Non-fungible tokens (NFT) are digital-only art that has no actual physical representation. It is a digital property and while buying it all get is a certificate of ownership. The open sea is one of the trading spaces of NFT which consists of all kinds of items like virtual cats, the adaptation of classical art and album covers that are set for sale.
Kim Kardashian, a virtual cat or a CryptoKitty, is an NFT that could be bought and sold on the digital trading space like Open sea. It was introduced in 2017 and now its price ranges from a few 100 to millions of Euro. CryptoKitty comes in different colours, patterns and traits. Its traits vary according to each cat and could only last for a small-time.
CryptoKitty, like all other NFTs, is bought and sold using cryptocurrencies like ETH, better known as Ether, or Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency is highly unstable and the transactions are verified using the computer. The verification process is called ‘mining’ and it takes many computer calculations to verify the transactions.
To use cryptocurrency, you will need to transfer the money from your account to the Ether account. You can transfer a minimum amount necessitated by the platform or a larger amount according to your need. The value of cryptocurrency can go up and down according to the market rate of the gas. But transferring the cryptocurrency back to your bank account can also be costly.
It could take days to get your hands on the NFT that prefer to buy as the transaction process of the cryptocurrency is complicated. If you have to sell the same NFT, it will also cost you time and money as you would have to go through the same process of transfer and verification of cryptocurrency.
Investing in cryptocurrency could be a catch-22 situation. The transactions in the market take time and money more than we initially thought as needed. There is no backing away once you have entered the maze as backing out from it can be more costly. Many people have already raised issues regarding the transactions.
It involves many risk elements like the network getting caught up in the high demand and varying gas price issue, your demand being cancelled, and your money is lost, in an auction, if someone pays a higher price for the same item, the digital property itself could be deleted from the market which will also result in you losing the money, the website going offline.
The cryptocurrency is often used to exploit people who don’t know much about it. When we buy an item we are only given the right to a receipt rather than the real property. The property existing only on the digital platform complicates things as we have no real clue whether the person selling the thing owns the copyright or not.
While there are popular stories regarding people getting rich by investing in cryptocurrency, artists who have little knowledge about the market and its volatility could easily lose their money in it. the entire market is unstable which makes it riskier than any other market form.