Of course, the communal activities depend on the community. It could be argued that one of the earliest NFT projects, CryptoPunks, has a community around it, and there are other animal-themed projects like the Bored Ape Yacht Club that have their own clique. One community that’s been exceedingly popular revolves around a collection of NFTs called Pudgy Penguins, but it’s not the only community built up around the tokens. people have long built communities based on things they own, and now it’s happening with NFTs. Didn’t the boom go bust ?īut surely you’ve heard of penguin communities? I think I remember hearing that NFTs are already over. With digital art, a copy is literally as good as the original.īut the flex of owning an original Beeple. Whoever got that Monet can actually appreciate it as a physical object. This last sold for $3,600, but the current owner is asking for $16,300. 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 the tech to sell digital art.

What’s worth picking up at the NFT supermarket? It is worth noting that other blockchains can implement their own versions of NFTs. Ethereum is a cryptocurrency, like bitcoin or dogecoin, but its blockchain also supports these NFTs, which store extra information that makes them work differently from, say, an ETH coin. You gave up a Squirtle, and got a 1909 T206 Honus Wagner, which StadiumTalk calls “the Mona Lisa of baseball cards.” (I’ll take their word for it.)Īt a very high level, most NFTs are part of the Ethereum blockchain. If you traded it for a different card, you’d have something completely different. A one-of-a-kind trading card, however, is non-fungible.

For example, a bitcoin is fungible - trade one for another bitcoin, and you’ll have exactly the same thing. “Non-fungible” more or less means that it’s unique and can’t be replaced with something else. Okay, let’s start with the basics: What is an NFT? What does NFT stand for? You might be wondering: what is an NFT, anyhow?Īfter literal hours of reading, I think I know. Now, months after we first published this explainer, we’re still seeing headlines about people paying house-money for clip art of rocks - and my mom still doesn’t really understand what an NFT is. And by the time we all thought we sort of knew what the deal was, the founder of Twitter put an autographed tweet up for sale as an NFT. There’s nothing like an explosion of blockchain news to leave you thinking, “Um… what’s going on here?” That’s the feeling I’ve experienced while reading about Grimes getting millions of dollars for NFTs or about Nyan Cat being sold as one.

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