WisdomTree | Oct 04, 2021 14:44
- Benjamin Dean, Director, Digital Assets, WisdomTree
On August 23, 2021 Visa (NYSE:V) announced, “As we enter a new era of non fungible tokens (NFTs)-commerce, Visa welcomes CryptoPunk #7610 to our collection. Visa bought it for the equivalent of USD$150,000. Setting social media alight – a nice marketing move – this is far from the most expensive purchase made across thousands of newly ‘minted’ non-fungible tokens .What does the recent craze in NFTs tell us about the current and future opportunities presented by the digital asset space?
At a technical level, NFTs have been possible for a long time. Ethereum Improvement Protocol 721 was released in 2017 and allowed people to create unique (‘non-fungible’) tokens on the Ethereum network. Over the years teams and companies have been experimenting on and iterating around ideas and concepts built using this standard. Most NFTs are traded via online marketplaces such as OpenSea or Veve. In a bumper August OpenSea saw USD$3.4 billion dollars in trading, which was 10 times more than the previous month. When people want to buy items on these platforms they must first purchase a coin or token. These platforms tend to be interoperable with a variety of digital asset networks: those who use Ethereum buy ETH, for Polygon they buy MATIC or if they use Solana then SOL. The market prices of these tokens have also risen over recent months, partly as a consequence of the NFT boom.
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