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Why People Are Paying Millions for Digital Art Anyone Can View for Free Online
NFTs allow people to claim ownership of a unique and authentic piece of digital art. How much are they really worth?
According to Oscar Wilde, a cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, while a sentimentalist is someone who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing. The sudden surge of cultural interest in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has already sparked a battle between cynics and sentimentalists in the creative economy, and it’s playing out on the blockchain.
For the uninitiated, an NFT can be difficult to explain and appreciate. Non-fungible tokens are a type of crypto asset; they are not currency. While cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin and Ether, are exchangeable or “fungible,” one NFT is not mutually interchangeable with another because each token is a unique digital asset. An NFT represents a particular (i.e. non-fungible) work, which could take the form of almost anything, like a work of art or a basketball clip. These tokens are held on various public…
