Today, with NFT owners still between 500 000 and 700 000, many people are still trying to make heads or tails of the new technology. Although NFT market sales in 2020 were valued at $250 million and its market size surpassed $41 billion in 2021, non-NFT users still believe that individuals are only purchasing Jpegs.
They have no idea how powerful it is to unite a group of people behind a shared cause. With utility and community, there is a one-trillion-dollar market. Currently, NFT sales range between $10 million and $20 million on the blockchain every week, as the market grows rapidly every day. This begs the question, "What are NFTs? " and "how is the value of an NFT cultivated?"
What are NFTs?
NFTs (Non-fungible tokens) are digitally scarce collectibles that cannot be replaced or exchanged with another equivalent. With metadata that serves as unique digital signatures for each generated NFT, the digital collectibles are simply one-of-a-kind. They can range from art, videos, tweets, music, codes, and photos to any other collectible created on the blockchain. A distributed ledger records and keeps track of every transaction made on it, making it impossible to change or manipulate the data on it.
NFTs are created (minted) with limited supply to increase their perceived value in the market. Investors identify rarity as an attractive quality as it allows ownership to be limited to only a few people at a time. This is the holy grail of NFT communities and memberships as it allows for clubs, societies, and associations to be well represented and secure on the blockchain.
Investors can now have their own unique collectibles in the form of NFT collections that can be associated with them as members of a business, for-profit organization, non-profit organization, or even as participants or fans of other clubs or societies. NFTs can be minted and traded on NFT marketplaces. The most popular of these is the Opensea platform. NFT marketplaces are like auction houses as they accommodate, display, and sell valuable commodities, but this time, digitally. The need for more digital assets, especially for the metaverse, has made marketplaces that meet the needs of different groups more valuable.