Like millions of people, I'm a big fan of Gary Vaynerchuk, I've been following his content for maybe 3 years now, I think. In this video he gives a fairly quick, 8 minute take on where NFT's (Non Fungible Tokens) were, back in February.
With my current, sketchy lifestyle, it's been nearly impossible for me to take in large amounts of information, for most of the Covid period. As a homeless guy who actually does some kind of "work" every day, like art and content creation, I struggled to get any decent amount of time online to learn. The little bit of time I had, 1-2 hours a day, was mostly keeping in touch with people social, and quick blog posts, content creation. So I didn't listen to much of what Gary, and many others, were doing, for several months.
Over the past few months, in the limited amount of media I did consume, I started seeing the term "NFT" in relation to artists and musicians. I knew it was somehow tied to Ethereum, but didn't have time to dig into it, and learn anything about it.
NFT stands for Non Fungible Token. Let's start with "fungible." Money, for example, is fungible, one dollar is worth as much as any other dollar. You can pay for lunch with dollar bills, coins worth a dollar, a dollar in your debit card account, or a dollar in your Apple Pay account. Any dollar is worth the same, that's what fungible means. That's a big part of the point of money.
Now one big problem for creative people, of any kind, in the digital age, is that we all can share digital files. A book, a song, a piece of art, a photo, a video clip, whatever, we can all make copies, and share the copies, and millions of copies could end up being made. Nobody gets paid, and most are pretty much worthless. Creative people, and businesses, lose lots of money because of this.
So someone figured out how to take a digital file, let's say a scan of one of my drawings, and "mint" it, tying it into a blockchain, mostly the Ethereum blockchain. Because there is only one file tied to the blockchain in that transaction, and anyone can check that, suddenly it's "scarce." It's an original. When you do that, mint a digital file into the blockchain, that's called a Non Fungible Token, of NFT, for short. You can make NFT's out of art, photos, music, video clips, contracts, things like ID, any digital file. And people can prove, "that's the REAL one." You need to make them out of your own work, that you own, or else you get into copyright trouble.
This started among tech geeks in 2016-2017, and different projects started to happen. Crypto Kitties was one of the first. Crypto Punks, a group of 10,000, unique, 24 bit characters, was another. That one was actually tied to Bitcoin. Another early big one was Bored Ape Yacht Club, funny looking apes in clothes, all with different features. The Crypto Punks were given away, for something like 11 cents in fees. People did what people do, they collected them, traded them, and started selling them, and an aftermarket developed. Even though these are just files, the blockchain tie makes each unique, and potentially valuable, and this year they've been selling for downright ludicrous prices.
One of the 10,000 Crypto Punks sold for $530 million. Again, they were free, with an 11 cent service charge, in 2017. One of the Bored Apes sold for $3.4 million. A Crypto Kitty sold for over $3.4 million. Digital graphic designer Beeple, (who says he's not an "artist") sold a compilation of 5,000 of his digital sketches, for over $69 million in March. You get the idea. If you think the real estate market is crazy, it's tame next to the high end of the Crypto Art/NFT market.
The NBA did an NFT project called Top Shots, and raked in over $100 million. Gary Vaynerchuk did a launch of 10,000 NFT's, based on his own doodled characters. He made about $20 million, instantly formed a huge community of his followers, and then sold 5 of the original sketches in a Christie's auction for $1.2 million. So that's the insane side of the NFT boom, the 2021 NFT Art/Collectibles market.
On the much more sane side of things, a whole bunch of artists and musicians have minted NFT tokens of their work, and put them up on several market sites, kind of like eBay for NFT's. Most sell for $40 to maybe $300, plus some fees, when they sell. They pay (almost exclusively) in Ether (Ethereum crypto). You have to buy crypto, get a wallet, and then sign up to the marketplaces, to create, buy, sell, or trade NFT's. But there's a lot of that going on.
NFT's have a whole bunch of other potential, as well. Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and Shark Tank guy, is stoked on NFT's. He sees a future where they may be the standard type of concert or sports event ticket. You may get bonus, digital stuff, with your game or concert NFT. They could be used for ID's, passports, and things like that some day. You can take your NFT into vitural worlds, there are actually virtual art galleries displaying NFT's right now. You know that Metaverse thing Mark Zuckerburg is talking about, these are part of that concept.
So that is a basic look at the emerging world of NFT's. I've been digging into this world for about a week now, to see if it makes sense for any of my creative work. We'll see where that leads. If any of this interests you, watch the video above, check out the links, and you can find a ton more info on YouTube.
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