By Marshall Wong

I woke up this morning to the absurd news that Jack Dorsey was offering to sell the first tweet as a Non Fungible Good (NFT) and that the highest bid was 2.5 million dollars. So I browsed online, and to my astonishment, there were thousands of similar transactions of individuals purchasing NFTs. I quickly realized that this strange market had already amassed huge potential –– in fact, OpenSea, the largest marketplace for buying and selling NFTs, booked almost $90 million US worth of transactions just last month.

What exactly is an NFT? 

According to CTV, an NFT is a singular, one-of-a-kind digital token that cannot be interchanged with other tokens. Usually, buyers purchase the ownership of a specific item (icons, artwork, tweets etc.) on the digital blockchain. 

How are NFTs different from a Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is fungible, meaning that they all have the same value at the same time. You can swap a bitcoin with a given amount in U.S. dollars or any other established currency. You can be sure that any item with that particular quality has the same value.

A non-fungible token, on the other hand, is unique and can’t be substituted one-to-one with another item. The ownership of a particular token is what’s driving investors to spend millions of dollars on a single item/token. 

Examples 

On a digital sports-card website named Top Shot, buyers scrambled to purchase LeBron James’ monster dunk on a Sacramento big man from November 2019, which was sold for $208,000. Purchasing this meant, on the online platform, you became the recognized and exclusive owner of the clip. 

Even if you don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars to spare, you can consider buying this Bojan Marjoanoic stat sheet for 20 dollars. 

How do I get started with NFT?

If you’re interested in NFTs, cryptocurrency investment news sites often have sections dedicated to covering NFT news. Furthermore, MakersPlace, SuperRare, and Rarible are sites that specialize in digital NFT artwork.