The question: what are NFTs, these digital certificates that are reinventing the art market?
Photo, video, music, and even tweet... The NFT industry is growing and this term is becoming more and more recurrent, without us always knowing what it's all about.
Gif sold for several hundred thousand dollars, the first SMS in history for more than 100,000 euros... Moreover, a particular auction is opening since the British Museum sells NFTs of works of art in the metaverse, particularly the "Great Wave of Kanagawa" by the Japanese artist Hokusaï. It is the NFTs that allow these unique transactions.
This new industry is booming, as in 2021, over $40 billion was spent on NFTs . Lately, NFTs are spilling ink and even more money. And this in all areas. One of the latest major companies to embark on the adventure: the Gap group of stores collaborates with artist Brandon Sine for a collection of NFT.
What does it mean ?
NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token. Non-fungible refers to something that is unique and cannot be replaced by something else of equal value. For example, a euro is fungible since it can be exchanged for another euro, the value remaining the same, regardless of the coin used. On the other hand, a work of art is non-fungible because it has its unique characteristics and cannot be exchanged for an object of the same value.
The term "token" refers to a digital token that serves as a certificate of ownership. In this famous "token", the information is stored (the buyer, the seller, the date, and the amount of the transaction) thanks to blockchain technology. Indeed, NFTs are strongly linked to cryptocurrencies since most are paid in Ethereum, a currency like Bitcoin or Dogecoin, but whose blockchain makes it possible to store the considerable amount of information necessary for NFTs. Using the blockchain also makes it possible to completely anonymize the buyer: once sold, the NFT is assigned a token number which serves as an identifier.
It's used for ?
NFTs are therefore used to attest to the ownership of works, but whose author and moral rights remain unchanged, like the Associated Press which sells its historical photos in NFTs. These non-fungible tokens are associated with digital objects in general, whether art or even tweets: Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, sold his very first tweet in NFT.
Once the purchase has been validated, the purchaser will find his "title deed" in a digital wallet in which he can find his object on a web page. Therefore, buying an NFT makes it possible to claim possession of a work in a more symbolic way than anything else. Indeed, NFTs in no way guarantee a one-time use. To illustrate this particularity, the example of the Nyan Cat gif is rather telling: If anyone can use it, download a copy of the gif and share it, only one person now owns it after a $560,000 purchase.
NFTs, therefore, make it possible to be able to "brag" of having ownership of the original of a digital work and are used either by art collectors or for speculation. For now, the popularity of NFTs is growing, but, as with classic art collections, they remain in the hands of a minority: a study by Chainanalysis carried out on more than 7 million NFTs purchased with Ethereum shows that some 32 000 owners hold 80% of the market .
Seen in "La Provence" Mathilde Ruchou.
Video: NFT for Dummies
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