HOW TO MASTER NFTs?
You’ve heard of things like crypto kitties and so forth. If you’ve heard any of those terms, those are all NFTs. Maybe you’re curious why these things are selling for so much money. Why a Crypto Punk has gone for $7.5 million. Why the Bored Ape Yacht club, every single one goes for at least $200,000 these days?
Maybe it’s overwhelming and you’re skeptical. Probably you want to get into it but you don’t know where to start. We’re here to go over all of that. So first I’d like to tell you a little bit about myself. I’m Ben. I dropped out of Harvard University to accept an inaugural Thiel Fellowship. I’ve been in Silicon Valley for most of my life starting a business. In about half that time, I’ve been making crypto startups. So I did my FIRST CRYPTO STARTUP BACK IN 2017. Then NFTs became a thing, but no one heard about them.
But four years later, I am convinced and so are many others in the crypto space. The NFTs are the future. They are the reason why cryptocurrencies are going mainstream.
WHAT ARE NFTs?
So what are NFTs? You might have heard the term NFT, and you might have wondered what exactly that means. NFT is an acronym that stands for Non-Fungible Token. What exactly is a Non-Fungible Token? Let’s break down each of those parts. First, what is fungible? Fungible = INTERCHANGEABLE. If something is perfectly interchangeable with something else, it means one thing is the same as another thing. What’s an example? The perfect example is money. If you have one US dollar, it’s the same as if you have another US dollar. Technically, they’re kind of unique right? One might be crumbled, one might be clean, and one might be perfectly new. But it doesn’t matter. If you go to the store, no one cares. If you give them one US dollar versus another. They have the same value. That is fungibility. One thing is the same as another.
Now, what is non-fungible? Well, is there anything that is not the same as another? Something is unique. Most things in the world are non-fungible. Non-fungible = NON-INTERCHANGEABLE.For example, people are non-fungible. And dogs, for example, pets, they’re non-fungible. If you went on vacation and you dropped off your dog at a dog hotel and you came back they gave you another dog. You’d be upset right? Because you want your dog, you don’t want someone else’s dog. Same thing. If you dropped off your kid at daycare and they gave you a different kid back, you’d be pretty upset. That’s non-fungibility. Non-fungibility is how most things in the world are valued. If you buy the Mona Lisa for $850,000,000 and then they tried to give you a different piece of art. The same thing, you’d be pretty upset. So let’s go to the notion of a non-fungible token.
WHAT IS A TOKEN?
So what is a token? Token represents a lot of things on the blockchain and in the very early days of blockchain technology. The first tokens on blockchains were just basically currencies, similar to the US dollar. So we had things like bitcoin. We had things like Ethereum. Now Ethereum and Bitcoin are all perfectly fungible. No one cares if you have one Bitcoin or another Bitcoin. They’re worth the same amount of money. Anyone is willing to accept payment in one Bitcoin versus another kind. They’re all the same. Same for Ethereum and same for all cryptocurrencies. Now NFTs are our new kind of token, that’s been enabled with blockchain technology, the same kind of technology that first enable things like Bitcoin, and Ethereum. But now we’re able to use that same technology and create a token that represents non-fungible items. In the same kind of way, you can represent something like the Mona Lisa. Even you could represent something like a person. For example, one digital avatar. Think of a character in the game that can be different from another one and they’re not the same. They are not interchangeable. They’re not worth the same amount of money. With non-fungible tokens, you can represent one of these unique items and you can ascribe value to it, something that was never possible before. We’re explained a little bit about what NFTs are. Let’s talk about why they have so much value today.
WHY DO NFTs HAVE SO MUCH VALUE TODAY?
Why do people buy NFTs with things like $69 million for a piece of art? I have invested over 1 million dollars in NFT in the past few months. Before that, I had never even bought a piece of art in real life. I have never even understood art in real life. I’m the last person you can imagine joining the NFT and counting on them. Just three months ago, I thought NFTs were a giant scam, a big fad, just a bubble, worth nothing but human hype. Before, I even believed that art was just an exaggeration. The truth is that Vincent Van Gogh only sold a few works of art, and took his own life at the age of 37 thinking he was a failure. The truth is that Leonardo Da Vinci may have died thinking he was a failure and the Mona Lisa is not even known or appreciated by the world.
There is no reason why this and other works should not be recognized for the way they were created. But for some reason you know, one is worth $10 million, and the other is unknown. These little art facts make me think there’s nothing here. This is just an exaggeration. What value? I like science, logical technology, refrigerators with true values, the Internet with values, microwave ovens that heat your food, and refrigerators that keep your food cool. Trucks and cars both have real utility value to me. I never thought I would get into NFTs. Now, I believe this is the most valuable thing we can have and that things like art are among the most valuable things in the world. That seems to have led me towards art.
