What are NFTs, and why are they changing the world of art

By: Obinna Tony

What are NFTs, and why are they changing the world of art

July 14, 2022 1:14 PM

As the world is slowly progressing daily and there are new inventions, NFTs are slowly giving artists an avenue to monitor sales of their work. It also offers the potential to collect royalties years later and this investment has proven there are no risks associated with it.

 

There has been media attention on NFTs which is a shorter form of non-fungible tokens. With much visibility, comes the question of the advantages and disadvantages of NFTs in relation to sellers and buyers. NFTs are digital assets that cannot be replicated or reproduced. This asset exists in the blockchain system.

 

Since its inception, NFTs are having their very huge moment as collectors and speculators have spent over $200 million on different types of NFT-based artwork, memes and GIFs in the first half of the 2021 year which was reported by the market tracker, NonFungible.com. This is in comparison to $250 million throughout 2020. In 2022, NFTs are still getting better and growing as a big market that caters to the future.

 

For a while, there has been a problem with digital art. It’s undervalued and in most cases, because of its easy access and piracy, it’s mostly available free online for easy consumption. The introduction of NFT has saved the dying market of digital art. Now, NFTs are constantly in the headlines and it has been taken over by art lovers to help themselves sort their financial needs and get their talent out there. As the days progress, the world is becoming overwhelmed with news about NFTs, major releases and huge amounts of money made by cryptocurrency artists.


 
So, how are NFTs changing the world?


NFTs are called non-fungible tokens because unlike cryptocurrency which also operates on the blockchain, they aren’t all equally exchangeable. In NFTs, when you have a dollar, it’s equal to every other dollar. This means that when you have a bitcoin, it’s equal to every other existing bitcoins.

 

NFT boasts attractive features like smart contracts. It can be built into the NFT and with it, artists build in an automatic royalty paid to them whenever the NFT is resold. NFT has been in existence for a long time and the first NFT was Kevin McCoy’s Quantum (2014). It didn’t generate much buzz in the media back then till the early part of 2021 when Beeple sold his NFT for $69 million.

 

But as NFT is revolutionizing the media, there are important questions: what are you buying when you purchase NFT? It’s very clear to know that owning NFT doesn’t afford you the copyright of the image. A lot of other people on the internet can still have access to those images and they can recreate them at their convenience. So, with this problem, there have been a lot of conversations around digital art, especially for people who are buying them.

 

Examples of outlets one can buy and sell NFTs are OpenSea, Rarible, SuperRare etc. This market is booming since there has been an explosion in the NFT marketplace.

 

In conclusion, crypto art and collectibles have been a major throughline for much of the conversation about NFT. In a sense, NFT is here to stay and it’s clear how the market is still growing as days go by.