NFT’s and the world of Cryptocurrency We’ve discussed the basic idea of digital fashion and how it has been shaped in recent years through a more direct transfer from physical to digital, but how does it revolutionise fashion? How does digital fashion differ from the physical world? Well, one of the biggest worldwide trends of the past 2 years has been cryptocurrency and NFT’s, but what are they exactly and what does this have to do with fashion? Something that seems to be a priority for everything and every brand is money, as well, it does make the world go round. The use of Crypto and NFT’s add a new way of monetising digital fashion assets, this is because NFTs’a re essentially a digital piece of art that can fluctuate in price and has a watermark built in to it to stop it from being simply copied or duplicated. A good comparison would be a trading card for example, like a Pokémon or Match Attax card, each one has a unique image/ code that makes it unique to its owner and only they can truly own that certain card. Some cards are more expensive than others because of their rarity, and also their appearance, a more unique looking NFT will be more expensive and finally the quality of the NFT is important, that the art is of the highest quality in terms of pixelation etc. Cryptocurrency comes into this because using a certain currency (Ethereum) you can buy these NFT’s as their currency is one of the most refined and also has a public blockchain history available, this basically means it’s very easy to see history of transactions and ownership of their NFT’s. This has in very recent news been changed, for more mainstream participation, a company based in Crypto trading called Moonpay has made strides forward to aid non crypto funded NFT purchases. Ceo of Moonpay, Ivan Soto-Wright had this to say on the breakthrough “Right now, the NFT market is limited to the hundreds of millions of people who own cryptocurrency. MoonPay’s NFT Checkout has just opened the door to billions more who own credit cards by making ownership both simple and fast.” (CNBCTV18, 2022). This shows the step towards NFT’s becoming a more accessible and well known commodity amongst not just tech-savvy kids but people who enjoy art in more traditional forms and maybe we’ll see NFT’s in sports or TV somehow. I think this is the exciting aspect of NFT’s and crypto, the ideas are new, and new can be scary but it can also yield so many more possibilities and angles to industries and creativity that we haven’t seen before, which is very exciting. This has been a subject that has had me read and re-read a lot of articles/ podcasts and reports to understand the idea of NFT’s and Cryptocurrency. It’s a new world for a lot of people and ever the optimist, I’m always looking to try and make it easier for people to understand and grasp for themselves because I think it has an amazing potential and could be something that truly see the fashion industry boom again in a totally different way to ever before.
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