Redistributed from: WWL-TV
You’ve probably heard about nonfungible tokens or NFTs, but do you know what they are? They become a fairly big business now, but the new tech investment opportunity, as we mentioned, is something that a lot of people don’t really understand. Today we’re try and learn more about what they are and how they’re actually being used for much more than just art and music.
NFT expert Connor Borrego is joining us with more on this. And thank you for joining us. And I’ll tell you what, I read a lot about this. I still don’t get it.
Hi, Eric. Thank you so much for having me on this morning. I’m super excited to be here and explain non fungible tokens, which is what NFT stands for. I think people feel like this is a really intimidating term, but for software engineers, this is a new way to describe the way that data is stored in the blockchain database. So you can think of it as a unique identifier, like a serial number that helps us track down a bit of information or data that’s stored on sort of this new blockchain cloud Internet that’s emerging. And people are buying all kinds of art and music on it.
But a lot of times you don’t actually get the art. You get a digital deed to it or whatever.
Yeah, exactly. So I think that the way that a lot of things are being used at the present moment. Right. Is around IP licensing. So when you are able to purchase the deed to an image. Right. You can take that property and print it onto T shirts, onto mugs, onto different items and resell them. And purchasing that IP gives you the right to do so. So that is one of the major ways that we’re seeing NFT’s being leveraged today, like by big projects such as the BAYC, which is short for Bored Ape Yacht Club, which you may have seen popping the news here and there.
And one of the criticisms is about the Copyright enforceability that it really is hard to enforce Copyright. Yeah.
So I think from a technology standpoint. Right. NFTs don’t necessarily solve the enforceability conflict necessarily, but when it comes to intellectual property, you start to acquire rights the moment you start using that publicly and with a blockchain, which is basically a publicly accessible database, what we can use the NFT for is to track that date of creation back to its origination. And that allows us to see when a piece of intellectual property first started being used in the public eye. And that’s one of the use cases that NFTs could potentially prove useful for in that situation.
So, Connor, who’s buying NFTs, and are they a good investment?
It really depends on the project you’re looking at. NFTs are being purchased by lots of young people, but also a lot of tech investors. And I think there’s a lot more speculation in the market at the moment because the utility is still being proven out. But one of the major things that I think is super valuable is if you look to web two which is propped up on an economy of buying and selling user data, NFTs provide abilities for us to come in and provide new ways to manage and govern that data that can open up a lot more doors. So I think while NFTs are still very much in early stage technology, we’re going to see a lot more from them in the near future.
All right. It’s baffling, though, but thank you for the explanation, Connor. We appreciate that. Yes. Thank you so much for having me on. Bye.
