If your children are talking about it, there is a good chance you need to be talking about NFTs. Start asking questions – what is an NFT?
A LeBron James NFT just sold for $270,000, but that is just one story, his NFTs are in big demand. Last year a Miami-based art collector resold a 10 second video artwork for $6.6 million. Famous musician and artist, Grimes, sold more than $6 million of artwork in just one day. Digital artist Beeple sold $3.5 million worth of art through Nifty Gateway last year.
Many of us are still confused about what they really are and how to participate. Remember, there was a time when people said the same about the internet, driverless cars, television, mobile telephones. The world changes fast and it is important for us to understand these changes.
What is an NFT or non-fungible token?
The simplest way to understand what a non-fungible token (NFTs) is, is to consider it as record that shows who owns a unique piece of digital content. It is a digital asset, in the same way that our car or a piece of land has a title and ownership certificate. Imagine old school sports cards being traded in a virtual world. In fact almost any piece of digital content can be minted into an NFT. Digital artwork, sports cards, photographs, podcasts, published articles, tweets and memes all can be turned into an NFT. Even the video games your children are playing can include items that can be purchased or traded as an asset with value. Special keys, weapons and other objects can be tokenised.
So is it real? Are people buying just an idea? NFTs cannot be duplicated or divided and due to the special nature of the blockchain technology used to create and store them they have very unique identification security and uses.
It certainly is a new paradigm!
My Personal Story
I decided I could not possibly miss out!
Day One – The release of a special NBA Topshot pack was planned for last Saturday 9.00am Pacific Standard time, USA. Being located in Asia that meant a 1.00am launch time for me. I stayed up many hours beyond my bed time. Launch time came – system crashed. Off to bed at 3.30am. An announcement was made for a 24hr postponement.
Next day – 1:00am came. I sat at my computer with fingers paused and ready to pull the trigger.
Click!
I am number 45,640 in the queue but only 10,600 packs were released. I waited up an hour or more just to confirm what I already knew.
No chance…… you missed out my friend!
Reports have been made that this $99 pack was being resold for more than $3000 just 24hrs later.
Do I really care that much about NBA basketball?
No 🙂 I have no interest to be honest. But the excitement of being a first and telling stories about how cool it would be to own an early NBA NFT outweighed that.
A few days later I submitted an order for a $9 pack.
What are they? 3 short video moments captured, minted and stored on the blockchain.
At least now I can feel hip, knowing that I am part of the early NFT crew!
Let’s hope LeBron James or similar makes me rich!
Global Services in Education (GSE) is always looking for new technologies that can help accelerate learning. In fact we are education advisors to a number of investors, investment funds and start up groups looking for opportunities.
About GSE
Global Services in Education plans and opens international schools for investors, developers and governments, and manages them once they are running. 39 school projects delivered across 16 countries. Management agreements run a minimum of ten years.
The company was founded in 2011 by Greg Parry and Shanna Parry.