A Beginner's Guide to NFTs

Digital art suffers from perfect reproducibility, and hence, a lack of scarcity. There is no “real” version — even in the artist’s studio, copies proliferate in backups, on shared drives, and in cache files. For decades, we have experimented with watermarks and anti-piracy tech to try and enforce a physical, world-of-atoms scarcity on digital goods... See more

An NFT serves as a digital certificate of authenticity, backed by math, on a public ledger, that incontrovertibly proves that the holder owns a one-of-a-kind digital (and sometimes physical) asset.

More NFTs will unlock certain perks or privileges, making them not a fad but a long-term asset that both delivers and accrues value. The holy grail will be shifting the $150 billion virtual goods market—largely comprised of microtransactions in Robux (Roblox), V-Bucks (Fortnite), and Minecoins (Minecraft)—onto blockchain so that digital assets you ... See more