Caleb Scharf, writing at Nautilus, notes some interesting things about one of the latest crypto-currency related crazes, called "non-fungible tokens."
Simply put -- and I admit upfront that I am not at all sure I properly understand this whole shebang -- NFT's are some kind of electronic or online asset to which provenance is unbreakably assigned. If the NFT is a digital image, for example, the same blockchain technology that backs crypto-currencies "marks" one image in such a way that no matter how it is copied, the original is always distinguishable from the copy.
In order to ensure a painting is real, its history is traced from artist's easel to purchaser's rec room wall. Should the history not be available, then recent advances in scientific testing can compare brushstrokes, pain composition, canvas, and so on. So a stolen painting that suddenly resurfaces is tested and can be pronounced real, establishing its provenance.
NFT's, as mentioned, use the same blockchain technology that backs up digital currency. The problem is that, as a part of its anonymity and validity, the computational work in a blockchain is widely distributed -- and highly power-hungry. Environmentalists have been grumbling about the energy use level behind digital currencies, but their defenders can at least point out that such currencies are a means of exchange and might have some utility.
It's hard to say the same about the utility of NFT's. If I take an online image and use it as, say, the background photo of a blog, I really don't care if it is the original. And if some people do care, unless we're talking about a request to take down a copyrighted image I don't care that they care.
Perhaps it's because I'm some middle-aged dweeb who has a job in the real world and deals with people who live in it, interacting with them as real people and thinking that's of some value that I can't stop thinking, every time I hear people talk about NFTs: "That's just about the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life."
Until someone tells me how much money this or that NFT sold for, that is. That's even stupider.
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