
March 4, 2021
Why NFTs Are Attracting Everyday People to Crypto | Jake Brukhman on Unconfirmed Podcast
Check out Unconfirmed Podcast Episode Page & Show Notes
Key Takeaways
- Whereas a cryptocurrency has many identical units all worth the same, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) represent unique digital assets.
- For instance, collectibles, 3D models, stock photography, syndicated content, music royalties, movies, articles, blog posts, books, etc.
- NFTs allow creators to sell and license digital content to users in various ways, which opens up liquidity in previously non-tradable paper rights
- Additionally, blockchain technology replaces privately owned market places with a decentralized smart contract-based system
- Intellectual property rights can apply to NFTs in different jurisdictions, platforms will facilitate agreement terms between buyers and creators
Intro
- Jake Brukhman (@jbrukh) is the cofounder and CEO of CoinFund
- Host: Laura Shin (@laurashin)
What are NFTs?
- Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) represent unique digital assets. By contrast, a cryptocurrency has many identical units all worth the same
- Think of unique digital objects as an asset class, with NFTs as a technology to denote ownership and royalty streams to these objects
- For instance, collectibles, 3D models, stock photography, syndicated content, music royalties, movies, articles, blog posts, books, etc.
- NFTs are “liquid intellectual property rights for digital content”
- Creators of digital art and collectibles can create, trade, and license NFTs, and investors can invest in NFT companies
Community-Owned Platforms
- Blockchain technology disrupts privately owned market places and replaces them with a decentralized smart contract-based system
- Ownership and governance is democratized among participants and token holders
- Tokens can be traded, crowd-funded, and incorporated into other financialization schemes to manage risk
- For instance, using NFTs as collateral or co-ownership of a single NFT
Copyright Concerns
- Owning an NFT means buying intellectual property. An analogy: people can download the Mona Lisa online, but only the Louvre holds the property
- Intellectual property rights can apply to NFTs in different jurisdictions, platforms will facilitate agreement terms between buyers and creators
- These property rights may also be enumerated in traditional legal contracts (e.g. Open Law)
- Additionally, some projects like Aragon are working on a global digital jurisdiction and global on-chain dispute resolution
- In short, NFT creators can give the purchaser legal property rights. In the long term, those property rights might be enforced on-chain
Future of NFTs
- Finance is no longer limited to academia and investors and professionals. DEFI and NFTs educate the younger generation about finance.
- Trading digital art and collectibles comes naturally to people. Thus, Jake predicts the NFT space can get on par with DEFI space
- Keep in mind, platforms like Rarible are at 100K monthly active users currently