NFTs, explained: what they are, and why they’re suddenly worth millions - The Verge
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What the heck is an NFT?
Non-fungible token.
That doesn’t make it any clearer.
“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 NFT is like:
You gave up a Squirtle, and got a 1909 T206 Honus Wagner, which StadiumTalk calls “the Mona Lisa of baseball cards.
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How do they work?
At a very high level, most NFTs are part of the Ethereum blockchain. 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.
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So, what's being sold as an NFT?
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.
Dogecoin isn’t an NFT. But this GIF of a dogecoin is.
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What about piracy?
You can copy a digital file as many times as you want, including the art that’s included with an NFT.
But NFTs are designed to give you something that can’t be copied: ownership of the work (though the artist can still retain the copyright and reproduction rights, just like with physical artwork). To put it in terms of physical art collecting: anyone can buy a Monet print. But only one person can own the original.
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Can I buy this article as an NFT?
No, but technically anything digital could be sold as an NFT. deadmau5 has sold digital animated stickers. William Shatner has sold Shatner-themed trading cards (one of which was apparently an X-ray of his teeth).
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Digital marketing at dentsu. Invested in the symbiosis of marketing, psychology, and design. Photographer at heart.
Pranav P.'s ideas are part of this journey:
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