{"id":57352,"date":"2021-03-30T11:35:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-30T11:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/creativemarket.com\/blog\/?p=57352"},"modified":"2024-04-22T03:23:53","modified_gmt":"2024-04-22T10:23:53","slug":"creatives-guide-nfts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/creativemarket.com\/blog\/creatives-guide-nfts","title":{"rendered":"What Every Creative Needs to Know About NFTs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whether you’re an artist or a collector, you can stand to benefit from an NFT<\/strong>, short for non-fungible token. Think of NFTs as digital certificates of authority that speak to the true origin of a specific piece of art<\/a>, design, or collectible.

Suddenly spiking in popularity in the last couple of months, NFTs are now among the hottest digital and design trends<\/a> in the world. When something is harder to come by—along with strong demand for it—its value tends to skyrocket. NFTs, therefore, can be game-changers for creatives who seek to create scarcity in their unique artworks.<\/p>

Read on to figure out exactly what NFTs can do for your career as an artist.<\/p>

<\/span>What Is an NFT?<\/span><\/h2>

As mentioned above, NFT stands for non-fungible token<\/em>. In other words, it’s a good or product that cannot<\/em> be replaced by an identical item.<\/p>

For something to be fungible<\/strong> in the first place, it implies that there is equal value between two assets of the same kind. Without getting too deep into economic theory, it’s essentially an asset that’s mutually interchangeable with something of the same kind.<\/p>

Let’s look at an easy-to-understand example:<\/p>

Take the concept of a dollar bill.<\/strong> How many dollar bills<\/a> has the federal mint printed throughout the years? Too many to keep track of. They are legion, and any one of them serves its purpose just as well as any other. You can take a dollar bill from 2005 and use it to buy something worth exactly $1, just as well as you can take a dollar bill from 2015 and use that bill to purchase something for exactly $1.<\/p>

Therefore, these dollar bills are said to be fungible.<\/em><\/p>

Since it’s the unique<\/em> identifier of a very specific digital good, an NFT is the exact opposite: it serves as the distinct barcode for a digital asset that can’t be replaced.<\/strong><\/p>

It’s really a digital token, a form of cryptocurrency—a virtual type of currency where transactions are maintained and recorded by a decentralized system that uses cryptography, instead of being either issued or regulated by a central authority such as a bank. Think of this token as just another form of cryptocurrency, like more well-known ones such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Of course, its non-fungible nature makes it a cut above your ordinary cryptocurrency.<\/p>

Since the average NTF stores additional information—the unique identifier mentioned above—the token comes into its own as more than just currency. A broad definition would be that it stands for pretty much anything<\/em> that can be stored digitally and to which real value can be assigned.<\/p>

Here are just some examples of various kinds of this non-fungible:<\/p>