An NFT is an asset that has its own unique identity and cannot be replicated or cloned. They are often used for trading card games, video games, and collectibles. Essentially, they are the cryptocurrency equivalent of baseball cards. As we all know, NFTs are becoming more and more mainstream. The idea of owning a digital asset that cannot be destroyed or counterfeited is very appealing to people who value their privacy and security. Visa has just helped propel the mainstreaming of NFTs by buying a CryptoPunk – an early NFT series – for $165,000. The Context: One Purchase of Many While Visa spent 50 ETH on a Cryptopunk, this is just one NFT purchase of thousands, amounting to sales in the billions of dollars this year alone. Visa’s purchase was part of a much larger trend this year where companies began buying into non-fungible tokens as a way to better understand and analyze new asset classes that were previously unavailable to them. Large firms and retail investors alike have all shown interest in purchasing non-fungible assets as a means of gaining insights into new market opportunities that are not currently reflected in traditional financial data sets or indices. This is reflected in the fact that NFT sales have surged from just a few million last year to several billion dollars this year. The purchase by Visa also highlights another important point about digital collectibles: they’re not just for ...
