Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are gaining popularity among artists. But what are they actually, and what are the advantages and disadvantages for artists and buyers?
NFTs are digital assets that cannot be duplicated or copied in any way. They operate on a blockchain system, which is commonly associated with cryptocurrencies. Artists are now experimenting with the concept of making actual pieces to go along with those assets, resulting in an investment that is also a work of art.
Professor Marco DiMaggio of Harvard Business School created the school’s first fin-tech course. He proposes that NFTs be viewed as collectibles for the digital generation.
- “There is so much excitement also because there are many artists that want to issue NFTs,” he said.
Among those artists is Damien Hirst, a well-known British artist who released “The Currency,” an NFT collection of 10,000 one-of-a-kind pieces. Buyers have six months to decide whether they want the digital or physical version of the NFT. The other is scorched.
- “So the NFT records, who owns what. And so every time you are going to sell, the NFT is going to record on the blockchain,” DiMaggio explained.
Consider the blockchain to be a digital database ledger that keeps track of transactions in a permanent and verifiable manner.
