Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1416119
NFT www.postmagazine.com 27 POST SEPT/OCT 2021 your digital wallet. "'Fungible' means something that's able to replace or be replaced by another identical item — for instance, if I have two $1 bills in my wallet, they are the same; it doesn't matter which one I give you. Likewise, a Bitcoin. However, 'non-fungible' means it's unique. So, a non-fungible token is a token that is attached to something totally unique, something that doesn't exist anywhere else, as op- posed to something that is duplicated. That's the whole point of NFTs. "This all came about because in the DeFi (de- centralized finance) world when Bitcoins surfaced, they could only be used for currency. That's how Bitcoin was invented. But now there are hundreds of blockchains that can do far more. Ethereum (with its own cryptocurrency called ether) allows you to attach other things to the blockchain, including something called a 'smart contract'. The smart contract — a piece of code that executes an agreement and is stored on the blockchain — is attached to an NFT and basically means it is a unique thing and can be attached to a token. "When you think about something that is unique, you naturally think about art. So, that's how art started to become part of the NFT world. People really into cryptocurrency and the crypto world began buying and selling art in this way. "So, it's a way of attaching digital content to a token, to something that can be tokenized. In terms of what that means for the art world, that's a whole other part of it." Are NFTs always associated with cryptocurrency? "Anyone can make anything that represents something. But, an NFT is something that became unique in the crypto world. And, its popularity is specifically centered around these ideas of smart contracts, because smart contracts change how you think about what is on the blockchain." When did NFTs really start becoming popular? "People have been selling NFTs for a while. What captured everyone's attention is when Beeple sold his piece for $69 million. That's when everyone start- ed to pay attention to the market. January-February 2021 is when the big boom started happening. "Beeple is famous in the same way that Banksy is famous. He creates the lure of the story, which is more important than the art, and he's very good at that. Successful artists are always about the narrative that goes with the art. By the way, he is the third richest artist in the world now." (Beeple is launching an NFT platform, called Wenew, that'll sell "iconic" moments in time pertaining to artists, NFTs can be used to represent items such as photos, videos, audio, and other types of digital files. NFT A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unit of data stored on a digital ledger called a blockchain that certifies a digital asset to be unique and, therefore, not interchangeable. — Wikipedia Access to any copy of the original file, however, is not restricted to the buyer of the NFT. While copies of these digital items are available for anyone to obtain, NFTs are tracked on blockchains to provide the owner with a proof of ownership that is separate from copyright.