I'm an architect by profession and sometimes I make paintings as well and post it on my Instagram. Recently I got approached to sell my artworks as NFTs and the person asked me if I have an NFT account. I know nothing about NFTs, I don't know how it works or what does it mean. I know it's called non fungible tokens but I don't really understand what it's supposed to mean. Can somebody help me? And how can I turn my artworks into NFTs?
What's the point of buying NFTs? Please explain.
ELI5: what the fuck is an NFT
Imagine you want to buy the Mona Lisa.
You pay $10m for it. But the image itself stays where it is. The guy selling it to you gives you a receipt though. That receipt says you own it.
You can sell that receipt to someone else if you want. The ownership transfers to that other person. They don't have the painting either.
That's an NFT and yes, it's dumb. It's not your misunderstanding, it genuinely is that dumb.
Ok, ok. I'll try to be fair.
It doesn't work when the item is a physical thing like a painting because if you buy it you get the thing. They're designed for when the thing isn't physical. Let's say you're not a painter, you're a photographer. Images are all digital now and stored on a disk. So what if, like other artists you want to sell your original work?
Well. You can't just sell the photo file. Because when you send it to them, it just makes a copy. You have it and so do they. So you sell an NFT. Like in the previous example, this is a receipt that says you own the original.
Questions...
What's to stop the artist just making thousands of copies of the file and giving them away? Nothing. But you still have the receipt.
What's to stop other people downloading the image? Nothing. But you still have the receipt.
What's to stop someone else downloading the image and making a new NFT for that new copy of the image, thus making two receipts for two people who say they own it? Nothing.
What's to stop the artist making 100 NFTs and telling everyone theirs is the original ownership? Nothing.
So yeah. Sorry. Still dumb.
More on reddit.comHelp me understand NFTs, I honestly don't get why anyone would buy it.
What’s up with NFTs?
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