Compared to what our ancestors had, we can say that technology has advanced so much. In their time, they had to rely solely on texts, calls, and emails to stay connected when far apart. Now, we have social media networks. These are essentially virtual worlds where the users can talk and connect to people from anywhere in the world.
Aside from social media, another proof of technology’s progression is cryptocurrencies. These are digital or virtual currencies encrypted by cryptography. Cryptocurrencies can be used to purchase things just like real money, as long as the seller accepts them as a method of payment. For instance, private jet company BitFly accepts payment in Bitcoin – one of the most known cryptocurrencies. Crypto tokens can also be used to store value or to make investments.
Do All Twitter Followers Qualify for NFTs?
What makes cryptocurrencies great is their portability, divisibility, inflation resistance, and transparency. Also, they are generally not issued by any central authority. That means they are not subject to government interference or manipulation.
People can earn more crypto tokens without spending money in different ways. But, cryptography encryption prevents the generation of counterfeits and double-spending.
Social media giant Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is known to be one of the cryptocurrencies’ biggest supporters. He openly admitted his interest in virtual currencies. Dorsey also named Bitcoin as probably the best native currency of the internet. In fact, his financial services and digital payments company Square is the world’s third-largest corporate holder of Bitcoin.
Now, there is an uprising trend that is similar and connected to cryptocurrencies. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are steadily becoming more known. Based on Twitter’s activity last June 30, it seems like the platform is interested in the space.
Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs)
The latest addition to the digital market is Non-fungible tokens. If cryptocurrencies are virtual money, Non-fungible tokens are assets. They can be used to represent items such as photos, videos, audio, and other types of digital files. Like cryptocurrencies, however, these tokens are stored in the blockchain.
Fungibility means a good or asset to be interchanged with other goods or assets of the same value. For example, one can exchange a $100 bill with twenty $5 bills. Regardless of their form, they hold the same value. Bitcoins are also considered fungible.
No-fungible assets are unique and therefore not interchangeable. For example, the value of Starry Night is not equal to that of a poster of the same painting.
Will Followers on Twitter Try To Get NFTs?
With that said, NFTs’ purpose is to assert the authenticity of a digital asset. Unlike physical paintings, digital works are more prone to forgery. People can easily copy or duplicate them and claim ownership. As a result, business for digital artists is quite hard. Nothing is as easy as buying real Twitter followers to this day!
Now, they can avoid these issues by turning each of their artworks into NFTs. People replicate their works as much as they want. But, the original will still have more value because there is a digital certificate that confirms its authenticity.
The first application of NFTs is on the game Cryptokitties. Cryptokitties operates on Ethereum’s underlying blockchain network. In the game, players can buy, breed, and sell virtual cats. Each cat is considered an NFT for they have different traits and Attributes. So no two users will have the same cat, meaning each individual cat in the game has its own value. Their original owner is also validated through the blockchain.
To get a feel of how much you can make on Cryptokitties, you need to meet Dragon. Dragon, the most expensive Cryptokitty, was sold for 600 ETH. That is $172,000 for a single virtual cat!
While Cyptokitties was what popularized NFTs, the tokens are now used for many, and arguably, more important things.
Twitter’s NFT Giveaway to Followers
Earlier this year., Jack Dorsey sold his first Tweet as an NFT through a website called Valuables by Cent. The website is not affiliated with Twitter but gives people the option to mint and sell NFTs of tweets. The Twitter executive’s NFT sold for 1630 ETH – about $2.9 M at the time of sale. Dorsey donated the proceeds to GiveDirectly to help Africans during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Twitter seems to be interested in further investing in NFTs. There have been 29 million tweets about them since the start of this year, so that could have contributed to that.
On June 30, Twitter changed its bio to “dropping NFTs all day.” Furthermore, its new header read, “I’ve stopped moisturizing because tweeting about NFTs is keeping me young now.” And so it did.
The company minted seven tokenized assets on Rarible- an NFT marketplace – and Tweeted about them. Its tweet said, “140 NFTs for 140 of you, besties,” captioned to a presentation of the seven gifs with NFTs.
They cannot be bought, but the users can get one for free by simply replying to the tweet. Each token is produced in editions of 20, so there are 140 NFTs in total.
The NFTs are for the gifs Vitamin T, Furry Twitter, Reply Guy, Rare Form, First Born, Building Characters, Twitter Jggl.
The Future of NFTs
While the lucky winners can get them for free, they can sell them for a huge sum of money. Alternatively, they can keep them for bragging rights.
NFTs’ growth story is one of the biggest successes in crypto this year. According to industry sources, the first quarter of 2021 saw $2 billion in total NFT sales.
However, many worry that the trend and hype will die quickly. But, just as many believe the opposite. Because of the continued growth in trade volumes, they believe the NFT market will double in the upcoming months. Furthermore, with large companies like Twitter hyping NFTs, the trend is likely to stay.
There is still a lot of untapped potential in Non-fungible tokens. Here is an example. They are looking to make the original owner of the piece earn a percent of the money each time their work is sold.
As NFTs and Twitter continue to evolve, we can expect to see more of these tokens in the platform.