My Desperate Attempt To Understand NFTs

I first heard about NFTs about a year and a half ago — and I did not understand them. To be honest, I still don’t understand them, and I’m not sure I ever will. However, despite my massive inability to understand them, they will not leave me alone. Twitter now allows users to make NFTs their profile pictures, even giving them a special shape — a hexagon as opposed to the circle that’s normally used for profile pictures. A fan of NFTs also hacked the Discord account of Raven Pines, a slideshow commentator and friend of mine, before sending links to an NFT server to all her contacts. Obviously, not everyone who uses NFTs will hack Discord accounts to get you to join their servers — but the fact that someone did is really what inspired this article.

Here’s how they work — I think: NFTs are a form of crypto-currency which allow you to buy code that says that you own an image. You do not actually own the image itself, instead, you buy a line of code that says you own said image. The website Rationalwiki calls them “crypto-currency trading cards,” although they also say that NFTs are more works of art being turned into money through blockchain technology as opposed to something you actually buy — again, I think, this is all really confusing.

Now, I want to make one thing clear: I have nothing against those who use crypto-currency. I myself have had an interest in the market for a very long time, although I do not personally engage in it. With that said, the crypto market is, by design, impossible to properly regulate — which opens up the door for both illegal uses and scams.

The most popular crypto-currency is easily Bitcoin, which gained media attention in 2017 for its high and rapidly increasing value. As of writing this, one bitcoin is worth more than thirty four thousand dollars — with its highest value on record being when it hit sixty four thousand dollars in November 2021.

Crypto-currency is certainly something I love the idea of, as it is anonymous and untraceable. People in authoritarian nations have used it as a currency that allows to have actually freedom over what they purchase, and women in highly patriarchal societies have used it as a way to get finical independence. With that said, it is impossible to deny its connection with drug purchases through the deep web in the…