If you like staying up to date with what’s happening in the tech universe, you must be familiar with the term NFT, a new digital trend but still poorly understood by the general public. Thanks to the digital art auctions that have become very popular in recent years, FTs have also become known and are still on the rise in the most talked about subjects.
NFTs are available for sale on various platforms. For example, you can buy digital art on V-Art marketplace. But do you really understand what this technology is all about, why it is so important and why we talk about it so much lately? We will answer all these questions in this article.
What is NFT?
Far beyond a passing trend, NFT is a technology that is here to stay and perhaps, the easiest way to understand what that term means is to understand what it is.
The acronym NFT means non-fungible token(s). Let’s look at it in stages:
What is a token?
If you use a banking app, you may already know what that word means or even have used it. In the financial world, a token is a sequence of numbers (or also letters, in some cases) generated to authorize passwords and banking transactions.
Understanding this concept, a token is like a key or a form of identification. In the case of NFT tokens, its meaning is related to the universe of cryptocurrencies or digital currencies.
In this context, it is used to designate the digital representation of an asset that is also digital, such as the works of art that we have already commented on and even properties in the physical world.
What is non-fungible?
If something is “non-fungible”, it cannot be replaced or reproduced with the same exact characteristics; it’s something unique. Therefore, in the NFT universe, there is no possibility of plagiarism or unauthorized copying.
Despite the technology being recent, the concept was already used to categorize goods long before the creation of NFTs. The difference is that, now, these transactions take place in the digital environment.
So, in short, NFT is a unique virtual asset, thanks to its blockchain digital property certificate — in a very simplified way, a system that allows you to store and centralize all the sending and receiving information of an online transaction.
Current technology allows anything to be an NFT — artwork, music, games, in-game skins, land in Metaverse etc.
How to acquire an NFT?
Because it is so exclusive, an NFT carries a lot of added value, and that’s why we see more and more millionaire transactions involving this technology. But another interesting feature of the NFT is that, precisely because it is a digital asset, it is impossible to buy one with physical currency.
To trade an NFT, whether to buy or sell, the transaction is made with cryptocurrencies, and there are exclusive platforms for this, such as Binance, CoinBase, Rarible and OpenSea. One of the biggest benefits of the technology is that everyone who is part of the transaction has access to all the information.
This makes the process more transparent and safer for all parties, and as a result, it has been used more and more in the market. What regulates these transactions is the blockchain, the technology responsible for the functioning of cryptocurrencies and, consequently, the purchase and sale of NFTs.
NFTs on Instagram
No one knows the directions this technology will take, but we are confident it will end up on Instagram. Meta’s social network does not miss any opportunity to bring trends into the platform, and it was no different with NFTs.