आईसीटी समाचार
A museum dedicated to NFTs — the blockchain-based masterpieces that have taken the art world by storm — has opened its doors in the United States. The Seattle NFT Museum is designed to assist visitors understand the new world of Non-Fungible Tokens by displaying unique artworks alongside explanations of the technology underlying them. "The objective of a physical venue," museum co-founder Peter Hamilton told AFP, "is to make it easy for anybody to access."
"You can go in here and it doesn't matter how much you know or don't know about digital art or NFTs because you can view the art on a huge size display that reminds you, or is familiar to you, of a museum exhibition." NFTs are one-of-a-kind digital items with ownership rights. While its content is easily copied, the NFT is "the original," similar to how there are several reproductions of Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa," but only the Louvre museum holds the original.
In recent months, investors and affluent collectors have flocked to the latest digital fad, which is based on the same blockchain technology that underpins cryptocurrency. NFTs have fetched record prices at recent auctions, including $69.3 million for a digital work by artist Beeple at Christie's. They, like all new inventions, have skeptics; some see them as a passing fad, or worse, as something comparable to the Emperor's New Clothes.
Visitors to the museum, on the other hand, reported feeling something real. "We're sort of witnessing it come to life because it's kind of a worldwide phenomena," one museum visitor, Cara, said. For Hamilton, it's all part of the enjoyment to see the progress. "It's difficult to predict where this technology will take us; this is only the beginning," he remarked. "Anyone who claims to be an NFT specialist is lying to you because we're all learning, and we're all starting from the beginning."
