Many of you know that I am a technophile. I love learning more about the advancements in today’s technology, and the applications they might have. But lately it feels like we're reaching an inflection point where tech (especially software) is evolving faster than we can keep up. We’ve talked in the past about how subscriptions are the new business model due to reoccurring revenue, or how all of your iTunes music or Google Movies aren’t really yours. But now we are entering a whole new era, and one I just can’t quite comprehend.
You’ll have to bear with me now as I am still trying to wrap my head around all of this but one of the biggest up and coming things in the tech sphere, or really the world right now is something called NFTs, or Non-fungible Tokens. An NFT is literally just a way to have verifiable ownership of an item that might not possible otherwise. NFTs are based on the same technology that many cryptocurrencies are, blockchain. Blockchain is a topic that will likely be a Word of its own one day, but essentially blockchain is a massive, decentralized ledger that records transactions in an efficient verifiable permanent way. It is the way blockchain is being used with these NFTs that makes them really interesting.
NFTs right now use blockchain to essentially create an artificial scarcity with digital assets. This is really just a fancy way of saying that NFTs allow you to officially own a piece of digital content, similar to other nondigital collectables like baseball cards, artwork or cars. For example, the NBA recently partnered with a company to offer NFTs of highlights. People can spend money on packs (like baseball cards) and receive what they call “moments” or essentially highlights. Some other notables are Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO is currently auctioning an NFT of his first tweet which is up to $2.5 million. Or John Legere, previous CEO of T-Mobile just spent $888,888.88 on a 36 second video from DJ Steve Aoki. The most jaw dropping is digital artist Mike Winklemann, or BEEPLE just sold a collage of 5000 images for just under $70 Million.
If your head is spinning, it’s okay mine is too. We really are in uncharterd waters here my friends and I don’t know what’s coming next. I do hope that with NFTs gaining traction and our lives becoming increasingly digital that we gain the ability to own and control those assets.