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A viral video of a toddler crying about his brother Charlie biting his finger. First tweet posted on Twitter. Online trading cards showing the NFL’s tight end Rob Gronkowski winning championships.
This widely visible content has become wildly valuable with the development of immutable tokens (NFTs). These unique digital assets give their holders exclusive bragging rights in the digital space and can be artistically pleasing, create financial wealth and unlock membership in certain communities.
To help people better understand NFTs, Jennifer Wong and Peter Hamilton are establishing the Seattle NFT Museum, which opens its doors Friday. The museum will display NFT digital artworks on high-definition displays, and Ms Wong said it will include all original pieces borrowed from artists and collectors, not copies from the internet.
“We know a lot of people will be interested in something like this where they might not know the right people to follow on Twitter or the right Discords to join where typical NFT chats happen today, so having a really open and physical space. Inviting everyone to learn more about NFTs is truly the purpose of having the museum,” said Ms. Wong.
An NFT is a digital certificate attached to a real-world item such as an image or video that cannot be copied. It is recorded on a blockchain or digital ledger. The certificate signifies authenticity and digital property. These property rights do not always apply to NFTs’ associated elements in the physical world, which has led to debates about their tangible value.
NFT enthusiasts see unlimited potential for investors looking to own digital assets and artists whose work is routinely reproduced and shared online. Skeptics view NFTs as petty 21st-century fads trapping an excessive online crowd.
Mr Hamilton said the museum’s retail-type setting has already attracted passers-by to see what’s inside. The venue ticketed a nearly 100-person capacity crowd each night for the opening weekend. He said he and Ms. Wong had explored digital art galleries and noticed the potential appetite for the experience they were aiming to create.
“Seeing galleries, the first galleries to show off NFTs, started to make us think there was a place to have that kind of experience, but focused more on education, more on diverse art, and inspiration for more. “It’s community rather than art commissions or sales,” said Mr Hamilton.
The sale of NFTs has become big business. OpenSea, an NFT marketplace, announced a new round of funding this month. Forbes said the company was worth an estimated $13.3 billion, up from $1.5 billion six months ago, making its co-founders multibillionaires.
The booming market for NFTs is backed by the wealthy. Marshall Mathers, better known as rapper Eminem, bought a Bored Ape NFT for a few hundred thousand dollars. He now shows a Bored Ape picture on his Twitter profile.
Eminem’s Bored Ape avatar shows that he is part of the exclusive Bored Ape Yacht Club. The monkey’s NFT represents membership.
NFT’s status symbol and attention-grabbing function has attracted a wide range of people. Alternative social media platform Parler said he helped former First Lady Melania Trump develop the NFT platform.
Scott Jensen, a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota, created an NFT hotline for donors, activists, and others last year. Congressional candidates have also started using NFTs.
Not everyone agrees with the NFT craze. Mashable writer Amanda Yeo has branded NFT ownership “the tech-brother equivalent of pissing on a fire hydrant.”
“What are you really buying?” Ms. Yeo wrote last year. “This is not like comparing an original oil painting to a print where the copies are so clearly different from the original. Your tokenized image is exactly the same as every copy ever made and every copy not yet made. You don’t just have a unique version you can enjoy. All you have are bragging rights.”
It’s not always clear where bragging rights end and property rights begin. According to reports, Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino maintains an NFT collection featuring the movie “Push Fiction” despite the Miramax movie studio filing a copyright infringement lawsuit.
The debate over the value and digital ownership of NFTs is poised to have lasting effects in the next iteration of the web as companies like Facebook, which has rebranded as Meta, are building augmented and virtual reality products around the concept of a blending “metaverse”. A physical world developed by technologists.
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