These days, NFT or Non-fungible tokens are a hot trend. Here is a brief guide on what they are and why the world has gone NFT-crazy, this month. 

A 500 rupees note in your pocket and a single bitcoin token has no difference. They both are made to be mutually exchangeable. 

But, NFT is a class of cryptocurrency assets in which the token is unique. This makes them a bit useless as a currency but is useful for other things. 

Other things such as Creating Digital Art. And since it is new in the digital age, that’s why it has gone viral too as cats. Hence, to support the same there is a game that allows the players to adopt, raise, and trade virtual cats, which is known as CryptoKitties. 

Is that all about virtual cats? Well, not really. 

In the past month, a lot of things have happened. During that time, NFTs have turned into a global obsession. 

The Biggest Turn-Around 

This year on 15th February, the respected Christies founded in 1766, became the major auction house to announce their plans to sell a digital piece of art. That Digital Piece of Art has been created by digital artist Mike Winkelmann, also known as Beeple. 
Beeple Instagram posted 5,000 individual images created every day between 2007 to 2021. 

Still, feeling preposterous? Let’s understand it again.

On Thursday, when the auction was about to begin, an hour before that the price jumped from $100 to $1 million. 

No doubt, Christie’s head was excited writing ‘Beeple leads the way’.

But, the real concern is is this the latest craze and will vanish with time? The answer is, yes, they could be. 

The reasons are that firstly, currently, they exist on a single blockchain. And human use is now largely restricted to selling digital trinkets. 

It can be problematic, energy-intensive, and tedious to develop decentralized applications for NFTs. There can be teething issues as well, around the protocols that are used to create them. 

Having said that, they could be the next big thing. Like really big. Not for big things, but for more practical use. 

The practical use can be unique, hack-proof virtual tokens that are stored in all kinds of data, private and public, from your health certificate to birth certificate, land records, and much more. 

Most importantly, one day they could change the way we create and execute agreements to exchange money, share, property, or any asset through smart contracts. These digital contracts will be so advanced one day that you won’t need a third-party, such as a court. Everything will be using a computer program on blockchain to check whether the terms and conditions have been met.  

And that would be transformative change.