The cryptocurrency market is constantly evolving and offers new ways for everyone to make money, no matter how unethical these methods are. NTF or “Fungible Tokens” is one such way. Although they have been around for years, the NTF boom started recently and continues to blossom.
To understand how people make money on NFTs, you need to understand what fungible tokens are. Tokens are not cryptocurrencies, although they can be sold and bought for crypto on specialized platforms. A token is a record on the blockchain that confirms a user’s digital equity in some asset and acts as a security bond on the blockchain. Now, there are fungal and non-fungal tokens. Fungible Tokens can be exchanged for other Fungible Tokens from USD to GBP. On the other hand, non-fungible tokens or NFTs are a type of entity that cannot be exchanged or replaced by another token of the same type. The NFT code includes the author of the product, its current owner, a mechanism to automatically receive royalties from future resales, etc. It is not possible to create such a token. Got all that? good
The first experiments with NFT began in 2017 – Pepe memes were published on the site Rare Pepe Directory. One of the cards — a portrait of Homer Simpson, styled as Pepe — quickly sold for $500, and a year later, it was auctioned for 38,000. Next is the CryptoPunks and CryptoKitties game. First came unique characters, while CryptoKitties was (maybe still?) a game where people farm and exchange NFTs. Look at the market now – everyone is dipping their toes into NFTs: regular people, collectors, artists, big companies – you name it.
Recently, Christie’s, one of the world’s largest auction houses, auctioned works by digital artist Bible, with the highest bid exceeding $69 million. Generally, graphics, animations, music, components of computer games and even plots of land are sold under the guise of NFT. Buyers pay for a virtual token that certifies ownership of the images and they are comfortable inside. Again, you can right-click and save it, but why use common sense when you can spend millions to get bragging rights?
It’s hard to understand why someone would be willing to pay for a simple picture of a cat or a clip of an NBA game that can be watched on YouTube – because none of this has any real value. That’s why critics often call the entire industry of NFT a bubble that will burst soon.
NFT enthusiasts argue that the value lies in uniqueness and liken collecting digital goods to old baseball cards, stamps, music records or other rare items. You can’t just touch your NFTs. Some wealthy people are willing to pay fat juicy dollars for the feeling of owning something unique, and that’s their choice.
Over time, such digital tokens could be attached to diplomas, driver’s licenses, property rights and other documents – basically, anything involving authentication could be bundled with an NFT. But now, people buy NFT tokens to quickly resell them at higher prices.
While the hype lasts, the NFT market thrives, but if it dies, all those memes, pictures of cats, and virtual NBA cards that cost millions of dollars today will be worthless tomorrow. So are these tokens worth the hassle? In my opinion – absolutely not. There are many disadvantages including environmental problems that have serious consequences for the entire world. Because of how crypto is grown, NFTs can be incredibly harmful to the environment. But that’s a whole different conversation. Be aware that the more NFT is spent, the more the planet gets polluted.
But at the end of the day, it’s up to you to help protect the planet or get rich quick and destroy future generations.
