Tech (9) — The Non-Fungible Token Has Become A Thing
Have you ever collected fancy sports cards? Those sports cards display the best move for players to score in a game. As I recall, it cost 10 dollars a decade ago in a package of two cards. Now, one of them can be sold for more than a hundred dollars online, because it is rare at present.
In this case, we can sell those sports cards at a higher price, and we call it the fungible token. In the concept of economics, the fungible token is something with units that can be exchanged, like currency. For example, you can interchange 10 pounds for about 15 US dollars. However you want to trade it, you will get money in the end.
However, there is a new trading form online called Non-Fungible-Token(NFT). People can make payments with NFT for various purchases. However, the purchaser does not own any physical assets. Instead, what they own is a virtual asset, kind of like a copyright. For example, in February 2021, the music producer 3LAU sold a collection of 33 music items as NFTs for more than $11M online.
Additionally, NFT is part of the blockchain, and the ownership is unique to the purchaser. So it can’t be cloned or deleted. NFT also protects the information around who owns the token, its purchase and ownership history, and a link to the relevant digital files. So it can’t be hacked. This shows the item’s individual character to the buyer and provides the item’s value.
In the modern world we live in today, humans show off their money by purchasing luxury products. So we can see someone carrying a Dior bag to look posh in the street, and someone wearing a Gap T-shirt to look cute. Since our lives are becoming more digital than ever, there are various virtual merchandise including purchases online, such as E-books, virtual currencies like Bitcoin, or access to remote FaceTime viewings of the Mona Lisa painting at the Louvre museum in Paris.
On a personal note, the things we own in a digital mode have taken over our physical assets unconsciously. The novel crypto trading mode like NFT is becoming the bridge between virtual assets and purchasers. Although I am looking forward to seeing NFT develop a new economic peak, I’m also worried that NFT has become a pop culture mania. A mania where the market bubble was busted by young trades’ stimulus money down the line.
