I have been casually following the story about non-fungible tokens (NFTs) but had little idea what they were other than that an NFT was some form of digital work that one could own. The radio program On the Media had an entire show where they talked about it and that rekindled my interest and gave me some idea about this new world of speculation.
Host Brooke Gladstone discussed NFTs with Anil Dash, one of the people who in 2014 developed the idea that led to NFTs. Dash says that he and an artist friend Kevin McCoy did this as a blockchain-backed means for artists to assert ownership over their digital work. Dash now says that that initial goal of creating ownership rights for artists seems to be in danger of falling by the wayside, to be replaced by the kinds of speculative behavior that we have seen before with bubbles.
[Read more…]