What's With Non-Fungible Tokens(NFT) (Part One)

Honestly speaking, I really still do not understand what NFT's are or the seeming craze behind it. How it is such a big deal to own a piece of art and pay astronomically huge sums of money for it is still a thing I can't quite fathom. But again I've always thought so of art in real life forms.

I have always been baffled about how these insanely rich folks are willing to pay millions of dollars for what I thought to be just "paint on a canvass", but over time, having taken a look beyond the surface, I began to appreciate the creativity, effort and ingenuity that went into making these arts and I started making peace with the price tags (even though I still considered most of them insane😂😂).

But then came NFT's. According to Wikipedia 'A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique and non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a blockchain, a form of digital ledger. NFTs can be associated with reproducible digital files such as photos, videos, and audio. NFTs use a digital ledger to provide a public certificate of authenticity or proof of ownership, but do not restrict the sharing or copying of the underlying digital files. The lack of interchangeability (fungibility) distinguishes NFTs from blockchain cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin.'

Okay, this is just really crazy. Basically, a NFT is a digital piece of artwork that is built on a blockchain giving it a proof of ownership whatever. So, just like a physical artwork, they are appreciated by certain niche within the art enthusiast. But unlike physical art, you paying a million dollars for it doesn't really make it what it's not.

Take a video for example, you might have paid a million dollars for it, but I can still view it on YouTube, I can still download it. I can still use that song that you bought (for an insane amount) in my tik-tok video. In essence, all you're buying for millions worth of dollars is really just a signature, sort of the creators signature that authenticates it's origin. In the case of physical art, once the original is bought, it remains so, it can not be completely duplicated or reproduced, but that's not true of NFT's.

They are supposedly unique, but I find that claim funny, as they can be 100% replicated and reproduced. According to verge.com 'In the boring, technical sense that every NFT is a unique token on the blockchain. But while it could be like a van Gogh, where there’s only one definitive actual version, it could also be like a trading card, where there’s 50 or hundreds of numbered copies of the same artwork'. Yes, that's right.

Physical art is hard, almost impossible to duplicate, and a duplicate can never be as good as the original, but in the case of digital art as well as NFT's, the copy is just as good as the original. There can only be one Mona Lisa, but we can have a hundred NFT from the same collection that are exactly the same, except for the proof of ownership of course😂.

I mean guys, think about it. Someone paid a whooping $6.6million for a video by Beeple, a video I can go to YouTube to download, watch and use as I deem fit anytime, anyday, anywhere, or the image by Beetle that sold for $69million at auction. I mean, seriously? What's going on here?

If that's not ridiculous enough, how about someone parting ways with $20,000 in exchange for a video of Logan Paul? Who does that? Is not like the guy is Mike Tyson. Put him in a ring with the least rank amateur boxer from Nigeria and he will knocked out cold in less than five minutes. This has got to be a joke.

I really don't know.......

Thanks for reading