NFTs on Bitcoin
In case you have been hiding under a rock, NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are the latest crypto-craze to go mainstream. In fact, on March 11, 2021, an artist sold an NFT for $69.3 Million. The art work is essentially a digital image and a link. The only difference between NFTs and other digital properties? NFTs have digital certificates that assign digital uniqueness to each item, and ensure that it cannot be replaced by another similar item.
This is “non-fungible” in non-fungible token. Fungible items are commonly described as items that can be “replaced by another similar or identical item”. A simple example is fiat money. For instance, a $10 bill can be replaced by another $10 bill, two $5 bills, or even 100 dimes. Fiat money is fungible. The same applies to most cryptocurrencies. It doesn’t matter what block your 1 BTC comes from, it is still 1 BTC.
Even though Beeple’s $69.3 Million sale is larger than any other one so far, a lot of people have been making “mad cash” selling NFTs. Jack Dorsey auctioned off his first tweet for over $2.5 million. Rick and Morty sketchs went for over $2.3 million. A sex tape was sold for $17,000, only for the buyer to list it for $260 million the very next day!
Of course, a lot of people are rushing in to get a piece of the action. There’s only one problem here: the costs to make one can be steep. Stories abound of fees being as high as $200.
The original NFTs were actually built on the OG blockchain, Bitcoin. They were known as colored bitcoins. NFTs, however, did not become popular until Cryptopunks and Cryptokitties went viral.
Most of the NFT activity has been taking place on Ethereum. However, a couple of Bitcoin projects are working on popularizing NFTs on Bitcoin. This is because not only is Bitcoin the most secure cryptocurrency protocol, it also is the most mature, and has the largest capital.
Canonic just recently started selling NFT books on Bitcoin. The first book is going for $100, and limited to 100 copies only. They would also sell non-NFT (FT?) books.
Another Bitcoin NFT is Boombox. Developed by the RunRiot team, Boombox intends to use the strengths of Bitcoin (security, maturity) to make it easy for just about anybody to mint NFTs. It is built on Stacks. Their fees are pretty cheap too (1 STX, which at the time of writing was about $1.4)!
Obviously, this is just the beginning, and we can expect to soon see a lot of new use cases, especially on platforms like Stacks , where NFT minting tools would be made available to everyday artists as well as the general public. We should also expect a couple of Bitcoin NFT-marketplaces to spring up soon!