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A college student’s guide to NFTs

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In today’s technologically advanced world filled with media, there aren’t many things left that haven’t found their place in the digital space. The recent emergence of NFTs, non-fungible tokens, has created a platform for digital one-of-a-kind art to be bought and sold. Non-fungible token means a blockchain of data that can’t be replaced, and NFTs use Ethereum, a cryptocurrency, as this data.

Although a lot of the popular NFTs talked about are worth immense amounts of money, there are less expensive ones for people who are interested in either buying for fun or buying to sell at a lower risk. Zora Stanik, a senior at the University of Edinburgh, shares her experience with NFTs, “I bought an NFT from a collection called Loopy Donuts for about $120, I have held onto it for a couple weeks and already gotten a few offers for more than I spent on it.”

Art has long been considered exclusive and socially prestigious, but with NFTs opening up the market for digital art, we are seeing changes in this mindset. It has now formed a marketplace for artists to work digitally and promote their art in new ways, as well as bringing in new audiences and investors that weren’t part of the art world before.

Zipeng Zhu, creative director for the creative studio Dazzle in New York City, gave his opinion on NFT’s opportunities for graphic design, saying that, “NFT is making all the waves. Good and bad. It’s a new way for graphic designers to make a living, but there is also a lot of ugly stuff out there in the NFT marketplace.”

There are opportunities with NFTs that Zhu says he has seen people in his field make a living from. One of the most popular NFTs is the Bored Ape collection, founded by Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow, with their most expensive NFT sold at $2.8 million in January 2022.

Brianna Verni, a 19-year-old college student, speaks for a lot of people when she says, “I really don’t know much about them, some of the ones I’ve seen are cool but I don’t understand why anyone would want to buy them aside from selling them.”

Opinions on NFTs are very mixed, with some people dipping their toe into this new world of digital art and others simply not seeing the appeal. Buying NFTs is a risk since some can be worth millions and some can be worthless, but Stanik says if you do your research and don’t spend too much money on them, it can be a safe and fun opportunity to try and make some extra cash or enjoy digital artwork.

Featured image courtesy of Pexels

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A college student’s guide to NFTs