So you’ve probably heard of it three letters N F T
it stands for a non-fungible token if you are anything like I was before i took a deep dive into
what it meant to buy an nft you might be wondering how this actually works what is the point of
buying a digital asset now even though you might be foggy on the concept there is no doubt
that this new investment opportunity out there is catching wind and with many investments timing is
everything you want to get in while it’s hot and let’s be real my friends right now nft world is
hot so let’s sit down for some coffee bagels and legal let’s talk about what it means to buy an
nft i’m andy contegullia i’m the owner and the founder of the conteguia law firm here in Denver
colorado as a business owner and really as a human in general it’s good to be mindful of the trends
going on around the world and nfts well it is hard to say really at this point if it is a trend or
if it is a new asset class that will serve as an investment option going forward but whatever it
is it is important that you understand the ends
And the outs and the legalities behind it so
exactly what is an nft well first let’s talk about what a token is all right the phenomenon of
cryptocurrency and blockchain has really flooded the media in our news feeds and a lot of people
have made a lot of money and they’ve also lost a lot of money trading digital currencies otherwise
known as digital tokens all right at the very high level a token is an asset and if you have a
digital token you can trade these digital tokens just as you would trade stocks on the stock market
or if you use digital tokens such as Ethereum or bitcoin you can also purchase nfts an nft or a
the non-fungible token is a less liquid version of a digital currency all right to keep it simple
it just replaced the word fungible with the word replaceable it is a non-replaceable token it is
a one-of-a-kind token that can be bought and sold on an nft marketplace but what is it really
well any media or content can be minted or made into an nft it can be anything from digital
art or a simple graphic it can be a meme it can be a short video a song really any type of consumable
content that people can look at read listen to or
Watch so if we were to translate this to the real
world the mona lisa is a non-fungible asset that could be purchased for millions of dollars if it
is ever for sale the louver in paris has dibs on the mona lisa so i doubt they’d really actually
ever give that up but take any painting a picasso monet van gogh any of their paintings are one of
a kind that are valued at millions of dollars it’s the same concept here in the nft marketplace but
instead of an amazing beautifully crafted canvas of genius, it could be a cat meme right for example
jack dorsey the former CEO of Twitter he auctioned off his first tweet as ever as an nft and it sold
for 2.9 million dollars to Malaysian businessman highlight of LeBron James making baskets sold
for two hundred thousand dollars so how are these simple pieces of content being valued so
high well it’s because people bid on them as if they wouldn’t at an auction and the price goes up
without really any cap so if you’ve ever bought anything off of eBay it’s a similar concept
people bid on nfts and it ends up being sold to the highest bidder right the seller can also come
in at a fixed price and you can just click a buy
Now button and get your nft and take ownership of
it all right keep in mind you need a crypto wallet with coins in it usually Ethereum to make the
purchases and cover any fees associated with the nft purchase but let’s talk about ownership once
you buy it what exactly does that mean what value does that cat meme add to your life now that you
purchased it well for one thing you theoretically have rights to that content it is yours you can
use it on your own website you can post it on your Instagram you can cash out and turn it back into
Ethereum and then back into dollars if you want or you can resell it and try to turn a profit on
the sale right think of it as owning the copyright to that piece of content it is yours and you can
do with it as you please you have the right to make money off of the content or you can make it
your desktop wallpaper if that’s what you end up choosing the beauty here is that there will never
be a replication of that piece of content now you might be thinking well wait a minute can’t the
a person who made that graphic just make another one well technically they can and would be a knockoff