As we continue to learn more about NTFs and the entire community of online digital art, I find myself becoming more comfortable with the language and further understanding the concepts that come along with this topic. The video from this week gave an example of defining fungibility that I found to be helpful in understanding what that means. Comparing 5 one-dollar bills to a five-dollar bill, they have the exact same value even though they are fairly different forms, and therefore they are fungible. Non-fungible tokens however rely highly on the form that they exist in, as this is what defines their value despite anything else.
What is still interesting to me, is the comparison of NFT’s to bitcoin, which is defined in the video as a fungible cryptocurrency. However, I have learned in previous cryptocurrency discussions that the value of bitcoin, as well as that of other cryptocurrencies is constantly fluctuating, similar to that of a stock. Again, a topic that I do not fully understand but would like to learn more about as I head into the real world of financing. So, although the value of the NFT technically does not change, the value of the currency used to buy it does – is how I am currently processing all of this.
One aspect of the NFT selling process that I think is especially great is the ability to track the sales of artwork, and therefore give the original artist a percentage of every sale, not just the original one. I find this to be almost a necessary aspect of selling digital art, because of how much the value can fluctuate. For example, if an artist sold their work for $300 and that same day the value of the currency skyrocketed, making the piece now worth $5000, that would benefit the buyer greatly but be unfair to the artist. Now, each time a transaction occurs involving this piece of digital art, it can be tracked using the blockchain and a fraction of the cost will be returned to the original creator.
This rapid growth in value of cryptocurrencies immediately brings my mind to the idea of a bubble, or a phase that is rapidly on the come up but will ultimately crash, leaving hundreds of thousands of people out of luck. I am not alone in these thoughts of a bubbles, as people in the video and readings questioned that. However, I am starting to understand more clearly how the blockchain technology works and all the benefits that are coming with it, now and in the long term. An article, written by Michael Connor looks into the new world that is coming with all of this new blockchain technology, and what that is going to change with our currencies and our society going forward. He links to a video by Babak Radboy who talks about ‘what is money?’ as we know it today. He talks about the connection of money, time, and life, and the importance of a relationship between the money we spend and the way we live our lives. By making a change to a way we value money, it has the potential to change the other values in life and focus them on things that may be more important to our future.