A Miami art collector sold a 10-second video artwork for a staggering $ 6.6 million last week, Reuters reported.
Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile bought it for $ 67,000 in October 2020, which he could actually have seen online for free. At the time, many would have thought he was mindless, but no one would dare now after it had been sold for quite a lot.
According to Reuters, the high-quality video is from digital artist Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, and it has been authenticated through a blockchain that acts as a digital signature to confirm who it belongs to and to verify that it is an original.
It is a new type of digital asset – known as a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) – which has grown massively in popularity during the pandemic as enthusiasts and investors battle for astronomical sums of money to get items that are only available online.
With blockchain technology the objects are publicly authenticated as unique as opposed to traditional online objects which can be reproduced endlessly.
« You can go to the Louvre and take a picture of the Mona Lisa and you can have there, but it has no value because it does not have the origin or the history of the work, « says Rodriguez-Fraile. was quoted as saying to Reuters.
« The reality here is that this is very, very valuable because of who is behind it. Non-fungible « refers to items that cannot be exchanged on a comparable basis as each is unique – as opposed to » fungible « assets like dollars, stocks or gold bars, he added.
Examples of NFTs range from digital Works of art and sports cards to real estate in virtual environments or just using a wallet name for cryptocurrencies, much like searching for domain names in the early days of the internet.
Ref: https://www.indiatimes.com
