traded it for a different card, you’d have something completely different.
How do NFTs work?
Most NFTs are part of the Ethereum blockcWhat is a Blockchain?hain, though other blockchains have implemented their own version of NFTs. Ethereum is a cryptocurrency, like bitcoin or dogecoin, but it iss blockchain also keeps track of who’s holding and trading NFTs.
What’s the point of NFTs?
I’f you are an artist.
You might be interested in NFTs because it gives you a way to sell work that otherwise might not be much of a market for.
If you come up with a really cool digital sticker idea, sell it as an NFT.
Also, some NFT marketplaces have a feature where you can make sure you get paid a percentage every time your NFT is sold or changes hands. That makes sure that if your work gets super popular and balloons in value, you’ll see some of that benefit.
If you are a buyer.
One of the obvious benefits of buying art is it lets you financially support artists you like, and that’s true with NFTs (which are way trendier than, like, Telegram stickers). Buying an NFT also usually gets you some basic usage rights, like being able to post the image online or set it as your profile picture. Plus, of course, there are bragging rights that you own the art, with a blockchain entry to back it up.
NFTs can work like any other speculative asset, where you buy it and hope that the value of it goes up one day, so you can sell it for a profit. I feel kind of dirty for talking about that, though.
How does an NFT make money?
The most direct way to make money with NFTs is by creating and selling them. As an artist or content creator, you can tokenise your work, turning it into a unique, tradeable asset on the blockchain. Creating NFTs for profit is easy
Is every NFT is unique?
Every NFT is a unique token on the blockchain. But while it could be like the mona lisa, where there’s only one definitive actual version, it could also be like a trading card, where there’s 50 or hundreds of numbered copies of the same artwork.
There have been some attempts at connecting NFTs to real-world objects, often as a sort of verification method. Nike has patented a method to verify trainers authenticity using an NFT system, which it calls CryptoKicks.
So would anyone pay hundreds of pounds for my digital image?
Some people treat them like they’re the future of fine art collecting and some people treat them like Pokémon cards (where they’re accessible to normal people but also a playground for the mega-rich).