NFTs, explained: what they are and why theyre suddenly worth millions
Although they’ve been around since 2014, NFT s are gaining notoriety now because they are becoming an increasingly popular way to buy and sell digital artwork. The market for NFTs was worth a staggering $41 billion in 2021 alone, an amount that is approaching the total value of the entire global fine art market. Non-fungible tokens, which use blockchain technology just like cryptocurrency, are generally secure. The distributed nature of blockchains makes NFTs difficult to hack. One security risk for NFTs is that you could lose access to your non-fungible token if the platform hosting the NFT goes out of business. Many NFTs can only be purchased with Ether, so owning some of this cryptocurrency—and storing it in a digital wallet—is usually the first step. These NFTs can't be regular cryptocurrencies, as each NFT has a distinct value, hence non-fungible. Other cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, are fungible, meaning that each ETH or BTC holds the same value as any other B