NFT is an acronym for nonhomogeneous token. As a new product of the encryption market, NFT has enjoyed unlimited scenery in the past two years. People often hear the news of the sky high price of the popular NFT. However, the wave of NFT just emerged, and the voice of bad singing has been heard all the time. There are reports that the foam in the NFT market has begun to burst, some reports point directly at the falling price of NFT, and there are also reports that billionaire Elon Musk's negative attitude towards NFT is one of the reasons why it no longer looks good.
In fact, don't care too much about these bad voices. When the stock market and cryptocurrency market generally fall, such reports will not be absent.
With the NFT trend sweeping the world, not only the stars are crazy about buying the popular NFT series, but also many investors and even listed companies have begun to join the ranks of buying However, as the latest richest man in the world, musk doesn't seem to be interested in the NFT trend. So far, he hasn't joined the rich game and tweeted against "boring ape" bayc. In fact, musk has criticized NFT for a long time. Just after twitter announced that it would launch NFT avatar function on subscription service twitter blue in January this year, musk expressed his dissatisfaction and criticized it for wasting resources. Compared with NFT with investment as the main gimmick, musk pays more attention to the irreplaceable private experience.
It is worth mentioning that musk once replaced his twitter avatar with "boring ape" bayc, which triggered a heated debate in the encryption community and even thought he was going to "shout orders" for NFT** Unexpectedly, musk sarcastically said to the NFT community, "maybe... NFT is replaceable", and then changed the avatar back.
Source: musk twitter
Interestingly, after mocking NFT, cosmonet red musk had an idea for twitter, the social media giant that first tested NFT Last month, musk announced the acquisition of twitter. As an avid twitter user, musk often attracts attention on the platform with sharp remarks. No one expected that as soon as his front foot expressed dissatisfaction with Twitter's policy on freedom of speech, his back foot made a willful acquisition. Although Musk's attitude of "putting the acquisition on hold" has changed for a few days, he has to temporarily stir up the whole market.
To be honest, although musk "despises" NFT, it's hard to say who can laugh to the end.
NFT represents a new technology trend
Frankly speaking, most of the reports about NFT are focused on the transaction volume and price of NFT, but completely ignore the future technology trend represented by NFT itself.
In fact, the emergence of NFT represents a new major breakthrough in people's understanding of assets. Such concepts as "virtual assets" and "digital ownership" are unprecedented. Therefore, the value of NFT cannot be measured only by market price, and the innovation value it represents will not disappear because of the current market price fluctuation.
Today, those who underestimate the power of this new technology can not help but recall people's attitude towards the world wide web in the early 1990s. At that time, many people were also not optimistic about the world wide web and thought that its life cycle would not be long, but in fact, the power of the network has just begun to show. From the vigorous development of major video streaming media platforms and social media platforms such as Facebook, twitter, youtube, zoom, fortnite and Netflix in recent years, it is not difficult to see that the activities of human society are completely inseparable from the Internet.
So why is NFT another key component of this digital revolution?
This is because NFT represents the ownership of different digital assets, and the ownership is verified. When you buy a digital picture or a virtual plot in the metauniverse, you also need to register the ownership somewhere and verify it effectively, just like buying any asset in the real world. This is like when you buy a house, you must register with the local real estate bureau; When buying a car, you need to register with the local motor vehicle department.
Similarly, after purchasing NFT, a unique digital commodity, the ownership of the holder will be registered on the Internet through a technology called "blockchain" Different from single physical storage or digital storage, blockchain is a new decentralized technology. It can store any type of information, including the ownership of NFT and cryptocurrency, without the authorization of the central server or relevant institutions. (Disclaimer: the author is the holder of NFT and the investor and consultant of many NFT companies. In addition, he also holds cryptocurrencies such as BTC and Eth and will trade regularly.)
In fact, at first, NFT was just a collection in the game (just like digital baseball cards). However, with the popularity of the blockchain cat game "cryptokitties" in 2018, it began to gain fame. In this new blockchain game, buyers can buy their own virtual "kittens" as a collection. In addition, these "kittens" can also be used to trade and breed offspring. In general, the digital assets purchased by the buyer may be just a simple JPEG image, but the difference is that the ownership of these digital assets will be recorded on the public blockchain. Moreover, NFT holders can also get benefits such as priority access to pre released versions of applications or priority access to movies, music or video games, and even have the copyright of the artwork itself.
Nowadays, most famous NFT series have different themes, such as "ape" in "boring ape" bayc series, which has become popular all over the world. Even Jimmy Fallon, a famous American TV host, can't help showing off his "ape" on the talk show "the night show". Not only that, a series of films about the "ape" will be released soon. Other celebrities keen on NFT investment include Reese Witherspoon, Katy Perry and Paris Hilton.
I have to admit that those popular NFTs that sell at sky high prices have promoted the gold rush of the new era in the circle of artists and celebrities. In March 2021, artist beeple's NFT digital artwork "every day: the first 5000 days" broke the record of the highest auction price of NFT works for $69.3 million. The merge, the most expensive NFT in history, sold to 28000 collectors for $91.8 million in December 2021, creating a precedent for NFT to provide partial ownership.
NFT extensive use cases
It is worth noting that it is a very narrow view to only regard NFT as a kind of art, because it has great potential and can be used for more purposes in the virtual and real world One of the most popular uses is to act as virtual images and enrich virtual images in the meta universe, which sounds like scenes that only appear in the virtual world in science fiction. However, now we realize it through 3D virtual images.
Last year, Nike, a sports brand giant, also acquired rtfkt, a virtual sports shoe brand, to accelerate its transformation to digital. I have to admire the unique keen sense of smell of these fashion giants. They have realized that "generation Z" attaches importance to virtual image, just like decorating themselves through clothes in the real world. They are keen to show themselves through virtual image.
Facts have proved that NFT is also of great value in the investment of virtual land, which will be a new direction for the development of the real estate industry and has an immeasurable future At the end of last year, someone spent $450000 to buy an NFT representing land ownership, which is located next to the residence of rapper snoop dog in the metauniverse the sandbox. In addition, we also found that even though the recent hype about NFT has basically ended, the sales of virtual land in the "boring ape" bayc theme game is still very popular. In the first week of May alone, the sales of these virtual land NFT reached $1.7 billion.
What's more exciting is that the value of NFT has been recognized in the real world. Recently, the British High Court ruled that NFT belongs to the legitimate property of citizens. This great progress means that if someone invades the system and steals your NFT, they will commit theft, which is no different from stealing "real" works of art or pirated Hollywood movies.
Finally, there is another use case that is also worth mentioning, that is, in the field of defi, people can use NFT as collateral to borrow real-world funds. In addition, some real estate funds are using NFT to build real estate that can be purchased by investors.
Summary
In short, today's NFT is becoming more and more intelligent. It is no longer limited to bringing simple visual enjoyment. More use cases are increasing, and NFT 2.0 has been grandly launched by people in the industry.
Frankly, like the Internet after the foam burst in 2000, blockchain technology and NFT are still in their infancy. For ordinary users, buying and using NFT is still a trouble. However, this situation will slowly change as some popular applications such as instagram gradually increase their support for NFT.
Most importantly, whether people buy real assets in the real world or digital assets in the virtual world, NFT, a new technology, can play an important role in tracking the source of ownership and income. Therefore, there is no reason for NFT to be worthless and die out as predicted by the losers, and it will not be abandoned by the market because of Musk's sarcasm. I believe that after many years, those NFT losers will regret their predictions. Let time test everything.
Source: NBC news, author: Rizwan Virk, founder of play labs @ MIT, translator: chainder