What Is an NFT? Your Guide to Non-Fungible Tokens in 2025

As tokens are minted, they are assigned a unique identifier directly linked to one blockchain address. Each token has an owner, and the ownership information (i.e., the address in which the minted token resides) is publicly available. Even if 5,000 NFTs of the same exact item are minted (similar to general admission tickets to a movie), each token has a unique identifier and can be distinguished from the others. NFTs were created long before they became popular in the mainstream. Reportedly, the first NFT sold was “Quantum,” designed and tokenized by Kevin McKoy in 2014 on one blockchain (Namecoin), then minted on Ethereum and sold in 2021. In many NFT sales, what the buyer gets is simply the unique entry in the blockchain database that identifies them as the owner of the digital good — the token, rather than the thing the token represents.

No, but technically anything digital could be sold as an NFT (including articles from Quartz and The New York Times, provided you have anywhere from $1,800 to $560,000). William Shatner has sold Shatner-themed trading cards (one of which was apparently an X-ray of his teeth). In the boring, technical sense that every NFT is a unique token on the blockchain. But while it could be like a van Gogh, where there’s only one definitive actual version, it could also be like a trading card, where there’s 50 or hundreds of numbered copies of the same artwork.

How much are NFTs worth?

I don’t think anyone can stop you, but that’s not really what I meant. A lot of the conversation what is cryptojacking is about NFTs as an evolution of fine art collecting, only with digital art. Be cautious about works that appear to be created by famous artists.

Blockchain and Fungibility

For instance, on the Bitcoin blockchain, they are called Ordinals. Like an Ethereum-based NFT, a Bitcoin Ordinal can be bought, sold, and traded. The difference is Ethereum creates tokens for the asset, while Ordinals have serial numbers (called identifiers) assigned to satoshis—the smallest bitcoin denomination. Yes, there have been a number of NFT thefts in recent months, as the price of popular NFTs has climbed. And hackers recently stole $1.7 million worth of NFTs from users of OpenSea, the largest NFT trading platform.

Ethereum is a cryptocurrency, like bitcoin or dogecoin, but its blockchain also keeps track of who’s holding and trading NFTs. First, you usually have to buy a cryptocurrency, like Ethereum. Some of the popular ones include KnownOrigin, Rarible and OpenSea. Users can now mint and sell NFTs on the Crypto.com NFT Marketplace through a simple creator application process. Head over to Crypto.com NFT and click ‘Create’ on the navigation bar to be directed to the application page. Creators should detail their journey and provide concrete examples of their past experience.

• Blockchains’ exhaustive record-keeping means that apps built atop them can create snippets of code that can be tracked as distinct entities and transferred from user to user.
• For instance, you couldn’t trade a shiny Charizard Pokemon card for a “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, 1909 American Caramel baseball card like-for-like.
• That’s because ownership is already baked into the content itself.
• It’s not bulletproof, but it’s better than having your million-dollar JPG stored on Google Photos.
• It was launched by Assange in partnership with digital artist Pak to raise funds for Assange’s ongoing, high-profile court case.

Traditional databases arrange information into rows and columns that make up tables. With blockchains, however, information is digitally formatted and collected into clusters or blocks. In contrast, bills in US currency are an example of a fungible good. You can exchange one $50 bill for five $10 bills or two $20 bills and two $5 bills. Anything that is mutually interchangeable can be described as fungible.

“Non-fungible tokens” use cryptocurrencies’ blockchains to sell original versions of digital artefacts

These community NFTs signal a kind of in-group status, and it’s become customary for owners to display them as their Twitter profile picture, marking themselves as a Bored Ape or a Cool Cat, or whatever. And everyone in crypto world knows that NFTs from the most valuable collections sell for millions of dollars apiece, which is why you see celebrities like Jay-Z and Snoop Dogg showing off theirs on Twitter. But a defense of NFTs I’ve heard from people in the industry — or, at least, an explanation for their popularity — is that NFTs aren’t unique in their uselessness. People spend money on objects of no practical value all the time — maybe to feel good, maybe to show off to their friends, maybe to signal membership in a group.

This simple greeting is part of buy sell and trade cryptocurrency instantly NFT culture on social platforms. Flipping is buying an NFT with the goal of quickly selling it for profit. This strategy involves tracking trends and knowing the market well.

Delisting NFT means the removal of it from being sold on an NFT marketplace. Often, people delist to hold onto their NFTs if they believe the price will increase. Airdrops are free NFTs or tokens given to a specific group of wallet holders. Often, they reward early supporters or loyal members of a community.

Artist and buyer fees

The value of cryptocurrency depends on its utility, similar to the US dollar. If every merchant in the US decided to stop accepting US dollars, their value would plummet because they are purely economical. Since an NFT can represent anything from artwork to a buy bitcoin cash with cash in philippines buy bitcoin with google play balance video game, its value depends on factors like investors, collectors, and rarity. A non-fungible token is a digital identifier recorded in the blockchain.