An NFT or non-fungible token is a one-of-a-kind, digital property that is usually in the form of digital art that can be bought or sold. NFTs can be anything one can imagine, as long as it has a digital certificate confirming it is one of a kind.
It’s like owning an original piece of art, except digitally. This digital certificate is in a blockchain, which is like a digital ledger that shows ownership of an NFT.
Imagine having the digital signature from the artist on a digital piece of art. And this signature says, “Yup, this is a unique and one of a kind piece of digital art.” This is basically the concept of NFTs and what makes them so enticing.
Another digital trend that is grabbing the attention of many is Bitcoin. It shares a lot of the same concepts. One of the shared concepts is the process of acquiring them.
Bitcoin essentially converts energy into money through the process of “mining” for them. You use the power of computers to solve equations, verify transactions or whatever else to mine for them, which then grants digital currency worth money. This is the process of mining in relation to digital currencies. They use the power of computers in order to mine digitally and make money.
Electricity is usually the product of planet-heating emitters like coal and gasoline. With, at the very least, hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin farms running constantly, its impact on the environment is terrible.
For NFTs, the process to get them is relatively similar but involves mining for a currency called ethereum, which also requires a lot of energy. To get NFTs, you have to pay with ethereum (most of the time), like how some things can only be bought with Bitcoin. Yet again, it’s converting energy into money.
For the sake of the environment and the future of humanity, I hope that NFTs don’t become a trend that sticks around for good.
Eventually, art will become widely digital but now isn’t the time. The process of mining digital currency takes a lot of energy. There are different figures worldwide, but it’s a lot of energy.
Despite the harm that NFTs pose to the environment, they’ve actually gained a lot of traction when it comes to the digital art aspect, especially with how much people are willing to pay for them.
Artist Beeple sold a piece of art in early March, which auction house Christie’s described as “the first purely digital NFT based artwork offered by a major auction house,” for $69,346,250. He became one of the top three artists in relation to money made after this. It’s absolutely astonishing that a digital piece of art garnered that much money.
NFTs aren’t limited to being pieces of digital artwork. They can also take the form of uniquely made music videos like musical artist Grimes, with a weirdly obscure music video that has themes of Christianity. This sold for $388,938, and I just watched all 53 seconds of it for free.
Another example of an NFT that isn’t digital artwork is when CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey sold a tweet for $2,915,835.47. Yet again, I’m flabbergasted.
The contents of the tweet? It was simply some text that said, “just setting up my twttr.”
That’s all it said, with the misspelling of Twitter and everything.
NFTs have simply blown up the digital world. People are paying some serious dough to have digital ownership of certain art pieces. However, this begs the question: Is a cool, new, multi-million dollar platform for art worth the cost of potentially furthering climate change? No.
Logan Sriharatsa can be reached at srih1201@stthomas.edu.