What's the deal with NFTs?

We have written a few articles about crypto and the vast potential of blockchain technology because we are fascinated with the number of use cases and levels of adoption that we are seeing. 

Today we want to talk about another monster in that space – the fast-expanding world of NFTs. 

The size of the NFT market exceeded $10 billion in transaction volume in the third quarter of 2021, according to analytics platform DappRadar. 

Digital artists saw their works ballooned in value as NFTs such as Beeple who sold a collage of his daily sketchbook, Everydays, for $69 million or singer-songwriter Grimes who sold more than $6 million worth of NFT artwork

So what exactly are NFTs?

NFT stands for Non-fungible token, a unique and irreplaceable cryptographic asset built on a tamper-resistant blockchain which you can mathematically prove the ownership of. 

First, what is considered non-fungible?

Fungibility is the ability to be traded or exchanged for one another at equivalency.

For example: The most fungible thing in the world is money. A dollar is always equal to another dollar. We exchange a dollar with someone and we get an identical dollar back. You trade a crypto coin for another and you’ll have the exact same thing. That’s just money. It’s fungible!

When it comes to NFTs, even though they are built on the same underlying structure as many cryptos (most NFTs are built on the Ethereum blockchain), they are different. They don’t have that fungible aspect. 

For example: You can’t trade an original painting for another one because there’s only one and it doesn’t have the same value as another artwork.

In a nutshell, an NFT is a certificate of ownership of a digital artwork which has a built-in authentication that serves as proof of ownership. Accordingly, NFTs are very unique, hard to copy but easy to verify. They are tradeable but you cannot exchange one for another. 

What can be an NFT?

NFTs can really be anything digital such as digital arts, music, in-game items and videos, which are tradeable online with cryptocurrency. 

The artwork itself is not on the blockchain but the certificate of ownership, NFT, is on the blockchain. 

If the artwork can be viewed publicly, wouldn’t everyone just screenshot or download it for themselves as many times as they