I've been a professional C, Perl, PHP and Python developer.
I'm an ex-sysadmin from the late 20th century.
These days I do more Javascript and CSS and whatnot, and promote UX and accessibility.
An NFT allows the buyer to associate themselves, with a URL, to a copy of the item.
There's still no such thing as an "original" item with digital copies. The copy on the author's drive is older but identical to the copy referenced by the URL, for example.
So why are people willing to spend millions on something they could easily screenshot or download?
Because people see intangible things as an investment and want to create money from nothing, a.k.a. the Greater Fool Theory. Nobody wants a bad picture of a monkey for a zillion bucks; they hope to sell it to someone else later and that it'll be famous because it was an early example of an NFT and is distinctive enough to be easily recognised. This is not particularly different to other features of capitalism.
If you have a reproduction of a Van Gogh which is so close to the original - say, it's been created by a Star Trek replicator - that even the experts can't tell which one is which, an NFT would be the way to tell who owned the original... provided no bad actor switched the URL when you weren't looking, of course.
Normally, in an online game, you can buy items for your character, but that’s as far as it goes. With NFTs, you can recoup your money by selling the items once you’re finished with them.
These are worthless as the game gets older and eventually shuts down. The only way selling them works is if you get out of the game early. It's almost like there's a bubble!
Am a software developer with 4+ years of experience in Javascript, Typescript, ReactJs, NextJs, NodeJs, ExpressJs, Firebase, etc. Am the founder of melbite - Home of creators
An NFT allows the buyer to associate themselves, with a URL, to a copy of the item.
There's still no such thing as an "original" item with digital copies. The copy on the author's drive is older but identical to the copy referenced by the URL, for example.
Because people see intangible things as an investment and want to create money from nothing, a.k.a. the Greater Fool Theory. Nobody wants a bad picture of a monkey for a zillion bucks; they hope to sell it to someone else later and that it'll be famous because it was an early example of an NFT and is distinctive enough to be easily recognised. This is not particularly different to other features of capitalism.
If you have a reproduction of a Van Gogh which is so close to the original - say, it's been created by a Star Trek replicator - that even the experts can't tell which one is which, an NFT would be the way to tell who owned the original... provided no bad actor switched the URL when you weren't looking, of course.
These are worthless as the game gets older and eventually shuts down. The only way selling them works is if you get out of the game early. It's almost like there's a bubble!
Wow!, A great and detailed explanation.