Above is an "ape" shown at the Bored & Hungry restaurant. Image credit: Getty Images file
NBC News, original author: Rizwan Virk, founder of Play Labs @ MIT, Translator: Chainnder
NFT is an acronym for nonfungible token. As a new product of the crypto market, NFTs have had unlimited scenery in the past two years, and people often hear the news that explosive NFTs have sold at sky-high prices. However, not long after the NFT wave emerged, the sound of singing was already incessant. There are reports that the bubble in the NFT market has begun to burst, and some reports point to the falling price of NFTs, and there are reports that billionaire Elon Musk's disapproval of NFTs is one of the reasons why its scenery is no longer there. Don't pay too much attention to these fading voices, and such reports will not be absent when the stock market and the cryptocurrency market generally fall.
With the NFT trend sweeping the world, not only are celebrities frantically buying explosive NFT series, but many investors and even listed companies have begun to join the purchase ranks. However, As the latest world richest man, Musk seems to be indifferent to the NFT trend, and has not joined the game of the rich so far, and also tweeted a "boring ape" BAYC. In fact, Musk has long criticized NFTs, and after Twitter announced in January this year that he would launch the NFT avatar function on the subscription service Twitter Blue, Musk expressed his dissatisfaction and criticized it for wasting resources. Compared with NFTs with investment as the main gimmick, Musk values the private irreplaceable experience more.
It is worth mentioning that Musk once replaced his Twitter avatar with "boring ape" BAYC, which caused a heated discussion in the crypto community, and even thought that he was going to "shout orders" for NFTs. Unexpectedly, Musk actually ridiculed the NFT community, saying: "Maybe... NFTs are replaceable", and then changed the avatar back.
Image credit: Musk Tweet
"Interestingly", after ridiculing the NFT, Musk, the cosmic internet celebrity, moved his mind to Twitter, the social media giant that first tested the NFT. Last month, musk announced the news of the acquisition of Twitter, which caused a sensation in the media circle. As an avid Twitter user, Musk often draws attention on the platform with his sharp remarks. No one expected that he had just expressed dissatisfaction with Twitter's policy on free speech on the front foot, and then made a willful acquisition move on the back foot. Although musk's attitude has taken another 180-degree turn in recent days, announcing a "temporary hold" of the acquisition, he has to admire his ability to stir up the entire market.
To be honest, although Musk "looks down" on NFTs, it is really difficult to say who can laugh at the end.
NFTs represent new technology trends
Frankly, most of the reports of the decline of NFTs focus on the number and price of NFTs traded, but completely ignore the future technical trends represented by NFTs themselves.
In fact, the emergence of NFTs represents a new major breakthrough in people's understanding of assets, including "virtual assets" and "digital ownership" and other such concepts are unprecedented, so the value of NFTs can not be measured only by market prices, and the innovative value it represents will not disappear because of the current market price fluctuations.
Today, those who underestimate the power of this new technology can't help but recall the attitude towards the World Wide Web in the early nineties, when many people were also not optimistic about the World Wide Web, thinking that its life cycle would not be long, but in fact, the power of the network was just beginning to appear. It is not difficult to see from the vigorous development of major video streaming platforms and social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Zoom, Fortnite and Netflix in recent years that the activities of human society are now completely inseparable from the Internet.
So why is NFT another key component of this digital revolution?
This is because NFTs represent ownership of different digital assets, and that ownership is verified. When you're buying a digital image or a virtual plot of land in a metaverse, you need to register ownership somewhere and verify it as you would any asset in the real world. It's like having to register with your local property office when you buy a house; you need to register with your local motor vehicle department when buying a car.
By the same token, after purchasing a unique digital commodity like an NFT, the holder's ownership is registered on the Internet through a technology called "blockchain." Unlike a single physical or digital store, blockchain is a new type of decentralized technology that can store any type of information, including NFT and ownership of cryptocurrencies, without the authorization of a central server or relevant institution. (Disclaimer: The author is an NFT holder and an investor and advisor to several NFT companies, in addition to holding cryptocurrencies such as BTC and ETH and trading regularly.) ）
In fact, in the beginning, NFTs were just a kind of collectible in the game (like digital baseball cards), but with the popularity of the blockchain cat game "CryptoKitties" in 2018, it began to gain fame. In this new blockchain game, buyers can buy their own virtual "kittens" as a collectible, and not only that, these "kittens" can also be used to trade and breed offspring. Under normal circumstances, a buyer's purchase of a digital asset might be a simple JPEG image, but the insincerity is that ownership of these digital assets is recorded on the public blockchain. Not only that, but NFT holders also receive benefits such as priority access to pre-release versions of apps or priority access to movies, music, or video games, and even the copyright to the artwork itself.
Nowadays, most of the famous NFT series have their own different themes, such as "Ape" in the BAYC series of "Boring Ape", which has become so popular that even the well-known American TV host Jimmy Fallon can't help but show off his purchase of "Ape" in the talk show "The Tonight Show". Not only that, but the series of movies filmed around this "ape" is also about to be released. Other celebrities who are keen on NFT investment include Reese Witherspoon, Katy Perry and Paris Hilton.
I have to admit that those blockbuster NFTs that sold sky-high have driven a new era of gold rush in the circle of artists and celebrities. In March 2021, artist Beeple's NFT digital artwork "Every Day: First 5,000 Days" broke the record for the highest auction price for an NFT work for $69.3 million. The Merge, the most expensive NFT in history, was sold to 28,000 collectors for $91.8 million in December 2021, setting a precedent for NFTs to provide partial ownership.
NFT has a wide range of use cases
It's worth noting that simply viewing NFTs as a work of art is a very narrow view, as it has a lot of potential to be used in virtual, real-world ways. One of the most popular uses is to act as a figurative and rich virtual avatar in the metaverse, which sounds a lot like a scenario that would only occur in the virtual world of science fiction, but now we've done it with 3D avatars.
Last year, sports giant Nike also acquired virtual sneaker brand RTFKT, accelerating its digital transformation. I have to admire the unique keen sense of smell of these fashion giants, they have realized that the "Generation Z" attaches great importance to the virtual image, just like decorating themselves through clothes in the real world, and they are keen to show themselves through the virtual image.
NFTs have proven to be extremely valuable in terms of investment in virtual land, which will be a new direction for the development of the real estate industry, and the future is immeasurable. Just late last year, someone bought an NFT representing land ownership for $450,000, next to rapper Snoop Dog's residence in The Sandbox in the metaverse. In addition, we also found that even though the recent hype about NFTs has largely ended, sales of virtual lands in the "Boring Ape" BAYC theme game are still extremely hot, with sales of these virtual land NFTs reaching $1.7 billion in the first week of May alone.
Even more exciting is the fact that the value of NFTs is now recognized in the real world. Recently, the UK High Court ruled that NFTs are the legitimate property of citizens, a great advance that means that if someone hacks into a system and steals your NFTs, they are guilty of theft, no different from burglary of "real" art or pirated Hollywood movies.
Finally, there is another use case that is also worth mentioning, that is, in the DeFi space, people can already use NFTs as collateral to borrow real-world funds. In addition, there are some real estate funds that are using NFTs to build real estate that investors can buy.
summary
In short, today's NFTs are becoming more and more intelligent, it is no longer limited to bringing simple visual enjoyment, more use cases are increasing, and the industry's NFT 2.0 has been grandly debuted.
Frankly, like the Internet after the 2000 bubble burst, blockchain technology and NFTs are still in their infancy, and buying and using NFTs is still a hassle for the average user. However, this situation will slowly change as some popular apps such as Instagram gradually increase support for NFTs.
And most importantly, whether people are buying real assets in the real world or digital assets in the virtual world, new technologies such as NFTs can play an important role in tracking ownership and sources of income. Therefore, there is no reason why NFTs will be useless and quickly die out, as predicted by the singers, let alone be abandoned by the market because of Musk's ridicule. I believe that after many years, those NFT singers will regret their predictions, so let time test everything.
(This article was originally published in ChainDede, authorized by Titanium Media App, author: Song Song)