The introduction of crypto and different blockchains over the past decade has had a huge impact on the tech sector as a whole, and there are many that pay very close attention to all of the big changes to get ahead of the curve as expectations that anything crypto related turns to gold. Many big services have started to incorporate crypto as a core part of how they operate, particularly for things like payment as many online systems expand their offer as this list of sites accepting credit cards and crypto for example continues to grow – that’s why the latest introduction of NFT’s into the Ethereum blockchain have many excited, but what exactly are they, and will they have a big impact?
For now, NFT’s have been introduced as a digital wallet for collectable digital items, in the simplest sense – but the whole thing is a little complex even if you’ve been following along closely and have a lot of understand of what’s actually happening. It’s essentially the purchasing of a unique digital item as a collector’s item – much like you’d buy a rare baseball card, or rare painting.
That’s also where things tend to get a little complicated, however – if you buy a physical collector’s item, you have it – it’s tangible, you can see it and touch it, it can be verified, and you know you own it. For digital items, it’s a different story – you can’t exactly buy a digital image for example, it can be reproduced and replicate online, as such the way it works is that much like physical version, you own the ‘original’ which can then be sold later on, but with little regulation existing in the space and no current protection it’s a bit of a what if when buying anything aside from the big names that have already moved into the space.
(Image from theverge.com)
The big question has come from how value is really assigned to any NFT – one of the big sales has been with the content creator Logan Paul, who sold NFT’s for clips of his upcoming Pokémon collectors box opening – but given the event is livestreamed and all of the footage becomes publicly available on things like his YouTube channel, it begs the question of where the value really is. If you’re confused by all of this, don’t worry you aren’t the only one as there are many sceptics of the whole system despite things like the big Beeple art piece selling for nearly $70 million, but given it could be the next big move in the tech sector, it may be worth following.
