Ep 3 – Introducing NFTs
In this episode we look at coins and tokens and what makes some fungible and some non-fungible. Welcome to the world of NFTs.
Transcript
Welcome back, and thanks for tuning in. I love the word fungible. I had never used it in a sentence prior to 2021 and had never even heard the word fungible prior to last year. Yet here we are - coins and tokens, fungible and non fungible. There is a lot of terminology to get your head around when it comes to understanding blockchain. In time it will become second nature to use these terms and "get with the lingo" of the industry.
Speaker:One such term is token. A token is a coin like object that can be used instead of actual coins. So it makes sense with what we explored in the first episode, that digital currency would be a token. It also makes sense that anything else that is used to give you special access to something tangible in the digital world would also be a token. By extension, anything that is an asset within the digital currency world would also be a token.
Speaker:Cryptocurrencies are fungible tokens. Fungible means that something can be replaced by something identical and it is mutually interchangeable. So if I hand you one Bitcoin, and you hand me one Bitcoin, they are of identical value mutually interchangeable, and therefore fungible. A non-fungible token is a digital asset that exists on the blockchain. It is a thing of value with unique attributes, its uniqueness makes it non fungible, because it is unlikely that you are going to be able to swap two unique assets for the exact same value. In this case, the token would be called a non fungible token. A non-fungible token goes by its acronym of NFT. NFTs exploded onto the scene in 2021. Now interestingly, because of that explosion, 70% of crypto wallets were created in 2021 for the first time in the US, so that means 70% of Americans got on board with crypto just last year. So this is brand brand new, even though people who have been understanding the technology programmers who are in the blockchain and early adopters of cryptocurrency, they get it and they've been getting it for many, many years. For us. 2021 was a pivotal turning point for the industry. So an NFT is a digital asset purchased with cryptocurrency and secured with a smart contract.
Speaker:So I just want to talk about the different types of NFTs and give you a real understanding of now what this amazing opportunity is for you and your businesses. A lot of people go but our NFT is a digital artwork. Well, it's not. It's a digital asset. But it just so happens that it got really taken up by artists and musicians last year, because they saw this as an incredible way to be able to monetize their creativity in a way that they weren't able to before. The reason that the momentum got behind it is so many older millennials and down we're making a crazy amount of money trading cryptocurrency, so the value of Bitcoin went high, the value of Ethereum went high. And so millionaires were being created overnight. And a lot of them are young, and they wanted to flex and they wanted to own things. And one of the things that they wanted to own or it became very, very cool to own work, digital assets, digital artworks and digital music. Thanks also in part to a number of NFT projects, taking off some notable celebrities and entrepreneurs getting on board with NF T's. It led to a massive interest in collecting digital assets. And as 2021 sped on, NFTs became an unstoppable train garnering interest going for very high amounts of money. A number of artists and creators jumped on board to be part of this new creative experience on the blockchain. And this is where we've arrived at today. NFTs are here to stay as a digital asset. They can be anything, and as more people get involved, NFTs will start to evolve not only creatively, but practically as tokens, digital assets that have value, and because it's on the blockchain, and they're secured with a smart contract. The applications of NFTs are vast and varied. So it's a space that we can't ignore NFTs will become part of our lives. And it's a very exciting time.