After a few years of building in silence, crypto is ready to make some noise again. Everyone is familiar with the rise and fall of Bitcoin. The bull run started during the pandemic and ravaged every sector of finance until it reached a peak of almost $70k. Then, when everyone was hoping for a massive return, the price of Bitcoin plummeted to $15k.
The entire world was interested in cryptocurrencies. And when prices dropped, everyone disappeared. The crypto world felt like a ghost town of only enthusiasts who knew about the technology and kept building. Many projects failed, and the likes of Sam Bankman Fried ruined the reputation of crypto that took over a decade to build.
Luckily, there are projects that pushed through and are ready for the future. Telos is one example. It’s the fastest Ethereum Virtual Machine on the planet. Now, you can think of an idea, add Web3 elements to it, and deploy it in a few hours.
During the bear market, the crypto world became closer to the fiat currencies we’re all familiar with. New payment solutions like https://nftpay.xyz/telos/ came about, and they’ve added support for NFTs. Web3 is ready for a comeback!
What are NFTs?
NFTs used to be the most popular way to use your crypto. Instead of holding tokens on an exchange or a decentralized wallet, people bought JPEGs of art. You’ve probably seen headlines where Eminem, Snoop Dogg, and Justin Bieber changed their profile pictures to images of digital monkeys. That collection is known as Bored Ape Yacht Club, and it’s one of the most popular NFT projects in the world.
But NFTs are way more than regular images that you can use as a profile pic on Twitter. They serve a purpose in the Web3 world because you can have actual ownership.
Here’s an example. If a digital artist creates an image and posts it online, anyone can download it and use it. Copyright issues are a massive problem in the art world. NFTs solve that because the owner has the image as a token.
But even though NFTs are mainly thought of as digital art, there’s more to their story. Every niche in the world will become revolutionized by Web3 technology. Just like computers and smartphones changed the workplace, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs will change the internet. Keep on reading to find out how.
Why are NFTs important?
The first area that NFTs disrupted was gaming. Gamers know that developers want to extract as much value from them as possible. That’s how Ethereum’s founder, Vitalik Buterin thought of the idea to create the project.
He was a massive World of Warcraft player. He spent hundreds of hours creating and enhancing his in-game character. And then one day, the game decided to nerf it, which made it unusable in the game.
Practically, the game decided to make an update without talking to the players, and all of his efforts fell down the drain. He recounts the experience as one of the horrors of centralization.
When one centralized body has control over a product, there’s no way to influence what they do with it. Gaming NFTs serve as digital assets that have intrinsic value, and you can trade them on online marketplaces.
So even if a game disappears, the NFTs from it will still remain. That’s one use case that’s becoming very popular thanks to games like Axie Infinity.
A real-world NFT use case comes in medicine. Let’s say you’re stranded in a country without your medical record. If you get sick, the local doctor will have to contact your home country, and then ask for your records through an embassy.
In the case of an emergency, that’s too much time wasted. If you had a medical NFT with all of your checkups, diagnoses, blood type, and allergies, and only doctors could access it, the process would be much simpler.
Concerts, comedy events, and movies can distribute NFTs instead of tickets. That way, they’re saving money on printing, and you receive the emotional sentiment of going to an event. Physical tickets made going to such events feel special. Digital tickets removed the subjective part of collecting memories. Luckily, NFTs can bring that back.
Another use case is in the metaverse. Facebook rebranded into Meta, so virtual worlds are coming. The office might get a revamp, just like it did with remote work. The metaverse is supposed to be a place where people hang out digitally. So buying a physical product like shoes can translate into the metaverse, and you can equip your character.
How can you buy them?
With many utilities available, and new ones coming up each day, NFTs will be pretty important. But they had one major setback a few years ago. The only way to purchase an NFT was to buy cryptocurrencies first on a centralized exchange.
Then, you had to transfer the crypto to a decentralized wallet. And only after signing a smart contract, you could mint a non-fungible token. That’s a lot of work for people who aren’t tech-savvy.
Luckily, there’ve been leaps and bounds of progress. Now, payment solutions for different chains allow users to buy NFTs with credit cards. Of course, the decentralized part of buying with a wallet still exists. But this is a nice addition to a space that was limited to only people who understood how the technology works.
What does the future hold for NFTs?
NFTs will continue to develop, and they will change how we view the digital world. They represent being part of a specific community. People will invest in them because some virtual items have more value than physical ones. Click here to learn more.
Look at the verification checkmarks on Instagram and Twitter before the updates. People would rather have those, compared to a souvenir at home because more of their friends are going to see and notice the checkmark than come visit them in person.
The future is online, and non-fungible tokens will democratize how businesses work. Finally, users will have a say in how projects move forward, and create community-centric experiences.
