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.

What about piracy?

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.

So, what's being sold as an NFT?

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.

How do they work?

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 <a href="https://www.stadiumtalk.com/s/most-expensive-baseball-cards-985687df1bbe45c5">calls “the Mona Lisa of baseball cards. </a>

What the heck is an NFT?

No, but technically anything digital could be sold as an NFT. deadmau5 has sold digital animated stickers. William Shatner has sold <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/william-shatners-nft-collectibles-sell-out-at-warp-speed">Shatner-themed trading cards </a>(one of which was apparently an X-ray of his teeth).