NFT, as was probably explained to you hundreds of times from January 2021 to May 2022, stands for "nonfungible token", and essentially means you can buy a code that says you own a digital asset, which is then stored on the blockchain, a sort of centralised public transaction ledger. There were a lot of hyped future uses for this technology, but for the most part it was used to buy jpegs of monkeys, or maybe sometimes a lion.
Before the boom, there were whispers that the NFT community would transform the way people viewed and bought and thought about art and collectibles, and there were some technological advancements pushed during that time that will have a positive impact on whatever the next iteration of the internet will be. But what the short, sharp NFT hype cycle will mainly be remembered for will be: insanely bad art, hyper-inflated prices, digital hucksterism, $17bn of sales in 2021 and a 90% sales drop in 2022, John Terry, and that one mate everyone has who spent thousands on one and now goes really quiet whenever the subject of NFTs comes up in conversation.
This story is from the October 06, 2023 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
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This story is from the October 06, 2023 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
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