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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

What's An NFT? And Why Are People Paying Millions To Buy Them? [npr.org]

The artist Grimes recently sold [theverge.com] a bunch of NFTs for nearly $6 million. An NFT of LeBron James making a historic dunk for the Lakers garnered [usatoday.com] more than $200,000. The band Kings of Leon is releasing [rollingstone.com] its new album in the form of an NFT. The auction house Christie's, bids on an NFT by the artist Beeple are already reaching [christies.com] into the millions. And on Friday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey listed [v.cent.co] his first-ever tweet as an NFT.

[...] It stands for "non-fungible token." Non-fungible, meaning you can't exchange it for another thing of equal value. A $10 bill can be exchanged for two $5 bills. One bar of gold can be swapped for another bar of gold of the same size. Those things are fungible. An NFT, though, is one of a kind.

[...] What exactly do you get when you buy an NFT? This question unleashes a fury of debate among NFT enthusiasts. The answer is not simple.

Are you buying what amounts to an Internet trophy? Clout? A feeling? A digital collector's item? Perhaps, but you are also purchasing a kind of barcode, almost a certificate of authenticity that serves as proof that a certain version of something in uniquely yours.

"The underlying thing that you're buying is code that manifests as images," said Donna Redel, who teaches courses on crypto-digital assets at Fordham Law School. "You're buying a different format of art."

It's not a scam, it's just liberating money from people with too much of it.

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