Amrit Pal Singh has been licensing his Frida Kahlo, Malala Yousafzai, and Van Gogh toy faces to various firms before selling NFTs of them for roughly R11 lakh. Siraj Hassan, a long-time photographer, and videographer with an interest in 3D illustrations from Chennai stumbled upon a post about crypto-art on social media a few months ago. It grabbed his interest, so he decided to transform his artwork into NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens, and sell them after a few weeks of research.
The procedure, however, was not as straightforward as it appears. Every piece of art must first be verified by the blockchain or marketplace. An artist must spend for this, and not in rupees, but digital money. Hassan exchanged his INR into ETH, or Ether, the Ethereum digital currency, which is a community-run system that hosts digital money, worldwide payments, and apps. While artists meet consumers in galleries in the physical world, NFT markets feature communities called discord groups where artists meet collectors and showcase their work. Hassan took roughly three weeks to sell his first item.
The abbreviation NFT stands for non-fungible token. Fungible objects can be switched for comparable items. Because a one-dollar bill may be traded for any other one-dollar bill, fiat currencies (such as the US dollar) are fungible. Because one token may be swapped for another, cryptocurrency tokens (such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and MANA) are fungible.
Non-fungible tokens are digital assets that are not created equal. A non-fungible token is something like a movie ticket. A cinema ticket isn’t good for any film at any time. It’s for a certain film and a specific period. Ownership NFTs offer security and convenience on the blockchain, but only for a single item with a specified value.