A 92-second video was sold for a whopping $3.5 million. Is NFT, which makes Bitcoin pale in comparison, really that valuable?

If you think virtual currency is unreliable, then you haven't seen NFT.

On October 9, Sotheby's Hong Kong held its autumn auction, with masterpieces by Rodin and other masters participating in the auction. However, this time, the buyers seemed to have less enthusiasm for art, and the masterpieces of these masters either failed to be sold or were withdrawn, and the prices of the works sold were also lower than expected.

In this auction, the most dazzling item was a 1 minute and 32 second clip of "In the Mood for Love", which started at HK$1.6 million and was eventually sold at a high price of HK$4.284 million (approximately RMB 3.55 million).

The reason why this clip was sold at such a high price is, on the one hand, because the scenes in it have never been released before, and on the other hand, it is because it has a special identity - NFT.

The so-called NFT refers to "Non-Fungible Token", which is similar to cryptocurrency and is a product based on blockchain technology.

The so-called homogeneous tokens refer to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. There is no difference between a Bitcoin in the hands of a mining boss and a Bitcoin in the hands of Musk. NFTs, on the other hand, are similar to real currencies and have their own numbers, so they are indivisible and irreplaceable. There will not be two identical NFTs in the world, just like there will not be two RMB notes with the same number.

NFT was first born from the cryptocurrency Ethereum. In 2017, Ethereum launched a batch of pixel avatars called CryptoPunks. Each avatar has randomly generated features. There are 10,000 avatars in total, and there are no duplicates. Users who have opened an Ethereum wallet can receive them for free and trade them on their own.

Subsequently, a small game called Cryptokitty became popular in the Ethereum community. If you own two or more cats, you can breed new cats. If you breed rare characteristics, you can sell them at a higher price. This attracted countless people to join the game. They used Ethereum to buy "breeding cats", sold the bred cats, and then bought mining machines to continue mining. Thus, the "nesting doll" situation was formed.

In August this year, NBA star Stephen Curry made NFTs well-known to the fans. Curry changed his Twitter avatar to a monkey, which is from the Bored Ape series, a set of ape-themed avatars that also have randomly generated features and are limited to 10,000. Curry's avatar has two rare attributes: "zombie eyes" and "tweed suit", with a probability of 3% and 1% respectively.

It was probably this rarity that attracted the Golden State Warriors star, who eventually spent 55 Ethereums, or about $180,000, to buy it. In order to keep his "pet monkey" from feeling "lonely," he spent another $18,000 to buy a leopard-print "companion dog" for the virtual monkey.

In addition to this randomly generated virtual item, NFT has also entered other fields. Due to the non-replicability of NFT, it has also begun to be used as a copyright mark for art products such as paintings and music. The "In the Mood for Love" trailer that was filmed this time is the first movie NFT work.

In addition, the recently popular concept of "metaverse" is also frequently linked to NFT. To form the metaverse, the economic system is an indispensable part, which means that currency and commodities are needed. NFT, which can give "value" to virtual items, is naturally regarded as the most ideal revenue-generating model for the metaverse.

Even the financial industry seems to have begun to recognize NFT. In August this year, the US credit card company VISA purchased CrytoPunks' NFT work numbered 7610 for $150,000. At the same time, they also stated that they wanted to allow fans to participate in crypto commerce.

NFT seems to have become a new direction for economic development.

But if you think about it calmly, there are still many obvious problems with NFT. The most obvious one is: it seems meaningless.

When we buy NFTs, what do we actually buy? A unique work? But the difference between an NFT "original" and a "copy" is not as obvious as the difference between an authentic painting and a print, or there is no difference at all. The work you bought at a high price can also be downloaded, copied and uploaded by anyone, and not many people have the leisure to look through the source code of the file to confirm who the "owner" of the work is.

In other words, buying an NFT is largely about buying bragging rights, but who cares? Would you show your social account avatar at a party and say "I own this avatar"? Do you want to explain that your avatar is marked, so it has "value"?

In essence, NFT satisfies a primitive desire of creatures: to mark sovereignty. But why should humans, who are much smarter than dogs, pay a lot of money for something that a puppy can do by just lifting its legs?

At the same time, NFT has not played the positive role in copyright that many people expected.

Many people believe that NFT can allow some artists to earn income. After all, pictures can be circulated freely on the Internet nowadays, but creators often do not get compensation. NFT can clarify the copyright of the work, allowing creators to earn income and forming a virtuous circle.

But if you really want a work that is completely your own, why don’t you ask the creator to do it? If you really care about the creator’s income, why don’t you just give him a reward? What’s the point of “helping” the creator in a roundabout way through NFT?

And NFT itself is far from as good as imagined.

NFT has a fatal problem, that is, as far as the current situation is concerned, there is no guarantee that the person who marks a work and makes a profit from it is the original author.

In fact, many creators have said that their works have been made into NFTs by others for profit without authorization. Previously, there were even robot accounts that could automatically tag tweets and pictures.

Today’s NFTs have not only failed to become a copyright protection zone, but have also facilitated copyright theft. The victimized creators’ complaints on the Internet have not received a response from the platform, and naturally no one will compensate them for their losses. The only way they can resist is to set their social accounts to private.

In addition to the hard work of the creators, any photo posted by anyone can be marked as NFT. In other words, personal life and privacy may be sold without permission. The mere thought of this possibility is chilling.

NFT and cryptocurrency are closely linked, and both are currently in a gray area of ​​regulation. This naturally meets the "decentralization" demands of some people, but for more ordinary consumers, in a field without regulation, once the gambler mentality and the instinct that scarcity makes things valuable are incited by people with ulterior motives, only the sickle of harvest awaits us.

In fact, we don’t need NFT at all, and we won’t benefit from NFT. The only value it can bring is the pale and powerless “this NFT belongs to me” - but don’t you think this reason is really ridiculous?

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.