NFTs: A New Market On the Rise?

Everyone wants to discover new ways of making money fast. Playing the lottery is always an option, but with odds close to 1-200,000,000, it’s not exactly a winning strategy. There is a market, however, for more ambitious and contemporary gambling.

NFTs. What are they? They stand for Non-Fungible Tokens. What makes NFTs interesting is that because they are “non-fungible”, they cannot be traded for other NFTs in the same way other products can. Explained more precisely, imagine NFTs as works of art. The price of one piece of art is determined by how much one is willing to pay for it. It’s value is not intrinsic, but rather perceived. Imagine you were in possession of the Mona Lisa. Is the Mona Lisa easily exchanged for another painting? Absolutely not! It’s priceless. It is a painting just like other paintings, but its value comes from how much other are willing to pay for it. This is the same for NFTs. One NFT cannot be traded for another.

What makes NFTs fascinating is that they are digital items of innumerable possibilities. Some artists and investors sell NFTs such as digital art or gifs, others sell NFTs such as photographs or in-game designs. It’s incredible the amount creativity that has arisen from NFTs. There are no “defined” features, so literally anything you can create digitally can be sold as an NFT.

So, how does one buy or sell an NFT? Well, there are online trading hubs that allow you to buy or sell NFTs. Here’s the catch though: you can only buy or sell NFTs using cryptocurrency. In an age where digital art and ownership is being sold, it is natural that it would require digital money to complete these transactions.  

Where exactly is the NFT market heading? It’s impossible to know. Digital ownership is a complicated phenomenon. For example, if you own the Mona Lisa physically, you own it. No one else can. They may have copies, but you have the original. It is the same with digital art. You may own the original, but others may own a copy. Is there digital copy as valuable as your digital original? Only time will tell. It is possible to see the NFT market becoming a new “Etsy”, where artists and creators begin to sell their digital creations or ideas and a new market might emerge. There are already numerous artists who are making triple digit figures selling their work as NFTs.

Given the complicated nature of NFTs and cryptocurrency, however, it is entirely possible that it will fizzle out as quickly as it erupted. Whether this market stays or goes remains to be seen in the long run, but Emergent will be watching and monitoring regardless.