A Quick Intro to NFTs
NFTs took 2021 by storm. Billions of dollars have been traded over these tokens and many industries are starting to adopt them.
But… Do you know what NFTs are? I’ll explain in this thread.
What NFT means?
NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token. These are tokens that live in the Blockchain with a special characteristic. Saying “Non-Fungible” means they are unique and can’t be replaced with something else.
For example, a bitcoin is fungible. Trade one for another bitcoin, and you’ll have exactly the same thing. Similar situation when trading dollars or euros — if I give you 1 dollar and one week later you give me 1 dollar back, then it doesn’t care if it’s the same bill number or not — since they all have the same value.
But NFTs work in a different way since they’re unique. So you get different assets if you trade them. For example, the Mona Lisa and Guernica are very popular pieces of art that can’t be traded between them without noticing the difference. It means they’re not fungible.
So… How do NFTs work?
An NFT is a unit of data stored on the Blockchain. It’s done via Smart Contracts. So, only Blockchains that support them like Ethereum, Polygon, Solana and Binance Smart Chain allow the creation of NFTs.
NFTs can be associated with any particular digital or physical asset (such as a file or a physical object) which means they can be used in many different ways. There’re lots of protocols and companies already using them or exploring how they can improve or change their businesses.
For example, NFT gaming was a big thing during the past year. Games like Axie Infinity or The Sandbox follow the play-to-earn (P2E) model which are making gamers real money. Right now there are eSports teams participating in global competitions.
Most of the news we read about NFTs have been associated with art — it’s been a revolution. Companies like OpenSea and Rarible have exploded the popularity of buying and selling digital art as NFTs — being Bored Ape Yacht Club and Crypto Punks collections super popular with millions of dollars spent in trading.
NFTs are being used also in the Health sector in different ways. For example, Aimedis has launched the world’s first medical and scientific NFT marketplace allowing medical data to be bought and sold as NFTs. Patients could turn their medical data into NFTs to then be sold to pharmaceutical companies.
There are also independent musicians making big money from NFTs. For example, Daniel Allan has been selling digital copies of his electronic pop songs as NFTs for thousands of dollars each.
NFT technology is here to stay!
At BeeReal we focus our efforts on contributing to this challenge.
