NFTs owning online

A digital token is finding success as a way for content creators to sell the rights to their work.

- Abraham Jewett

Being the sole and rightful owner of a song from your favorite artist may seem like fantasy, but, thanks to NonFungible Tokens (NFT’s), it’s a lot closer to reality than you may have thought.

NFT’s have become an increasingly popular way for professional artists and everyday content creators to capitalize on their work by selling its ownership. Everything from images, videos, songs, and even tweets can now be bought and sold online.

“Remember those days where people would line up for the newest Nike Air Jordan sneakers at the physical store? This is the new digital equivalent,” said Katie Haun, a general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, in an interview with NPR.

The difference, however, is that instead of owning a new pair of shoes, people are purchasing the right to simply own a piece of work in its digital form.

You won’t actually own a physical copy of what you buy, in other words, just the NFT, which symbolizes that you are the owner, despite not being its original creator.

What it Means

In order to grasp the premise of buying and selling content using NFT’s, it’s important to first understand how they work.

For something to be classified as “non-fungible,” it must be entirely unique, thus rendering it uninterchangeable. A bitcoin, for example, is fungible, as it is the same as all other bitcoins. A diamond, however, will always be entirely unique from other diamonds, thus making it non-fungible.

An NFT, meanwhile, is a unit of data that can be logged by an online record book called a blockchain – the foundation for cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and the aforementioned Bitcoin – which digitally links everything together using cryptography.