That’s right, you guessed it; we’re deep diving into NFTs this week!
According to Wikipedia, a non-fungible token (NFT) is a “unique digital file stored on a blockchain (a digital ledger). One NFT is a cryptographic token, but unlike cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and many network or utility tokens, NFTs are not mutually interchangeable, aka “not fungible.”
NFTs recently took the worlds of digital art and sport collectibles by storm with several jpg files sold for thousands and even millions of dollars. An auction at Christie’s recently broke the record for the most expensive NFT ever sold with “The First 5,000 Days” by Beeple.
Without really planning it, I ended up listing 7 articles in this week’s list about NFTs, including: how you create them, their impact on the creator economy and the issues around them – in particular, environmental & copyright challenges.
Book
Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook & The World
On my wishlist
Events
What if this moment was ultimately an opportunity to reimagine the future of fairs and events?
“Of course, physical connection is a fundamental element in establishing a relationship, but it is now impossible to imagine that it is the only one. Since the onset of 2016, we have invested significantly in our digital platform, MOM, to enable our community to communicate yearlong. The goal? To allow buyers and specifiers to be in touch with the brands through their new product catalogues.”
- linkedin.com/pulse/what-moment-ultimately-opportunity-reimagine-future-fairs-brocart/ :: Philippe Brocart
Diversity & Inclusion
Making steps towards a DEI aware universe
via Andreea, one of our former team members 🙂
- medium.com/builders-studio/making-steps-towards-a-dei-aware-universe-60d0352f156f :: Andreea Butincu
AI
Should CC-Licensed Content be Used to Train AI? It Depends.
- creativecommons.org/2021/03/04/should-cc-licensed-content-be-used-to-train-ai-it-depends/ :: Brigitte Vézina + Sarah Pearson
NFTs
Non-Fungible Tokens Yearly Report 2020
NFTs and a Thousand True Fans
“The second way NFTs change creator economics is by enabling granular price tiering. In ad-based models, revenue is generated more or less uniformly regardless of the fan’s enthusiasm level…Fan of Bitcoin? You can buy as much or little as you want, down to 8 decimal points, depending on your level of enthusiasm. Crypto’s fine-grained granularity lets creators capture a much larger area under the demand curve.”
Are NFTs The Future Of Digital Music Or Just Crypto Snobbery?
“But for its proponents in the worlds of art and technology, NFTs have the ability to change the very nature of digital media, allowing artists to eliminate financial middlemen and make a profit from their work outside of the demands of mass popularity.”
A Step by Step Guide to NFTs for Creators NFTs
Here Is The Article You Can Send To People When They Say “But The Environmental Issues With CryptoArt Will Be Solved Soon, Right?”
“Many would call me unrealistic and naïve for this, unwilling to make compromises in the world we are living now because of an idealistic vision of a tomorrow; and to them I would like to say that we literally invented an extra-sovereign monetary system that within 10 years has generated trillions of dollars of worth and is held up with the power consumption of a small country.”
NFTs are a dangerous trap | Seth’s Blog A Word on NFTs
“The trap, then, is that creators can get hooked on creating these. Buyers with a sunk cost get hooked on making the prices go up, unable to walk away. And so creators and buyers are then hooked in a cycle, with all of us up paying the lifetime of costs associated with an unregulated system that consumes vast amounts of precious energy for no other purpose than to create some scarce digital tokens.”
A Word on NFTs
“The underlying misconception here is to think that in the digital world copies are indistinguishable from originals. In a trivial sense this is true. Let’s say you copy a digital artwork, you will now have exactly the same bit sequence as the original. But in a much more profound sense it is not.”
Science
Check out the most extensive map of black holes ever
“This first image, which covers four percent of the Northern sky, combines a decade of development and analysis, and nearly 11 days worth of radio emissions absorbed by LOFAR.”