Non-fungible tokens, or simply NFTs are the hottest trend to emerge in the wider digital assets industry in 2021.
This emerging landscape in the crypto industry took the world by storm and received mainstream attention for the first time when popular digital artist Beeple sold the “Everydays, The First 5000 Days” NFT for a whopping $69 million in ether (ETH) via a first-of-its-kind auction at Christie’s.
The high-profile NFT auction of Beeple’s art opened the floodgates for NFT adoption with a large plethora of digital artists now choosing to sell their work online in a secure and authentic manner in the form of NFTs. The growing popularity of NFT projects such as CryptoPunks, Moon Cat, and most recently, Axie Infinity continues to remind us why NFTs are the talk of the crypto industry today.
While an increasing number of digital artists choose to sell their precious artwork in the form of NFTs, not many people might know that the NFT’s pool of use cases extends far beyond just being used as art.
NFTs in the World of Music
Earlier this year, American rock band Kings of Leon announced it would launch its latest studio album, titled When You See Yourself in the form of an NFT. While the album was also released digitally on other music streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, its NFT sales carried extra benefits such as limited-edition vinyl and front-row seats to future concerts.
The aforementioned example is a strong indication of the fact that NFTs are not merely for digital art. NFTs are proof of someone owning a certain piece of art or in this case, a music album, and that the said asset is authentic as the proof of authenticity comes from the underlying blockchain network and can easily be verified on-chain.
In the same vein, Indian beatboxer and National Award-winning architect, Abhishek “ABVERSE” Bhaskar recently announced the launch of Metavoice – the world’s first-ever Beatboxing generated digital art that enables people to see the human voice instead of just hearing it.
A former Brand Ambassador at Adidas Originals JBL, Abhishek has also conducted 2 of India’s biggest beatboxing workshops with more than 3000 participants.
Speaking about Metavoice, Bhaskar remarked:
“The Metavoice Project is an amalgamation of Beatboxing (Art) Design (Visual), allowing people to see the human voice, rather than just hear it. So, my approach towards NFTs is always to provide unique assets and share them with the Metaverse for people to experience.”
Adding:
“NFTs is the right way to showcase my work, as it is unique, the world’s first-ever of its kind, and hence, allowing people to own a piece of my work across the years, is very special to me.”
Clearly, NFTs foray into the music industry has only just commenced, and if the number of musicians joining the NFT bandwagon is anything to go by, NFT detractors could be in for a surprise.
NFTs to Tokenize Certificates and Credentials
Besides their use as digital art or in the music industry, NFTs can also be leveraged to tackle the ravaging document counterfeiting and forgery menace.
An NFTs proof of authenticity can be accessed publicly by anyone in the world with an Internet connection which makes them ideal for a certificate, or credential verification purposes. An increasing number of countries the world over are already taking note of the promising NFT use case.
For instance, recently, India launched the world’s largest blockchain-based diploma verification system where certificates and diplomas will be tokenized on the Ethereum blockchain to verify their authenticity.
Essentially, NFTs can be used to verify the authenticity of any kind of official document such as a driving license, a music concert ticket, a ticket for a sporting event, and others.
NFTs to Tokenize Collectibles and Antiques
Remember the ‘Disaster Girl’ meme? The girl pictured in the meme named Zoe Roth recently sold the image as an NFT for a whopping $500,000.
If the above example makes you think NFTs can only thrive in the meme-world, consider a more formal example.
The recently elected Israeli president, Isaac Herzog was presented with a digital copy or an NFT of his father’s signed oath of office from 38 years ago by the Israeli parliament.
Similarly, in June, former Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’ handwritten job application from 1973 was digitized as an NFT and is currently under auction along with a physical copy of the same.
Indeed, there is no dearth of promising use-cases for NFTs across different industries. One only needs to find an existing bottleneck plaguing their business and examine if tokenization would help mitigate it.
As the global economy continues to pivot towards the digital revolution of the 21st century, expect NFTs to continue to be a force to reckon with.
