WHEN I WAS at school, every few years there was a new collectable trend that was the talk of the playground. Whether it was Pogs, Beanie Babies or Pokémon cards, the outcome was always the same: after a flurry of interest, and prices going crazy, they ended up stuffed into the back of the cupboard. So it’s fascinating to see the same thing happening today—online—as the world is going crazy for NFTs.
NFTs are “non-fungible tokens”, and are designed to make collectables work on the internet. Built on top of the same technology that makes cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin work, if you own an NFT, it’s possible to use complex maths to prove that it belongs to you, and only to you. This means that even if files can be copied or shared, ultimately there is proof of who it really belongs to.
NFTs can, in theory, be created from any sort of a digital file, such as a song or a photograph. You could even turn an Excel spreadsheet into an NFT if you wanted to. But it’s in digital art where the idea has really taken off, as the internet has been swamped with thousands of NFT works, including the ubiquitous cartoon “Bored Ape” images that people are trading like rare Pokémon cards.
Esta historia es de la edición May 2022 de Reader's Digest UK.
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