Many people ask themselves what the relevance of NFTs is, and other than buying and selling them, what else can be done with these tokens? As the year 2021 started, there was heightened interest in non-fungible token (NFT), and the month of March saw a great deal of traffic going into NFTs. These days, there are daily updates on art deals with NFTs. The most interesting part of all this is that people who were previously ignorant of crypto are now getting more interested in NFTs.
The best example of how NFTs are taking the market by storm is how Beeple sold his art piece for $69.3 million at the prestigious Christie’s auction. In addition, an official announcement from the Hermitage Museum talked of their facility in Saint Petersburg, Russia holding an NFT art exhibition in 2021.
The main thing to understand about the NFTs is their uniqueness because these pieces of digital art cannot be faked, divided, or replaced. The creator or author of this token can easily prove the ownership of said token and can pinpoint how the transfer of the ownership occurred. This means that the owner of this product can tokenize it when they release it as an NFT. They can then assign a price to their product and put it up for auction. Whoever wins the bid during auction and buys it, receives the right to own and dispose of the product, and all information pertaining the token is recorded on the blockchain.
The good thing about this new approach in the crypto space is that operating with tokens is much cheaper than having to operate with real objects. The challenge is that platforms for the creation and sale of NFTs are in their infancy stages and the law does not completely cover NFTs so proving ownership in terms of intellectual property rights might be an uphill task.
Users are encouraged to remain vigilant when accessing NFT platforms and transacting on them, just as they do in other crypto spaces. This is not to say that NFT platforms have poor security, but it is the new users who do not have full knowledge on how to use them safely.
It is never enough to buy a token and leave it stored on the platform, one must protect their accounts from issues such as theft, account hijacking, and use of their credit card information to purchase NFT without their authorization. A good example is from March 2021 when the trading platform, Nifty Gateway reported that some users were facing some of these issues.
I’ve learned that you obviously need 2FA on every account. This seems obvious, but I was lazy in one moment and got punished for it. I’m so thankful and pleased to say that @niftygateway was able to resolve this issue and completely restored 100% of the stolen art! 👏 😄 🥲
— Keyboard Monkey (@KeyboardMonkey3) March 16, 2021
Users must protect their accounts by keeping their passwords and other account information in a safe place and enable two-factor authentication because most platforms provide these opportunities. Everyone venturing into NFT has a responsibility to promote security within the platforms by protecting their items.
Image courtesy of Flickr
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