Photo: Auction from Opensea.io
Non-Fungible Tokens aren't going away anytime soon. While scouring the Internet I came across some very ridiculos and pricey NFTs. Not to mention the mind-blowing stories behind some of them.
The very first NFT came into existence on May 3rd, 2014. But after that, nothing much was mentioned about them. And as I’m sure you’ve undoubtedly heard at least a million times in the last couple of years, the NFTs rose yet again into existence.
As far as their informational design goes, NFTs haven’t changed much, if at all. The Non-Fungible Tokens are purely digital items. They could be in the form of a video, song, photo, or just a regular computer image.
Whoever owns them can legally sell them as goods. That doesn't necessarily translate directly into money, but more often than not, the seller prefers cryptocurrency, mainly Ethereum. NFTs can also come in a limited number of copies, or they can even be unique. Although the definition of “unique” sometimes eludes the item in question somehow.
Let's take the Corvette Z06 NFT, for example, which at the time was worth between $238,960 and $252,350. It is a one-of-a-kind digital item, and only one person can own it at a time. However, it can be copied without fault, with no quality loss or difference in design whatsoever. Then it can be shared on the Internet for free. Even the owner could put it up as a simple image at an online auction.
You’d be absolutely right in wondering if that is still unique or not. The answer is kind of like Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, where a cat is both alive and not alive at the same time. That might be the case here as well.
So, if the original image is indeed on someone’s computer, but at the same time, everyone else has access to its copies, why on Earth would anyone still want to pay almost $253,000 for it? Well, for better or for worse, in this case, no one has. Even though the item would have been paired with its real-life counterpart. I say "would have" because the physical car wasn't manufactured at the time of the auction.
In that example, the car-based NFT was ordered by Chevrolet. But there's also the case when they're created by independent design artists with no professional relationship with the car manufacturer. Like the famous burning Lamborghini video where the owner torched it, filmed it, then put parts of the video up for sale on an auction website.
And yes, people actually showed up (digitally) to the bidding. No less than 1784 individuals, to be exact. The currency used was WETH cryptocurrency, which to my understanding, is a tradeable counterpart of Ethereum. The top bid was 69 WETH, which today (August 20) would mean roughly $113,436.
But that amount doesn’t even come close to the value of some other NFTs that wildly roam the Blockchain and pollute our air. For them to exist on the Internet, they require immense power resources to sustain the entire crypto network along with its bells and whistles.
The most expensive item on our list comes in at around $8,251,250 (5,000 ETH), and it’s called the “Car Man Logo.” It’s a simple 2D drawing of a man wrapped around a car with an old-timey horn instead of a mouth. I’m not by any means an expert in art, but I would rather buy two Hennessey Venom F5 Roadsters or a Bugatti W16 Mistral and still have “pocket change” to last me for the rest of my life.
Next up, we have a 3D rendering of a Nissan GT-R that was sold for no less than $2,301,428. Coming back from the future is none other than the DeLorean DMC-12 at the “low” price of $183,177 (111 ETH). There are also another 41 DeLorean-related NFTs auctioned, and at the time of writing, no one has bid yet.
Nevertheless, the NFT phenomenon is as strange as ever, no matter what form they come in.
As far as their informational design goes, NFTs haven’t changed much, if at all. The Non-Fungible Tokens are purely digital items. They could be in the form of a video, song, photo, or just a regular computer image.
Whoever owns them can legally sell them as goods. That doesn't necessarily translate directly into money, but more often than not, the seller prefers cryptocurrency, mainly Ethereum. NFTs can also come in a limited number of copies, or they can even be unique. Although the definition of “unique” sometimes eludes the item in question somehow.
Let's take the Corvette Z06 NFT, for example, which at the time was worth between $238,960 and $252,350. It is a one-of-a-kind digital item, and only one person can own it at a time. However, it can be copied without fault, with no quality loss or difference in design whatsoever. Then it can be shared on the Internet for free. Even the owner could put it up as a simple image at an online auction.
You’d be absolutely right in wondering if that is still unique or not. The answer is kind of like Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, where a cat is both alive and not alive at the same time. That might be the case here as well.
So, if the original image is indeed on someone’s computer, but at the same time, everyone else has access to its copies, why on Earth would anyone still want to pay almost $253,000 for it? Well, for better or for worse, in this case, no one has. Even though the item would have been paired with its real-life counterpart. I say "would have" because the physical car wasn't manufactured at the time of the auction.
In that example, the car-based NFT was ordered by Chevrolet. But there's also the case when they're created by independent design artists with no professional relationship with the car manufacturer. Like the famous burning Lamborghini video where the owner torched it, filmed it, then put parts of the video up for sale on an auction website.
And yes, people actually showed up (digitally) to the bidding. No less than 1784 individuals, to be exact. The currency used was WETH cryptocurrency, which to my understanding, is a tradeable counterpart of Ethereum. The top bid was 69 WETH, which today (August 20) would mean roughly $113,436.
But that amount doesn’t even come close to the value of some other NFTs that wildly roam the Blockchain and pollute our air. For them to exist on the Internet, they require immense power resources to sustain the entire crypto network along with its bells and whistles.
The most expensive item on our list comes in at around $8,251,250 (5,000 ETH), and it’s called the “Car Man Logo.” It’s a simple 2D drawing of a man wrapped around a car with an old-timey horn instead of a mouth. I’m not by any means an expert in art, but I would rather buy two Hennessey Venom F5 Roadsters or a Bugatti W16 Mistral and still have “pocket change” to last me for the rest of my life.
Next up, we have a 3D rendering of a Nissan GT-R that was sold for no less than $2,301,428. Coming back from the future is none other than the DeLorean DMC-12 at the “low” price of $183,177 (111 ETH). There are also another 41 DeLorean-related NFTs auctioned, and at the time of writing, no one has bid yet.
Nevertheless, the NFT phenomenon is as strange as ever, no matter what form they come in.
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