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1. Introduction
Hello! It's been a while since I've written for note. As I was thinking about what to write and scrolling through Twitter, the word "NFT," which I've been seeing a lot lately, caught my eye. It's a somewhat tricky topic, but this time I'll write about it!
2. What Is an NFT?
A technology that, by leveraging blockchain, gives easily copyable digital data unique asset value, creating a new market for buying and selling.
When you look up "what is an NFT," you tend to see descriptions like this a lot. It's a bit hard to grasp the meaning, isn't it? When I first saw it, question marks floated over my head, too. As I looked around for something explained more clearly, I found a tweet like the one below.
https://twitter.com/aoproo/status/1442660273647620096?s=20
Nice and clear. Pulling it all together, an NFT is "a token that can be used to represent ownership of a unique item," and the item includes a digital asset. For reference, please also see the note I wrote about blockchain technology.
2. The Purpose and Background of Buying NFTs
Possible purposes for buying NFTs include the following!
1) The value of owning the original data This is essentially the same as owning the original of a work of art. If you owned the original of the "Mona Lisa" or "The Scream," you'd be thrilled, right? Just as you can take photos of works of art, digital assets can be screenshotted and so on, but the level of value is different. Also, if the value goes up, you can, so to speak, resell it — which is probably part of the purpose of buying, too...
2) Perks At the time of purchase, in addition to the work file and the NFT, perks sometimes come with it. For a musical artist, that might be a limited-edition record; for a restaurant, lifetime all-you-can-eat, and so on. I can just picture famous idol groups raking it in with this...
3) Showing off a collection There are already virtual gallery platforms for NFTs. A famous one is Flawnt.
There are limited-time virtual galleries and real-world events held in Tokyo, and you can feel the excitement.
https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000001.000083075.html
Background It's said that a major reason NFTs are drawing attention is the popularity of cryptocurrency. As the cryptocurrency market expanded, NFTs — an adjacent field — also drew attention and grew. Apparently you can even buy NFTs with cryptocurrency!
3. Examples of Sales
Let me introduce a few concrete examples of NFT sales!
The first tweet on Twitter The first tweet, posted in 2006 by Jack Dorsey — co-founder and CEO of Twitter — was put up for auction as an NFT. And amazingly, it sold for about 315 million yen! Incredible...
https://www.itmedia.co.jp/news/spv/2103/23/news059.html
Digital artist Beeple Twenty-one works submitted from digital artist Beeple's "EVERYDAYS" series recorded total sales of over $3.5 million. As I thought, digital artists and illustrators really should be actively putting up their work!
CryptoKitties In fact, NFTs are drawing attention in the gaming industry, too. Let me quote an explanation introduced below.
In "CryptoKitties," players can buy and sell the one-of-a-kind characters and items they've acquired among themselves, and can also use acquired characters and items in other games. Characters raised within the game are traded on the secondary market, and the higher their parameters and rarity, the higher the price they trade for.
The image is something like an evolved form of social games. It seems like the amounts spent could get pretty incredible.
4. In Closing
I introduced a few things about NFTs. Personally, this gaming domain seems likely to evolve even further and looks interesting. It stirs the blood of the somewhat-gamer in me... I'd like to create some art myself and post it. Thank you for reading!