Menu Reading About NewsBusinessHe directed a Taylor Swift music video. Now he's trading BitcoinBy 3 min readJun 1, 2020Jun 1, 2020Hollywood video director Joseph Khan made $450 trading cryptocurrency. Image: Wikipedia. Hollywood music video director Joseph Kahn has gone from Bad Blood to Bitcoin. On Sunday, the director, who’s won Grammys for his work with Taylor Swift and Eminem, announced his new favorite hobby: trading cryptocurrency. And he’s looking for trading advice. Kahn, who’s worked with some of the biggest music stars and brands in the business over a twenty year career, said he spent the past month trading cryptocurrency, and had made a profit of $450. The award-winning director attached a screenshot of his portfolio on Coinbase Pro. It shows that his initial investment of $7,500—in Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin—now has a value of $7,949, a gain of six percent.  He is “mostly cashed out right now, and plans to buy Bitcoin and Ethereum on a downswing,” when the price falls.  The 47-year-old Korean-American is at the top of his game in the music video world, and has worked with a catalogue of stars, including Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent. His latest project is a movie, , about racial tensions in the world of battle rap, and his immersion in the rap universe may have given him early exposure to Bitcoin.  In 2013, referring to a new video cut, Kahn tweeted: ‘You can pay me in bitcoins and/or obscure sex tricks.” Whether Kahn bought any Bitcoin in 2013 is unknown. But his client, 50 Cent, is reported to have accepted the cryptocurrency as payment for his album ‘Animal Ambition’ in 2014. The rapper was thought to have accumulated Bitcoin now valued at over $7 million, but revealed he had during a bankruptcy hearing in 2018.   Kahn’s first known foray in Bitcoin was in February this year, when he tweeted “I bought bitcoin today because porn accepts it. If porn adopts tech, that's a sign the tech is mainstream.” But things didn't go well for Kahn to begin with. He lost almost half of his initial investment, when alongside mainstream stocks in March, and that the cryptocurrency didn’t seem to be an effective hedge against the market.  In April, things started looking up for Kahn. “I'm officially only down $50 in cryptocurrency. I still have no idea what I'm doing,” he tweeted.    Yesterday, he sent out another entreaty for help: “If anyone has any ideas on crypto I'm open.” Because of the pandemic, the rookie trader has only produced only one video in 2020, and—judging by the increased frequency of his tweets on cryptocurrency—he’s doubling down on his new hobby.  Unlike JK Rowling, who to explain Bitcoin to her, Kahn hasn’t yet been inundated with offers of advice. But it’s only a matter of time. -video-now-hes-trading-bitcoinTop stories, original features, rewards & more. Get the best of Decrypt where you want it most. Want to grow your company or brand 🚀? Learn more about partnering with Decrypt. Menu About

Famed pop music video director Joseph Kahn has announced that cryptocurrency trading is his new favorite hobby. 3853 Total views 87 Total shares Listen to article 0:00 News Joseph Kahn, a music video director who has worked for the world’s leading pop stars for over two decades, has announced that trading crypto assets is his new favorite hobby. After claiming to have spent the past month trading cryptocurrency, Kahn purports a profit of roughly $450  On June 1, Kahn took to Twitter announcing that he has spent the last month trading crypto assets. A screenshot shows Kahn’s portfolio to be valued at $7,949, with the hobbyist trader claiming to have gained 6% since investing $7,500 one month ago. Kahn claims to have mostly “cashed out” at present, with roughly half of his portfolio currently tied to open orders for Bitcoin () and Ether () at lower price levels. “If anyone has any ideas on crypto I’m open,” Kahn added to the Twitter thread. Since launching a production company, SuperMega Media, in 1999, Kahn has worked with many of the biggest stars in popular music, including Lady Gaga, 50 Cent, Eminem, Taylor Swift, and many others — several of whom have found momentary fame within the crypto industry.  In December 2019, a Monero () hidden behind JPEG images of Taylor Swift was discovered. At the time, the botnet in question, MyKings, had taken in $3 million worth of XMR through a wide variety of attacks targeting Windows systems. When Eminem released his tenth album "Kamikaze" in August 2018, outlets noted that the record’s ninth track "Not Alike" featured a shout out to Bitcoin — indicating the prominence crypto had gained in mainstream culture following the 2017 all-time high bull run: “Remember everybody used to bite Nickel, now everybody doing Bitcoin.” In 2014, Curtis ‘50 Cent’ Jackson Bitcoin as payment for his fifth studio album ‘Animal Ambition’. The rapper sold nearly 80,000 copies of the album for $5.50 each in BTC — garnering roughly 700 Bitcoins. In January 2018, 50 Cent claimed to have forgotten about his Bitcoin stash, following media estimates that his ambitious bounty had come to be valued at over $7 million. However, the following month, Jackson asserted that he had never owned any Bitcoin in. Loading Are you a journalist or an editor? Join us: career@cointelegraph.com Language Extensions: Cointelegraph covers fintech, blockchain and Bitcoin bringing you the latest news and analyses on the future of money. © Cointelegraph 2013 - 2020

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are the new way for companies to sell unique digital assets on the blockchain.

For example, the NBA is taking video clips of games and selling them to collectors. So, people are paying to have a video clip of a LeBron James dunk.

Then these collectors can resell those clips on the blockchain, hopefully for a profit.

We’re beginning to see all kinds of digital goods, such as music, video clips and items in video games, being put on NFTs.

In today’s Market Insights video, I explain why this changes everything for the entertainment industry.

Before we start talking about nonfungible tokens, let’s just talk about why we’re investing in blockchain, and why it’s disruptive, and how it kind of mirrors other technologies in the past.

So, blockchain is basically a general-purpose technology, and a general-purpose technology is a new, innovative way of doing something, or a new invention that changes both society and economies alike.

Now, if you think about general-purpose technology in the past, some great examples are electricity, railroads and the automotive. More recently, you’ve got the internet and smartphones.

These are general-purpose technologies that are just massively disruptive. They’re creating new types of economies, creating new types of businesses. And we’re seeing the same thing happening with blockchain.

So, blockchain as a technology first emerged 10 years ago. And the simple way of explaining blockchain is that it’s a way to keep track of digital things without needing a centralized intermediary.

So, if you think about bitcoin, you can send a bitcoin to someone as easily as sending an email. And you don’t need a centralized intermediary like a bank to approve that. You’ve sent something of digital value.

You can also hold this digital value, and the decentralized network of bitcoin nodes will recognize that you own that value. So, if you want to spend it, they can just check your bitcoin wallet history, and you can go ahead and spend it.

So, the first use case of blockchain was bitcoin. Now, the second use case came about five, six years ago with the launch of Ethereum.

What Ethereum did is it took the same properties of bitcoin and allowed you to write smart contracts on that. So, Ethereum has a programing language that says if you spend it at such-and-such place, and certain conditions are met, it will automatically create a transaction for you. And bitcoin doesn’t do this.

Ethereum allows for this type of programing language. So, it creates all these new use cases for an underlying blockchain because now you have what is like a smart currency, OK?

So, we’re seeing growth in what’s called decentralized finance, which is basically taking the traditional financial world and putting it on blockchains and doing things like trading and making loans in a way that don’t require a centralized intermediary, which I think is an existential risk to banks.

And now we’re seeing some more use cases. So, more recently, the big use case is what’s called a nonfungible token.

A token essentially is a blockchain-based thing of digital value that can be tracked on a blockchain, a decentralized ledger, and can be sent and transacted with in a way that doesn’t need a centralized intermediary, because that’s what a token is.

A nonfungible token is one that has very unique, specific properties, and fungible tokens are like bitcoin or Ethereum. They’re fungible; they’re basically the same thing.

If you go to a store and want to spend bitcoin, it doesn’t matter who the owner of the bitcoin is because the store manager knows that they can take the bitcoin and it’s fungible with other bitcoin and other dollars and whatnot.

Now, a nonfungible token represents a digital asset that has very unique properties. So, one of the big use cases that’s coming with nonfungible tokens, which we’ve already seen, is that the NBA is taking video clips of games, and it’s selling them to collectors.

So, people are paying to have a video clip of a LeBron James dunk, and then these collectors can take that video clip and resell it.

Now, the beauty of doing this and making it all digital is that the creator of the original token, which in this case the NBA is the owner with the license to it, can partake in any future transactions.

So, if the NBA creates this video clip, and let’s say I buy it for a couple hundred dollars and then I go to sell it for $1,000, the NBA knows that another transaction on that same video clip has happened because the blockchain is tracking it, and it can participate in future sales of the thing that it created and has the licensing property to.

Now, this is going to get big because we’re starting to see digital goods like music and obviously video clips and things that happen in digital video games be put on nonfungible tokens.

It changes everything for the entertainment industry because music, for instance, if you’re an artist and you have a new song and you put it on Spotify or Apple iTunes, these platforms pay the musicians only $0.003 to $0.005 for every download. So, that means they have to have millions and millions of downloads to actually make decent earnings.

And I’m not saying that musicians are all poor. It’s just that most of their earnings now currently come from endorsements or live music. But this is actually going to allow them to have more ownership of the digital items they create. And it’s going to move the control away from the platforms.

And I think we’re going to see a similar disruption happen not only to Spotify and iTunes, but you’re going to see content providers, producers that make movies and other series move away from platforms like Netflix — yes, believe it or not — and be able to sell those digital items directly to viewers and not need viewers to pay the Netflix monthly subscription.

Now, Netflix is smart. It already invests in its own movie studios, and it creates its own series. So, it’s creating the content itself. So, it might not move the needle as much on Netflix, but some of the other platforms, you know, that are just publishing or not investing in the actual content will have a more difficult time.

And I think music is probably the biggest use case for it considering how artists make very little money from the songs they produce.

So, this is a huge use case for blockchain. It’s a general-purpose technology that is disrupting many different business verticals. And I’m really excited to see what happens.

There are a couple of companies that I’ve been focused on in my crypto newsletter, and I’m really excited to bring that to readers of that newsletter in the next couple of weeks.

Have a great weekend, and we’ll speak to you next week. Thank you.

Editor, Automatic Fortunes

The ability to create and sell new digital content directly to fans could not have come at a better time, with musicians still largely unable to perform for live audiences due to COVID-19, yet NFTs are just one of the applications of blockchain technology showing promise for the music industry. Innovations like smart contracts and blockchain ticketing protocols have the potential to solve long-standing problems, including ticket scalping, copyright issues, and inefficiencies in how artists receive streaming royalties. So what exactly are NFTs, smart contracts, and blockchain ticketing protocols, and how can they benefit the music industry?

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are crypto-digital assets stored on a decentralized blockchain network much like bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. They can include any form of digital media, like an mp3, jpeg, GIF, etc., or they can represent something physical, or be used as a redeemable token for whatever purpose—the possibilities are pretty endless. Creators mint NFTs in limited numbers, and each one has a unique ID, which is what makes them non-fungible, or not interchangeable, unlike bitcoin or regular currency, which are fungible since they can be exchanged for the same currency of equal value (a twenty-dollar bill is interchangeable—or fungible—with two ten-dollar bills, for example).

Every NFT transaction is recorded on Ethereum blockchain, which creates a public ledger of ownership that is encrypted and distributed among every computer participating in the peer-to-peer blockchain network, rather than being stored in a centralized database that could be hacked. Although the digital media attached to an NFT might be copied and shared, the blockchain ledger ensures that everyone can see who actually owns the NFT, which functions like a certificate of ownership and authenticity, preventing the possibility of counterfeit NFTs. This concept has been addressed in the fine art world for centuries by way of “provenance,” although forgers have often successfully falsified provenance in the past. The decentralized nature of NFTs render falsified histories and potential fakes a non-issue.

The value of NFTs, like stocks and rare collectibles, depends mostly on what buyers are willing to pay, and the market is experiencing a boom as NFTs explode in popularity. Since their inception in 2017, rare NFTs have traded at prices reaching hundreds of thousands of dollars, so it is no surprise that people are bidding large amounts of money on early music NFTs. A collection of ten pieces by Grimes, each featuring an animated image set to original music, recently sold on NFT trading platform Nifty Gateway for a total of $6 million. Most of the sales came from two pieces that sold nearly 700 copies at a cost of $7,500 each, and the most expensive piece was a one-of-one video NFT entitled “Death of the Old” that sold for almost $389,000.

The “NFT Yourself” series was developed with a company called YellowHeart, which is dedicated to using blockchain technology to reverse the devaluation of music that has taken place since the recording industry went digital. “Previously, it cost $20 to go get one song,” YellowHeart CEO Josh Katz said in an interview with Rolling Stone. He said NFTs could help make people want to own music again, and give artists the power to sell their music directly to fans. “It’s early stages, but in the future, I think this will be how people release their tracks: When they sell a 100,000 at a dollar each, then they just made $100,000.” Katz calls the series an “extreme example to prove a point” because it shows a variety of uses of NFTs. It also shows the degree of control that can be written into NFTs using a related blockchain technology called smart contracts, which were used to create the “golden ticket” NFTs.

Smart contracts are self-executing contracts that use computer programs or transaction protocols to automatically execute the terms of an agreement. For instance, a smart contract could stipulate that every time a particular NFT is resold on the blockchain, 10% of the sale automatically goes to the artist who minted it. This way, the artist benefits as fans and investors make money buying and selling their work. But smart contracts apply to more than just selling NFTs. They could also be used to automate royalty payments and ensure that creators and rights holders are fairly compensated. A smart contract could track every time a song is streamed or used in a video, and then automatically distribute the royalty payments owed to each owner of the copyright instantaneously. This would be a big improvement over the way royalties are paid now, which can take a long time and involve many intermediaries, and it would eliminate licensing disputes between rights holders and streaming services, which have a history of ending up in court.

The live music and events industries can also benefit from blockchain technology like smart contracts and blockchain ticketing protocols. The “golden tickets” sold by Kings of Leon are technically the first concert tickets to be sold as NFTs, but blockchain-based ticketing solutions have been in the works for years. Aventus, GET (Guaranteed Entrance Token), and other ticketing protocols have shown how tickets can be sold directly on blockchain with added control using smart contracts. Multiple privileges can also be written into a single smart ticket, like the “golden ticket” NFT perks, and ticket prices can be set so they can never be resold above face value, eliminating the possibility of scalping, which takes almost $16 billion from fans and the ticket industry every year. With NFTs, the transparency of the decentralized blockchain network makes counterfeit blockchain tickets an impossibility. Ticketmaster is already working on bringing this technology to the masses with the help of blockchain startup UPGRADED, which they acquired in 2018.

Between NFTs, smart contracts, and ticketing protocols, blockchain technology offers promising solutions to many of the music industry’s biggest problems. It is still unclear whether NFTs will really revolutionize the way people consume music, or whether today’s frenzy is just a passing fad, and it may be a while before blockchain ticketing protocols replace ticket agencies, but the music industry has only just begun to explore the limitless possibilities blockchain technology has to offer, and we can be sure the best is yet to come.

"Monty Python" actor John Cleese wants to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge. Well, a very rudimentary sketch of the landmark that he made on his iPad Pro. And for the low, low price of $69.3 million, you can own this unique digital piece of art, the latest celebrity offering of an artform known as the NFT, aka non-fungible token. 

While you could, ostensibly, just screenshot Cleese's image that he shared on Twitter, it would essentially be a knock-off or a fraud, and wouldn't have much (if any) value. That's because an NFT is like a virtual trading card that comes "tagged" with digital proof of authorship and ownership.

Cleese's foray into digital art and currency is being done with a wink; it's a kind of commentary on the current NFT frenzy that has infiltrated the worlds of traditional art and music. For instance, an NFT of a piece by the digital artist Mike Winkelmann, who goes by Beeple, sold for $69 million at Christie's earlier this month. Cleese's asking price is a play on that number. 

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Cleese said that the selling price of Beeple's work is proof that "the world has gone terminally insane." 

"Technology is changing and moving so quickly that we can't even see we're standing in quicksand as we stare at a bunch of pixelated JPEGs, wondering what they might sell for next," he said. 

However, the sale of Cleese's image will run through April Fools' Day and the current bidding is up to nearly $36,000, so people obviously don't think it's a total joke. So, what exactly are NFTs? And what impact is their use going to have on music and culture? Here's a beginner-friendly guide to what you need to know:

What exactly is an NFT? 

An NFT — or non-fungible token — is part of the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum is a cryptocurrency, like bitcoin or dogecoin. 

"Non-fungible" essentially means that the tokens are unique, in that they can't simply be replaced with something else. For example, if I have a dollar bill and trade it for another dollar bill, I'm in basically the same position I started. If, however, I have an ace of hearts playing card and exchange it for a Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card, I have something that is similar in form, but fundamentally different.

There are non-fungible assets that we already interact with on a day-to-day basis. 

"Domain names, event tickets, in-game items, even handles on social networks like Twitter or Facebook, are all non-fungible digital assets,"  Devin Finzer, CEO of the NFT marketplace Open Sea, wrote in an explainer. "They just vary in their tradeability, liquidity, and interoperability."

This concept has simply reached the mainstream art market. While NFTs can still be traded in the same way as bitcoin — they're stored on a decentralized database without much government oversight — they represent the ownership of artwork, songs, videos or poems, instead of cash-like balances in a digital wallet. It's like you have proof of provenance for your own digital art and collectibles gallery, which can include GIFs, digital renderings, video clips and video game skins. 

"[NFTs] are unique files that live on a blockchain and are able to verify ownership of a work of digital art," Jacob Kastrenakes wrote for The Verge. "Buyers typically get limited rights to display the digital artwork they represent, but in many ways, they're just buying bragging rights and an asset they may be able to resell later." 

Like analogue artwork, there is typically only a select amount of these digital pieces, which drives a competitive market. 

Are NFTs new? 

Relatively so. As Andrew Steinwold, a crypto investor and analyst who founded the NFT investment firm Sfermion, wrote in a post about the history of the digital tokens, forms of NFTs have been around since 2012; but it wasn't until 2017 that NFTs really hit the mainstream with the introduction of CryptoKitties 

"CryptoKitties is a blockchain-based virtual game that allows players to adopt, raise, and trade virtual cats," Steinwold wrote. "Cats, on a blockchain!" 

The game's developers describe them as "breedable Beanie Babies," each with its own unique 256-bit genome. Like real-world pet breeding, the CryptoKitties are "tagged" with documentation about their origin. In 2017, the average price for a CryptoKitty was about $27, but CNN reported in December of that year that the most expensive CryptoKitty had sold for the equivalent of $110,707. 

"It might seem a strange way to spend a small fortune, but no more so, it could be argued, than splashing out on real-world collectibles," CNN's Matt Linares wrote. "A Pokémon card, for example, sold for almost $55,000 in 2016."

If NFTs aren't new, why am I hearing so much about them now? 

While NFTs steadily gained popularity in some artist circles, more mainstream artists and corporations tossed their digital hats into the ring during the pandemic when traditional income streams, like concerts and live shows, weren't possible. As Rolling Stone reported earlier this month, Kings of Leon released their new album "When You See Yourself" as an NFT— becoming the first band to do so. 

Three types of tokens were released: one was a special album package, the second included live show perks, and the third included exclusive audiovisual art. The album was released everywhere albums are currently released, as well — Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music — but the NFT, which was originally priced around $50, will be the only product with enhanced media. 

The sale of the album NFT lasted for two weeks, and no more are currently being made, hence the token is now a tradable collectible. 

This is just one example of how NFTs could revitalize the music business. Josh Katz is the CEO of YellowHeart, "a company that wants to use blockchain technology to bring value back to music and better direct-to-fan relationships." He helped organize the "When You See Yourself" NFT sale. 

"Over the last 20 years — two lost decades — we've seen the devaluation of music," he told Rolling Stone. "Music has become great at selling everything except music. There's been a race to the bottom where, for as little money as possible, you have access to all of it. Previously, it cost $20 to go get one song.

He continued: "It's early stages, but in the future, I think this will be how people release their tracks: When they sell a 100,000 at a dollar each, then they just made $100,000."

Other musical artists have jumped on the NFT bandwagon, as well, including Grimes, Portugal the Man, Post Malone, Snoop Dog, Lionel Richie and, as of Wednesday, Boy George, who is planning to release exclusive NFT content. 

"I think life turned me into art," George said in a press release about the decision. "My role models were both artistic types and hard-working types. I've painted myself and others. I have painted myself into a corner. I love metaphors and mystery and crypto sound like klepto so that makes me a crypto maniac."

Alright, so music I get — but why are people investing in digital clips of NBA stars dunking a basketball? 

Right, so you're talking about entrepreneur Mark Cuban's recent purchase of a clip of Dallas Mavericks player Maxi Klieber from NBA Top Shot, an online-only marketplace where users can buy, sell and trade NBA highlights. Those highlights are being traded and sold as NFTs. 

Cuban, who also literally owns the Mavericks, wrote about the decision on his blog, where he likened it to old-school trading cards. 

"I get to enjoy knowing I own my Maxi Klieber dunk Moment, along with knowing the serial number and much more," he said. "Some people might complain that I can get the same video on the internet anywhere any time and watch it. Well guess what, I can get the same picture on any traditional, physical card on the internet and print it out, and that doesn't change the value of the card." 

He continued: "The value is still set by the same laws of supply and demand." 

And currently, the demand is high. As CNBC reported, Top Shot has generated over $230 million in gross sales, according to its creator Dapper Labs, whom, it should be noted, is the firm that also developed CrytoKitties. In February, a LeBron James highlight sold for $200,000. A Zion Williamson edition went for a little less than that. 

As with any collectible, the market determines what it's worth, even if some of the collectibles seem kind of silly, like Cleese's Brooklyn Bridge. But it's like any other collectibles market — wine, motorcycles, modern art — where consumers drive the price. It's one of those situations where if enough people believe that Cleese's digital rendering is worth $69.3 million — suddenly, it's worth $69.3 million. 

Do NFTs help up-and-coming artists? 

The jury is still out on this one, honestly. In many ways, the current digital art market is reminiscent of 2020's OnlyFans boom. There were a ton of independent content creators and sex workers who used the platform before celebrities with pre-established fan bases started to join. 

There was a lot of outcry, for instance, when actress and singer Bella Thorne became the first creator on OnlyFans to make $1 million in a single day. Many of the site's users complained that Thorne was just "a celebrity gentrifying a platform and making obscene amounts of money," as Rolling Stone reported, without recognizing or acknowledging actual sex workers who rely on it for income. 

"For a technology that promises to 'disrupt' the world of digital art, it is tremendously efficient at replicating the most inaccessible paradigms of its physical predecessors," Arielle Gordon wrote for Stereogum. 

There are already hierarchies in the physical world when it comes to music, art and fame — and celebrities benefit from those in the digital world, as well. Grimes, for instance, sold over $6 million worth of digital art via NFTs in a week, temporarily crashing the NFT platform NiftyGateway.

This causes investors, Gordon wrote, to seek out some undiscovered talent and treat them like stock that's meant "to be consumed at their lowest possible value to be cashed in after they've achieved mass popularity."

Is this particularly innovative? That's how things work in the analogue art market. It just means that, despite blockchain's "decentralized, supposedly more democratic nature" it's currently operating under many business practices that are exhaustingly familiar: supply and demand, speculation, investment trends and the power of celebrity.

Questions remain, however, about how many average art and music enthusiasts will start putting their real-world dollars into NFTs, how long the current craze will last and whether it's as accessible for burgeoning digital artists as it purports to be. 

Ashlie D. Stevens is a staff writer at Salon, specializing in culture and food.

Boy George has said he will be “mixing all of the things I do together” as he announced he will be creating content for cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com’s new non-fungible token (NFT) platform.

An NFT is a unique digital token, a limited edition asset in the digital world, including jpegs and video clips, that can be bought and sold like any other item but has no physical form of its own.

The NFT works as a certification for ownership of a physical asset which means the NFT will effectively function like a rare trading card.

New #NFTs from @Bosslogic dropping Friday March 26!

Don’t miss a drop, sign up now 👇https://t.co/GC9cXDxtMu pic.twitter.com/II4Lnumfvu

— Crypto.com (@cryptocom) March 24, 2021

NFTs are bought using cryptocurrency and run on a blockchain, a decentralised digital ledger that documents transactions and ownership.

Crypto.com previously announced the platform will feature content from Snoop Dogg and Lionel Richie and sea shanty singer Nathan Evans, and will make a bid to be the “world’s largest and most user-friendly NFT platform”.

Boy George’s content will include animated and still versions of his own paintings, as well as music and other artistic endeavours.

He said: “I think life turned me into art. My role models were both artistic types and hard-working types.

“I’ve painted myself and others. I have painted myself into a corner.

“I love metaphors and mystery and crypto sounds like klepto so that makes me a crypto maniac.

“Art is like a partner? Can you live with it? Digital art is a new emotion and it can be very musical.

“I’m mixing all of the things I do together, music, art, fashion, poetry and anything else it leads to. I have stopped refusing to be influenced.”

Crypto.com/NFT, which is launching on March 26, will also host content from athletes and sports.

Source: Business News

With the recent sale of a .jpg by digital artist Beeple in a Christie's auction for $69 million, NFTs have suddenly jumped into the mainstream in a big way. Here's a history to better put Beeple's jackpot in context and to help understand where it might go from here. 

Cryptocollectibles or non-fungible tokens (NFT) are a specific type of blockchain token. Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum tokens, each NFT token is unique, making them comparable to rare items like trading cards and other limited-run collectible items.

NFTs were first created in 2017 with the introduction of Crypto Kitties. This line of cryptocollectibles features virtual pets: each token contains a unique cartoon cat, randomly generated through a lottery. Owners are able to trade Crypto Kitties for profit. In the years that followed, several other variations on NFTs were created. Now, in 2021, the first NFTs with mainstream appeal are arriving on the market.

Celebrities have created numerous NFTs. Actress Lindsay Lohan also created an NFT this February, shown above. The token sold for $59,000 and the proceeds were donated to charity. Lohan has also created other NFTs since then.

More recently, Twitter founder and CEO Jack Dorsey tokenized his first-ever tweet, originally published to Twitter in 2006. The auction for the token will end in March, and the highest bidder is currently offering $2.5 million for the tweet. The proceeds from the sale will go toward poverty relief via Give Directly.

Meanwhile, Paris Hilton is reportedly considering creating another NFT alongside entrepreneur Kim Dotcom and rap giant MC Hammer. Hilton previously tokenized a drawing of her cat in 2019, which sold for $17,000; the proceeds were donated to charity.

In January, "Rick and Morty" cartoonist Justin Roiland created an NFT based on art from the hit cartoon. That NFT was sold for over $1 million via Nifty Gateway.

Elsewhere, the NBA has launched a line of basketball-themed cryptocollectibles called NBA Top Shots. This line of NFTs was launched in October 2020.

The product line was produced in collaboration with Dapper Labs, creator of Crypto Kitties. The tokens are similar to player trading cards but with video clips of memorable basketball moments rather than still images. NBA Top Shots have become a fast success, bringing in more than $300 million, according to some sources. Some packs have sold out, and a secondary market for the physical items associated with the digital token has appeared on eBay.

In 2018, the MLB created a similar line of baseball-themed collectibles in partnership with the crypto firm Lucid Sight. That NFT line is called MLB Champions, and it features digital "bobbleheads" based on famous baseball players.

Several music artists have created NFTs. In early March, the popular rock band Kings of Leon released a line of NFTs to tie into their latest album “When You See Yourself.”

Various editions of the token contain either art related to the album, digital tracks, or lifetime tickets to band concerts. These tokens were created with the blockchain firm YellowHeart and can be viewed on the OpenSea marketplace. Other musicians have also created NFTs. Synth-pop musician Grimes tokenized a music video, “Death of the Old,” which sold for more than $388,000. Fyooz has attracted musicians including Post Malone, Lil Yachty, and Lil Pump. The firm aims to produce “experience NFTs” that provide live digital music experiences. 

OpenSea is one of the largest marketplaces for cryptocollectibles. It lists NFTs for dozens of different cryptocollectible projects on the Ethereum blockchain. Other competing marketplaces, such as Sorare, Rarible, and Enjin also allow you to buy NFTs. Generally, NFTs and cryptocurrency collectibles are designed to circulate freely, meaning that they can be bought and sold even if a single marketplace shuts down. That said, some tokens are available on limited markets initially. NBA Top Shot items and Fyooz tokens, for example, are best purchased through their official sites.

Because each NFT project has a different business model, some may be better investments than others. As seen above, cryptocollectibles can have celebrity backing or corporate backing, or they may simply be tied to blockchain trading games. Because cryptocollectibles are just a few years old, it is impossible to predict what their long-term value will be. On one hand, rare items can gain value over time; on the other hand, trends can fall out of fashion and become short-lived fads. But regardless of the eventual state of the market, it seems certain that new lines of NFTs will be created and released. Some are sure to attract mainstream attention.

Disclaimer: information contained herein is provided without considering your personal circumstances, therefore should not be construed as financial advice, investment recommendation or an offer of, or solicitation for, any transactions in cryptocurrencies.

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); In this video, we discuss why Chainlink is bullish, Ethereum becoming deflationary and flipping Bitcoin, Cardano ADA price discussion and other major news over the past 24 hours.

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TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Crypto News intro 0:28 Crypto Market Updates 0:48 Cardano ADA Price Discussion 3:36 Why I’m bullish on ETH and LINK 5:56 New Crypto vs Stocks Trading Series 6:25 Shopping.io SPI Token Updates 7:30 OpenSea Raises $23m to be the Amazon of NFTs 8:12 Eth2 Could Flip Bitcoin? 9:53 More institutions buying BTC and ETH 11:07 Bitcoin can be sent with a tweet 11:30 Bank of America Analyst Slams Bitcoin 13:35 Why Chainlink is Bullish 14:48 Final thoughts and video outro

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Authored by Omid Malekan,

This post was written with significant contribution from Nir Kabessa, a true crypto punk if there ever was one.

The growing boom in non-fungible tokens - digital assets that are one of one, as opposed to cryptocurrencies that are one of many - was long overdue. Applying a technology that enables digital bearer instruments to things like art, music and collectibles makes a lot of sense, and is arguably even more intuitive than applying it to money. That’s why I opened my first blockchain book by talking about the music industry.

If you spend some time reading up on NFTs in traditional publications such as the New York Times and Rolling Stone, then what you’ll detect is a collective sigh of relief. The world is slowly realizing that public blockchain networks like Ethereum enables creators to climb out of the digital dungeon they’ve been trapped in for the past 20 years.

To understand their predicament, consider this: Music consumption has exploded in the digital era, with more people listening to more music than ever before.

Music revenues on the other hand have imploded. Despite the popularity of streaming, musicians are still making less money from selling music than they did decades ago. Selling tapes and CDs had its limitations — like forced reliance on record labels who controlled the means of production — but the scarcity of those items enabled a simple business model for creators.

Digitization changed all of that, in a bad way. It’s no coincidence that the peak in the chart below occurred in the same year as the launch of Napster. Lack of digital scarcity has forced musicians to surrender to the streaming model, even though the economics are broken for many artists, and there is now yet another middleman taking a cut.

source: statista.com

NFTs allow musicians to sell music directly to their fans. They also allow visual artists to sell digital originals. What that actually means is in the eye of the beholder. Depending on who you ask, a digital original is either the art work itself, a vague notion of originality that only the most diehard fans believe in, a cryptographic certificate of authenticity tied to an image in the decentralized cloud, or complete nonsense. Who believes which is often a function of age.

People from the generation that straddles the internet have a hard time accepting the idea that something that is only digital is worth owning. To them, possession is a physical phenomenon. Their bias is understandable, as they grew up with comic-book collections and baseball cards. Younger people have no such bias. If anything, they would rather be freed from the constraints of physical ownership altogether. They’ve already embraced digital payments over physical cash and value experiences over objects. NFTs represent both.

Younger people also grew up playing video games, and the gaming industry normalized the idea of the digital asset long ago. Many of the most profitable games make their money from selling in-game items for virtual characters — digital collectibles that can have little bearing on gameplay. There are also card-based games where users purchase digital packs to compete.

Non-gamers are often shocked to learn how much money is already being spent on in-game purchases, pseudo digital collectibles that don’t enjoy the protections of a blockchain. This segment now accounts for the fastest growing type of video game monetization.

Source: statista.com

Skeptics who can’t wrap their head around all of this are often trapped inside the wrong mental model. I discovered this first hand a few years ago while pitching an NFT idea to a group of visual artists. Tellingly, they kept asking me whether blockchain would “prevent people from making digital copies.” I had to explain that the cat was out of the bag on that front. There was no way to prevent people from downloading image files or taking screenshots. But blockchain enabled one of those people to prove they owned the original, like a famous oil painting of which there are countless prints.

This analogy only confused them further, because a poster is qualitatively different from an oil painting. Then a younger artist chimed in to ask whether the distinction was a feature or a bug. He said that as a creator, he loved it when fans shared his work on social media, and would not want some low quality version to go viral. What he wanted was a way to monetize the popularity. I told him that he was in luck, because now there’s a blockchain for that.

NFTs allow artists, writers, and musicians to both sell an original AND hope for it to be copied a gazillion times. They eliminate the distinction between a higher quality original and lower quality print in a manner that benefits artists, consumers, and collectors alike. We can’t say for certain whether da Vinci would have preferred for there to be one HD Mona Lisa in Paris and a million SD versions in people’s living rooms, but many artists prefer their art to be consumed at its best, everywhere.

Google trends search for “NFT” (blue) vs “stock market” (red)

But NFTs also enable a new kind of crypto bubble, one that could be as big and disastrous as the ICO one. We are already seeing parabolic price appreciation for some things, and the mania is spreading. Beeple’s collection going for an astonishing $69 million at Christie’s could very well be the spark.

Part of what defined the ICO bubble in 2017 was the end game when anything that was labelled an initial coin offering would surge in value for that reason alone. All markets require a certain amount of mass delusion and “greater fool theory” to function, but bubble markets have only those things going for them. There was a point towards the end of the ICO boom when the average project had more content on its website about the coin offering than it did about the project itself. That was a tell.

NFTs could be headed in that direction, particularly now that celebrities and brand name companies are getting involved. Given the links to pop culture, this particular crypto application gets more MSM coverage than almost any other, and that sort of attention only creates more fuel. But the higher things climb, the harder they fall. As was the case with the ICO boom, there is a tendency here to conflate two different kinds of scarcity.

The first is the scarcity of a token on a blockchain after it has been issued. Crypto natives understand this as double-spend protection, or the simple idea that the same bitcoin cannot be sent to two different people (unlike the same MP3, which can be sent to 2 million different people).

The second type of scarcity is that of origination. In the case of Bitcoin, issuance is controlled by a protocol programmed to slowly diminish supply over time.

ICOs and NFTs can’t offer the second type of scarcity, because anyone can issue a new coin or token whenever they want, and nothing brings more supply to the market than a price bubble. A musician selling music-related tokens could always flood the market with more digital merch, and Taco Bell can produce an infinite number of digital tacos. Here, physical collectibles have the upper hand, because there are resource limitations on excess production. In other words, Nike can only pump out so many Air Jordan’s at a time. Digital kicks on the other hand are practically free to produce. It would be one thing if there were contractual limitations involved, but tellingly most of the NFT deals I’m seeing have virtually none.

Part of the charm of blockchain technology is the manner in which it can eliminate friction from economic activity. But that’s a double-edged sword, because less friction also means more (and faster) bubbles. This is a feature on the way up (we are all going to be rich!) and a bug on the way down (someone needs to go to jail!). NFTs have the potential to become the mother of all bubbles, especially during a crypto bull market where lots of people have (digital) cash to burn.

All of that said, a potential NFT bubble — just like previous crypto ones — is good for the decentralized economy. For all the flack that the ICO bubble got after its collapse, it pulled in millions of new users to the crypto economy, forcing them to learn about things like private keys and tokens. It accelerated the development of much-needed infrastructure like smart contract code and wallets. It also established fundraising as the first viable application of the technology beyond Bitcoin.

Crypto skeptics still point to that bubble as some sort of a setback, but theirs is a historically ignorant argument. New technology is often associated with an investment mania, because manias accelerate adoption. This was true for both the railroad bubble 200 years ago and the more recent dot come one. Skeptics used to make fun of pets.com too. Now online pet supplies is one of the hottest corners of e-commerce.

Those of us who’ve been in crypto the entire time can draw a straight line from all that went wrong in the ICO boom in 2017 and everything that’s going right today. NFTs could eventually do the same thing for a host of blockchain applications, transforming the worlds of art, music, gaming, and collectibles. But they need to go through their own wild boom and bust cycle first.

If you are an artist, now is a good time to (finally) cash in. If you are a consumer, please be careful. And if you are a HODLer, then you should feel vindicated. Beyond native currencies, stablecoins and DeFi, digital collectibles represent yet another killer application for public networks.

Recently a painting has been sold for 69 million dollars but in the form of a Non Fungible Token. The painting has been bought by Meta Kovan.  He would get a token in place of the money he spent. Take a look at the painting bought by MetaKovan below.

The blockchain is a kind of a public ledger on which anyone can verify the authenticity of a NFT and check its ownership. 

Most Non Fungible Tokens are part of the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum happens to be a cryptocurrency similar to bitcoin or dogecoin. However, its blockchain supports the NFTs. These also store much extra information which is why they work differently from an ETH coin

What is worth noting that other blockchains can implement their own versions of NFTs. The tokens  can be anything digital- this means it includes drawings, music but a lot of the current excitement is around using the technology to sell digital art

National Basketball Association’s Top Shot platform- enthusiasts can buy collectible NFTs in the form of video highlights of moments from games.

NFTs have the right to be patches of land in virtual world environments. 

It can be an exclusive use of a cryptocurrency wallet name

Recently Twitter owner Jack Dorsey announced the auction for his first ever tweet  “just setting up my twttr” which would end on March 21.

Read| All about Bitcoin ATMs and their use here

There have been a spate of mysterious news stories doing the rounds in crypto circles today. Why? We literally have no idea.

The biggest bit of breaking news we have to bring you is that The Teletubbies have launched TubbyCoin "in response to the overwhelming global demand for cryptocurrencies."

TubbyCoin — collectively co-invented by Po, Laa Laa, Tinky Winky and Dipsy — uses HugTech and cutting-edge cryptographology to convey the inherent value of "Big Hugs!".

Handbag-toting Tinky Winky, who has been appointed spokestubby for the project after a bitter round of boardroom infighting with Noo Noo, said:

In an attempt to solve the issue of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) being, at best, a mediocre means of exchange, industry-leading developers have created a platform that will allow users to burn their NFTs to mint the equivalent of their worth in fully fungible tokens pegged to the price of Bitcoin.

"We're freeing crypto users from the headache of having to barter two paintings for five music videos. Now they're finally empowered to send Bitcoin to anyone, anywhere, any time," commented the project’s head of development.

The mechanism of symmetric atomic fungibilization swaps introduced by Champignon Protocol — as the platform is known — is projected by many to deeply disrupt the field of decentralized finance. The high demand for the new technology is reflected by the size of the crowd sale: Champignon has managed to secure upwards of $50 million in funding despite having no actually usable products at the time of this publication.

A scientific study has shown that better access to nutrition and healthcare has resulted in the general improvement of physical fitness — in particular grip strength — of the global population. However, according to Dr Philip Parnas, this study speaks beyond just the future of humanity’s physical fitness, but also could mean great things for the cryptocurrency industry. 

“A problem in the crypto markets is what is referred to as ‘weak hands,’” explained Dr. Parnas. “What this study shows us is a more positive future for the crypto markets — fewer weak hands in the human race can only be good for Bitcoin’s price.”

Automotive giant Tesla has begun the trials of a new version of its flagship Model S with an integrated Doge mining rig, targeted at urban drivers "who don't need all that trunk space anyway." "We'll make the car basically pay for itself," said company's CEO Elon Musk. Initial testing has shown that the amount mined would be enough to pay for 5% of a full recharge, if only the battery hadn't died long before the car could make it to the nearest charging station. 

"Doge is essentially the Bitcoin of cryptocurrencies," commented the inventor-entrepreneur Musk. "We have to keep trying."

The hype around NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, refuses to die down, and regulators are taking notice.

SEC commissioner Hester Peirce, affectionately known as "Crypto Mom" within the cryptocurrency industry, warned investors yesterday that some NFTs could be considered unregistered securities under certain circumstances.

“The whole concept of an NFT is [it’s] supposed to be non-fungible, so it’s supposed to be unlike anything else,” Peirce said during a Security Token Summit webinar on Thursday. “Which means that it’s, I think, in general, less likely to be a security, but people are being very creative in the types of NFTs they’re putting out there. It’s a wonder what some people will pay for. And so I think, given that creativity, as with anything else, you should be asking questions.”

NFTs are cryptographically secured digital assets—essentially just a token attached to an image or video file. They’ve been selling for ridiculous amounts of money (the digital artist Beeple sold a single NFT for $69 million at Christie’s), and have been used to promote music , digital art , tweets , and journalism.

They’ve also posed problems for investors. There are potential copyright issues , as well as ethical concerns around the Ethereum network’s energy consumption; some have suggested that crypto art might make a good vehicle for money laundering (sort of like physical art).

Peirce explained that certain kinds of fundraising efforts tied to NFTs might “raise the same kinds of questions that ICOs have raised.”

“If you’re doing something where you are saying, ‘I’m going to sell you this thing and I’m going to put a lot of effort into building something so that this thing that you’re buying has a lot of value," those kinds of sales will attract more regulatory scrutiny.

ICO s, or “initial coin offerings,” have been a thorn in the SEC's side for years; they give early investors in crypto startups the chance to buy into a company’s cryptocurrency, with the promise of return down the line. The issue is that the SEC has taken the position that just about every token ever sold through an ICO is unregistered security, and the Commission has come down hard against these token issuers in lawsuit after lawsuit.

Peirce also suggested fractionalized NFTs (i.e. selling partial interest in a single, expensive NFT) could run the risk of being unregistered securities.

Peirce’s comments add yet another new wrinkle to the NFT gold rush. “You’ve always got to ask those questions,” she said. “As we’ve seen, the definition of a security can be pretty broad.”

The Non-Fungible Token (NFT) market is the hottest new cryptocurrency, but it’s unclear if a platform like Ethereum is poised to capture these gains. An NFT is the registration of ownership of a digital object on a blockchain. An NFT is a right to a stake in the ownership of a collectible such as art or wine. It can be any media, including but not limited to art, videos, music, games, or even tweets. Non-fungible means the object is unique, making it irreplaceable. For example, crude oil with the same gravity and sulfur content is fungible, and you can trade it anywhere in the world. The Monalisa is a unique piece of art that is non-fungible.

Most of the main NFT projects on Ethereum are marketplaces for digital collectibles. Some of these market places have thousands of daily active users, with their weekly transaction volume climbing to millions of dollars. The movement toward NFT’s has put Ethereum back into the limelight. The cryptocurrency has ran up 417% in 2020 and is poised to test higher levels. The technicals are also strong, which in conjunction with this new impetus, could help Ethereum move higher.

NFTs can be a catalyst in transforming the economics of creative activities. By allowing an artist to monetize directly with their fans. An NFT is on the blockchain, allowing the buyer of the NFT to prove that it is an original piece. This type of transaction will also allow an artist’s content can be sold globally on decentralized marketplaces. Additional NFTs also have a feature that pays the artist a percentage every time the NFT is sold or changes owner. This royalty feature will allow a songwriter to capture the royalties of a song on an NFT. Instead of being copied by millions of users for free, an artist can reap the song distribution gain.

While some of the auction houses have moved to some NFT models, there have been videos and GIF that have seen strong demand. An NFT video by beeple sold for $6.6 million, and someone paid $3,600 for a gucci ghost GIF, and a collection of digital furniture by andrés reisinger made $450,000. According to DappRadar, the top 3 NFT products are NBA Top Shot, Crypto Punks collectibles – based on Ethereum, and OpenSea, an NFT exchange.

While the activity in the NFT space may seem like yet another game-changer for Ethereum, there are some issues the world’s largest altcoin has to address. The scalability issues continue to endure. DApp developers have also been trying to build NFT-exclusive chains since 2018. Crypto-punk collectibles, based on Ethereum, despite being one of the top three NFTs in the market in terms of daily transaction volume, trails NBA Top Shot significantly. At the moment, NFTs are still a relatively new and emerging market, and just as institutions doubled down on BTC in 2020, 2021 may see a similar influx concerning NFTs. Given Ethereum’s promise as a platform, this year could be the year ETH gains massively.

It should not go unnoticed that Ether surged 470% in 2020 and is poised to test higher levels in 2021. The cryptocurrency’s initial movement increased, but as riskier assets came under pressure in mid-February, the cryptocurrency pair declined in value.

The upside for Ethereum looks bright, and the technicals point to higher prices. Ethereum is forming a cup and handle pattern, which is a pause that refreshes higher. The cryptocurrency has held support near the 50-day moving average and is poised to test the all-time highs near 2K. The 10-day moving average has crossed above the 50-day moving average, meaning that a short-term uptrend is now in place.

Medium-term momentum is positive as the MACD (moving average convergence divergence) index generated a crossover buy signal. This scenario occurs as the MACD line (the 12-day moving average minus the 26-day moving average) crosses above the MACD signal line (the 9-day moving average of the MACD line. The MACD histogram also generated a crossover buy signal. The histogram pushed through the zero-index level. The MACD histogram is printing in positive territory with an upward sloping trajectory which points to higher price for Ethereum.

Short-term momentum is also positive. The fast stochastic, which is a momentum oscillator, generated a crossover buy signal in oversold territory. The buy signal occurred when the fast stochastic was printing a reading of 15 below the oversold trigger level of 20, which generally foreshadows a correction. The fast upward movement of the fast stochastic reflects accelerating positive momentum. The relative strength index (RSI) also moved higher but has recently flattened, which could reflect consolidation in the price of Ethereum.

What is clear is that a new impetus has arrived that could allow Ethereum to gain further popularity as NFT’s take off. Recall, and Non-Fungible Token is a stake in an asset, which could include collectibles and media and tweets. The token gives the buyer the right to that product. Ethereum is in a strong position to allow the development of NFT’s on its platform and further gain traction as a platform that will provide access to NFT’s. After gaining more than 400% in 2020, Ethereium is poised to gain further. Momentum has turned positive, and the trend in cryptocurrency is upward sloping. The combination of a new impetus and positive technicals could point to higher prices for Ethereum.

Beeple just sold one of his creations to the tune of $6.6 million through non-fungible tokens, and a re-created GIF of Nyan Cat went out for 300 ethereum, or $600,000. So what is happening? Ever since its inception, blockchain technology has captured the imagination of millions worldwide. After cryptocurrency, NFTs are touted to be the next big application of blockchain technology. NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens, are a new type of digital asset that cannot be duplicated and are recorded on a digital ledger. But why millions of users worldwide are going gaga over NFTs? What difference are they going to make to blockchain technology? Let us start with the basics.

The term fungible refers to something that can be easily interchangeable. As the name Non-Fungible Tokens suggests, we can easily understand that we are talking about a type of token that cannot be replaced by another similar token.

A Non-Fungible Token (NFT) is a new type of digital asset that represents something unique.  It has an individual characteristic that sets it apart, and this uniqueness helps it generate value. It can be used to represent both tangible and intangible items. Now, whether it be arts or sports memorabilia, people across the world are spending millions of dollars on obtaining the ’ownership’ of various types of ‘digital assets.’

The proponents of NFTs say that these tokens will help the creators of digital content get the right value for their work. On the other side, the critics tout it as another speculative crypto frenzy that will eventually fizzle out. Let us look at the various aspects of NFTs and how the future might turn out to be.

On the other hand, assets like Bitcoin are fungible. They are all the same and are completely interchangeable. Meaning, two individuals holding a Bitcoin can easily exchange them. As both the Bitcoins here are a replica of each other and hold the same value. However, unlike most cryptocurrencies, no two NFT’s are identical, even if they exist on the same platform. This means that they cannot be directly exchanged with one another. They are like pieces of art with unique characteristics. In simple words, Bitcoins are just digital assets while NFT’s are unique digital assets, with each token representing a unique digital value.

Like Bitcoin, ownership of NFT’s gets recorded on the blockchain. When you transfer a

Bitcoin to someone, a ledger entry is made. Similarly, when you transfer an NFT, the code representing the NFT also gets transferred on the blockchain. When an NFT is created, it is immediately time-stamped and put on the blockchain. This makes digital ownership amazingly simple and easy to identify. For example, if you hold a virtual piece of art, you can easily create a Non Fungible token to tokenize your artwork. This NFT now owned by you reflects your ownership of the artwork. This is non-interchangeable simply because your artwork is unique and is stored on the blockchain as your property.

History suggests that NFT’s have been around for a couple of years now. Colored Coins were perhaps the first example of NFT’s. The next hint of NFT’s was seen in the Counterparty, which had numerous projects and assets, including trading card games and meme trading. Later, in 2017 John Watkinson and Matt Hall created unique characters which were generated on Etherium blockchain. These characters were limited to 10,000, and no two characters were the same. They called this project Cryptopunks. Cryptokitties in October 2017 had NFT’s hit the mainstream. Cryptokitties brought virtual cats on the blockchain. It was a blockchain-based virtual game that allowed players to adopt, raise and trade virtual cats.

But it was not until very recently that the market began to take off again. Graphic designers, 3D designers, and music producers find new platforms to showcase their work, and investors are looking for new places to allocate their capital. The crypto art movement has given power back to the creatives. About 40% of humans collect things like shoes, artwork, wine, etc. A whole bunch of psychological reasons can explain why. Some people need to add to the collection or even just for investment purposes. But we could only collect things in the real world because digital collectibles were too easy to copy.

Today’s blockchain allows us to make digital collectibles with a record of who owns what so that you cannot copy. Meaning, there could be many replicas of the same digital art, but only one holds value. This is having the normal people participate in the crypto market.  NBA Top Shop, for example, makes it extremely easy to show off moments. Everyone has a page, and you can post your collectibles which anyone can view.

Logan Paul recently started normalizing NFT’s. He gathered more than $5 million by selling Pokemon-inspired NFT’s of himself for one ether each. This process made 6 million followers of his awareness of this platform. Anthony Pompliano, the co-founder of Morgon Creek digital assets, put “The Innovator’s Dinner” on auction for a whole 639 ether, which accounts for more than $1 million. This was an interpretation of Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” in which Jesus Christ and his apostles are substituted by the luminaries of industry and pop culture such as Beyonce, Steve Jobs with a drunk Michael Jordon in the background.

Musician Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park and Fort Minor has released NFT’s of his new single,  “Happy Endings.” Canadian Musician Claire Boucher sold $6million worth of digital artwork very recently. A total of 10 artworks were put up on auction. ‘Death of the Old’, a video bagged the highest price at $389,000. 700 copies of two short videos, namely ‘Earth’ and ‘Mars’, were sold for $5.18 million. All these pieces were sold in NFT’s. Here, even though the buyer does not physically possess Boucher’s digital art, he/she has proprietary rights to that particular piece of art. The blockchain network ratifies this. When the NFT is bought, the buyer also gets a license which allows him/her to put them on social media, a digital marketplace, a game world, or even a virtual museum.

NFT’s have most importantly benefited digital artists. It finally allows them to profit from their work by making the public good into private property. It is easy to validate a GIF or an artwork or even just a meme. They have also led to new collectors finding ways to collect their favorite artists and brands.

NFT’s have explored the creative side of cryptocurrencies and investment. The power has subtly shifted to creatives. This is not only fun to play but is even accessible to new users. Gen Z especially has been gaga over the NFT’s lately. As and when popular artists and renowned musicians drop their work on NFT, they draw the attention of millions of their followers to NFT popularizing crypto art. This is leaving people in intrigue to discover this growing wave of scarce digital content. It offers an Instagram-like experience, and the music-specific NFT is on its way to build a digital record store.

Cryptocurrencies have been getting a lot of attention, but they aren’t the only digital assets getting a lot of play recently. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), another type of cryptographic asset, are starting to hit the mainstream as the latest investing trend.

So what is NFT crypto and why is this type of asset booming? Let’s take a look at what’s going in the world of crypto so you can decide whether these trending digital items are something you should add to your investment portfolio.

First, it’s important to understand that NFT stands for non-fungible token. When figuring out how to invest money, understanding different terms can help you make more informed decisions. In order to get an idea of what non-fungible even means, it’s good to understand the difference between a fungible vs. non-fungible asset.

Something that is fungible is something of value that can be exchanged for another unit of the same value. For example, a dollar bill can be exchanged for another dollar bill. Each dollar is always equal to another dollar. The same is true of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. You can exchange one Bitcoin for another and the value is the same. Plus, you still have a Bitcoin. A Bitcoin is a Bitcoin.

With a non-fungible asset, however, you can’t simply exchange one for the other. It’s similar to how, for the most part, you can’t simply exchange one trading card for another. If I take my Consecrated Sphinx Magic the Gathering card and trade it with my ex-husband for his Eli Manning Topps rookie football card, I’m not getting the same thing. Not only are they completely different items, but they don’t have the same values. Even trading my Consecrated Sphinx for another type of Sphinx from Magic the Gathering won’t get me the exact same thing. These items aren’t fungible — they’re not completely interchangeable.

It’s similar to digital tokens. Cryptocurrencies are digital tokens that are interchangeable. You can exchange one for the other and still have the same thing. When you give someone Ether in exchange for Ether, you still have Ether. NFTs, on the other hand, are non-fungible cryptographic tokens. They are unique and you can’t exchange one NFT crypto for another and still have the same thing

The first NFTs were CryptoKitties, which were launched in 2017 by Dapper Labs. Using Ethereum blockchain technology, Dapper Labs set it up as a game. You could get a unique CryptoKitty and then breed it with another unique CryptoKitty to get a third, unique CryptoKitty. In fact, before you buy a CryptoKitty, you can see the history of the NFT, including its “parents” and its “genetic characteristics.”

CryptoKitties soon became collectible for their uniqueness. You couldn’t just make a bunch of the same CryptoKitties and use them as currency. It’s different from mining cryptocurrencies. Indeed, CryptoKitties were designed to look at the concept of scarcity, and the Ethereum token standard ERC-721 was used to make the first CryptoKitties. These digital collectibles might seem like a strange thing to invest in, but CryptoKitties are reasonably popular.

With these particular NFTs, consumers can access them with Ether to feed, breed, and take care of them. The ownership arrangement is managed by Ethereum’s smart contract blockchain platform. The creation of a new digital token standard, ERC-1155 by Enjin, also now makes it possible to batch many different NFTs into a single contract so that storage and transaction costs are kept down. However, the Ethereum network isn’t the only blockchain platform with NFT standards now. EOS, TRON, and NEO all use NFT crypto standards.

And CryptoKitties aren’t the only NFTs out there now. It’s possible for artists to create and sign their own digital masterpieces and sell them directly to consumers as crypto-collectibles. Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, recently turned the very first tweet into an NFT autographed by him. Other digital characters, like the CryptoPunks from Larva Labs are now available in the NFT ecosystem as well.

NFTs can also go beyond artwork or music. They could also be used as identifiers. For example, it’s possible to turn a passport into an NFT that could then be presented at various points during travel. You can also create digital representations of other assets, and use NFTs as part of financial transactions, including smart contracts for real estate sales.

The blockchain can verify NFTs by their unique identifiers, which allows for security in transactions while streamlining them. For example, with the help of NFTs, the escrow process and the clunkiness around using it for real estate contracts could become obsolete.

There are a number of assets available as NFT crypto. In the blockchain-based virtual world of Decentraland, gamers can buy and sell land using non-fungible ERC-721 tokens. With platforms like Decentraland, you can even create game items like proprietary costumes and characters that are completely unique and can’t be copied.

Additionally, it’s now possible for world-class artists to sell their fine art directly to consumers in digital form, allowing them to keep more profit than going through a real-world auction house. There are even music NFTs available. Kings of Leon became the first band to issue an album as an NFT in March 2021.

With NFTs, creators are able to reach people without the expense and clutter of intermediaries. And, for the consumer, there is some degree of status in being able to own something that’s one of a kind.

It’s not just independent creators, either. NBA Top Shot is a website that allows people to buy and sell NFTs made from video clips of NBA players. For example, a clip of a dunking LeBron James recently sold for $200,000.

Just about anything can be turned into a digital asset and become an NFT.

Some NFT crypto assets are extremely valuable. Beyond the video of LeBron James, some of the most valuable assets include:

Some of the main qualities of NFT crypto assets are what make them valuable:

Thanks to the decentralized finance movement (DeFi) and the popularity of cryptocurrencies, other crypto-assets like NFTs, are going mainstream. Additionally, famous entrepreneurs like Mark Cuban have these digital assets, and high-profile sales like that of Beeple’s artwork through famed auction house Christies, are also fueling the boom.

Investing in NFTs is fairly straightforward — as long as you have a crypto wallet. You can go to websites like OpenSea, Rarible, and Nifty Gateway to purchase these assets. If you’re interested in games like CrytpoKitties and Decentraland, you can make purchases there.

Because NFT crypto assets are fairly new, it’s hard to say whether they will be sustainable in the future. However, they could become an alternative asset class, similar to art and collectible investing. For creators, particularly artists, NFTs could present new and interesting possibilities for direct sales to consumers, getting rid of costly intermediaries that are common in the physical art world.

As with any investment, it’s important to review your goals before deciding to add NFTs to your portfolio. If you have some extra cash and you want to try something different, then buying crypto assets could be one way to add diversity to your portfolio.If you want alternative assets for your portfolio, NFTs could be a good start.

However, one rule of thumb is to keep alternative assets to 15% to 20% of your portfolio. In my own portfolio, I keep alternative assets to about 10%, and my crypto assets are at right around 5% of my portfolio. Although I don’t have NFTs yet, I do have cryptocurrencies.

If NFTs aren’t the right fit for your situation, cryptocurrencies could be an alternative, especially because they’re fungible and can be used as a medium of exchange in addition to being a potential investment.

Robinhood is one popular app that allows you to easily buy and sell cryptocurrencies. However, even before you start trading, it’s important to understand cryptocurrencies for beginners. In fact, it’s a good idea to understand any asset before you start investing in it.

A non-fungible asset is one that can’t be exchanged for another unit of the same item. A non-fungible asset can’t be used as money. U.S. dollars are an example of a fungible asset that can be exchanged, one for one. Different Pokemon trading cards would be an example of non-fungible assets that vary in value and can’t be exchanged for each other.

An NFT, or non-fungible token, is a digitized asset. It’s a token created on a blockchain platform that has certain characteristics of uniqueness, verifiably, indivisibility, and indestructability.

One of the most famous examples of a non-fungible token is a CryptoKitty. CryptoKitties are all unique and some can be quite valuable. Others include a video clip of LeBron James slam-dunking a basketball and some of the artwork created by Beeple.

As with any other new asset class, crypto assets are gaining in popularity and there’s a lot of speculation around them. NFTs are more likely to be considered an alternative asset or a collectible, sort of like a digital version of investing in sneakers or art, rather than a mainstay of your retirement portfolio. NFTs can make for an interesting addition to your portfolio if owning them meets your goals and you have the risk tolerance.