An art collector based out of Miami last week sold a 10-second video artwork for an astonishing $6.6 million, Reuters reported.
Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile,?had bought it in October 2020, for $67,000, which he could have actually watched for free online. At the time many would have thought him as brainless, but no one would dare now after it sold for a whopping amount.?
As per Reuters, the high-value video is by digital artist Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, and it was authenticated by blockchain, which serves as a digital signature to certify who owns it and verifies that it is original work.?
It¡¯s a new type of digital asset - known as a non-fungible token (NFT) - that has gained massive popularity during the pandemic as enthusiasts and investors race to spend astronomical amounts of money to get their hands on items that only exist online.
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Blockchain technology allows the items to be publicly authenticated as one-of-a-kind, unlike traditional online objects which can be endlessly reproduced.
¡°You can go in the Louvre and take a picture of the Mona Lisa and you can have it there, but it doesn¡¯t have any value because it doesn¡¯t have the provenance or the history of the work,¡± Rodriguez-Fraile, was quoted as saying to Reuters.?
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¡°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 like-for-like basis, as each one is unique - in contrast to ¡°fungible¡± assets like dollars, stocks or bars of gold, he added.
Examples of NFTs range from digital artworks and sports cards to pieces of land in virtual environments or exclusive use of a cryptocurrency wallet name, much similar to the scramble for domain names in the early days of the internet.??