What are NFTs?

???NFTs or non-fungible tokens are basically “digital artwork”. NFTs have been around since 2014 but only became super popular in 2020 when surprising news came about how NFTs were being sold for millions of dollars.

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???Collecting NFTs is considered to be the new version of fine art collecting. NFTs can be anything a person creates digitally. It can be a picture, a video, a drawing, a GIF, music, and other things. NFTs can be anything, there was even an NFT of a digital pet rock being sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are endless possibilities of what you can do with an NFT.

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??What makes NFTs great is that it’s non-fungible, meaning they are more or less unique and once you’ve owned one, you have exclusive rights to it (including the artist who made it). You might ask why some people buy NFTs, a digital file that can be copied or downloaded anytime, anywhere for as many times as you can. Well, the answer to that is mainly because of having ownership of the work (NFT). It’s like owning an artwork made by a certain artist, you bought the artwork, maybe because you’d like to support the artist in his/her work, or maybe you’d just like to own the art that he/she made, in the end, you bought that artwork so you can own and do whatever you want with it. It’s the same with NFTs, you can buy it and do whatever you want with it.?You also have basic usage rights for it, you can post it online, you can set it as your profile picture, you can absolutely do anything with it. But also, one of the main reasons why people buy them is that it lets other people know that you bought it and that you own it, with a blockchain entry to back it up.

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???So where can one buy/sell an NFT? NFTs are being bought/sold on several marketplaces like OpenSea, SuperRare, Rarible, Mintable, and more.

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??How can I buy/sell an NFT? If you want to buy/sell an NFT, you need to have an Ethereum wallet, you need this kind of wallet because most NFT transactions take place online and the cryptocurrency that’s usually used for these types of transactions is Ethereum (ETH coins). NFTs also usually run on the Ethereum blockchain. However, if someone wants to sell an NFT, they can also use any type of currency they want.

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??With NFTs on the rise, even well-known artists, famous celebrities, big-time investors, tech companies, and other rich individuals are already trying to tackle what they can do with NFTs. Some are making games, creating TV shows, and some are just creating something out of it.

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??Believe it or not, the famous Nyan Cat meme from 2011 sold for about US$590,000 back in February 2021. Logan Paul, the notorious Youtuber, even sold NFT video clips for thousands of dollars, video clips from a video on YouTube which you can watch anytime you want. Crazy right?

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????There’s even a show called “Stoner Cats”, which stars Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher, Seth Macfarlane, Chris Rock, and other well-known celebrities, which uses NFTs as sort of a ticket system. You can watch episodes of the show when you buy the show’s NFTs. The show recently pulled in $8 million worth of NFT sales, what’s crazy about it is that it pulled in this huge amount of money through NFT sales but the show right now only has one episode. Some are even trying to resell the NFTs on the secondary market for a much higher price than the one they paid for originally.

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???Another thing to look forward to when buying/selling NFTs is that their value, much like stocks or cryptocurrency, goes up or down depending on the NFT market. You can also compare NFTs to artwork, hype sneakers, or trading cards, the more it’s rare, the more its value can appreciate. But If the NFT has more copies of it, say hundreds or thousands, then it’s likely that the value would go down. But in all honestly, we can’t really say for sure how its value can appreciate or go down.

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???NFTs and cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and other cryptocurrencies are somewhat alike. They’re both considered digital assets, but the main difference between them is that NFTs are non-fungible while cryptocurrencies are fungible. Fungible, meaning that if you trade, say a bitcoin, for another bitcoin, you’ll still end up with the exact same thing. NFTs however are non-fungible, they’re usually different from one another.

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??This is just a short “preview” of what NFTs really are. There are still lots of topics to tackle around NFTs. This is just the start of the new age for art collecting.