The hype in the crypto world has now moved to Non Fungible Tokens (NFT). Investing in NFTs may turn out to be as profitable as the early days of Bitcoin. Judging whether it is just a fad, or a lasting impact on the collectible industry, is up to you to decide. My interest piqued when Mike Winkelmann, the digital artist known as Beeple’s NFT sold for $69 million at Christie’s. The sale positions him “among the top three most valuable living artists,” according to the auction house.
Non-fungible tokens differ from popular cryptocurrencies such as Ether (ETH), Bitcoin (BTC) and Cardano (ADA), which are fungible; for example, you can exchange one Bitcoin for any other Bitcoin. They also have the following characteristics which set them apart from fungible tokens:
Rare – The value of NFTs comes from their scarcity. NFT developers can create any amount of non-fungible tokens, however limiting the tokens increase rarity.
Indivisible – Most non-fungible tokens are indivisible into smaller units. You either purchase the entire amount of, say, a digital art piece, or purchase no art at all.
Unique – NFTs have a permanent information tab that records their uniqueness. This is similar to a certificate of authenticity.
Below are some of the popular NFT projects out there as per CoinMarketCap –
- OpenSea – This is the leading marketplace for NFT art and collectibles. Listed items range from ENS to virtual pets and plots of land. Notably, the marketplace allows purchases using several virtual currencies such as ETH and DAI.
- Async.Art – Async is another non-fungible token artwork marketplace that allows you to not only buy and sell your NFT but also to create one. That’s not all. The platform has some programming features that enable art creators to easily define their artwork’s appearance and behavior. In fact, it even allows buyers to buy sections or “layers” of a given artwork and customize them.
- CryptoKitties – Although we’ve discussed this project above, it still deserves to be on the list of top NFT projects considering it brought the whole NFT game to the limelight.
- Ethereum Name Service (ENS) – This is a domain name service project that came to life in mid-2017. The .ETH domain names are NFTs using Ethereum’s ERC-721 standards and are tradable on NFT marketplaces.
- Decentraland – Decentraland is a top NFT project focusing on a distributed virtual world. Here, participants can buy virtual land. Furthermore, each “inhabitant” has a special identifying digital passport.
Check the following video by Andrei Jikh, who has the talent to simplify most things crypto!
Useful links, which I will keep updating
Article by Anne Gaviola on Globalnews.ca
How to turn your art into NFT – A tutorial by Ben https://youtu.be/CFD_8oDxw1k
NFTs Will Make You Rich – By Sheldon Evans : https://youtu.be/IO8gX4vPkRA
Introduction to the artist Alexa Meade – The transition to nft
