Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are the latest cryptocurrency phenomenon to go mainstream. And after Christie's auction house sold the first-ever NFT artwork — a collage of images by digital artist Beeple for a whopping $69.3 million — NFTs have suddenly captured the world's attention.
So what are NFTs?
In the simplest terms, NFTs transform digital works of art and other collectibles into one-of-a-kind, verifiable assets that are easy to trade on the blockchain. Unlike traditional, fungible tokens, every NFT is unique and cannot be duplicated.
The idea of non-fungible tokens used to strike me as quirky and kind of odd — but after attending the very first Non-Fungible Summit in Brooklyn last week, I have a deep appreciation for NFTs now. The event brought together some of the best thinkers on the subject from all over the world; I even learned about NFT's potential use cases from Lebanon . It certainly became my HMD (heart, mind, body) theater trip.
I made tons of new friends there — people from Fusion BlockChain Space , a VR program to put "virtual architecture into real buildings," mixing video game technology with blockchain business solutions; Florian Glatz whose art piece is a story mapping app that helps people discover stories within their provenance by tracking artifacts natively on DLT; and Radosław Nowakowski , founder at Coderz , one of Warsaw's most famous demo programmers in 80's and early 90's, now used to be the lead architect at Solidity Studio. I also reconnected with old friends — folks who are creating great products / services that benefit communities in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Even Richard Brown , CEO of Maecenas blockchain art gallery had a nice chat with me; one of the more significant obstacle for non-institutional investors to invest via blockchain is liquidity . By market cap, there are estimated to be around $1 billion worth NFTs on various blockchains; at Maecenas' auction last December, only 3 out of 49 pieces were bought with Bitcoin; remaining works were traded for fiat currency. I've been told that the lack of public awareness via education on this subject and lack of regulation may lead to unintended consequence—scams and money laundering, but that's something we can fix soon maybe through rigorous discussion in this Non-Fungible Community.
So, the weekend is almost over and Sunday is always special to me. In a sense, I was always wandering, taking myself on a trip to the valley. This story is quite different and interesting. In the middle of my journey, I felt ready and motivated to write about it, so here it goes. This story is about a single movie that inspired me to write. I had no plans to watch a Nepali movie called 'Halkara,' which had recently been released. As I passed by midtown, I wasn't prepared to watch it, but I found myself at the ticket counter buying a ticket for myself. When I bought the ticket, there were only five people who had booked the show, and all the seats were empty. The show was scheduled to start at 12:30 pm, and I entered the hall. Finally, the movie started. I cannot describe how amazing the cinematography, storyline, characters, acting, and overall vibe of this movie were. I still can't believe that this movie didn't receive a good response from...
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