Recently, an image of a meme was sold for 561,000 dollars. Isn't that unbelievable? Yes, I'm talking about the famous Nyan Cat meme that was sold as an NFT(non-fungible token) in February of 2021. But what exactly is an NFT?

An NFT stands for Non-fungible token. Alright, so let's break this up. The word non means not, fungible means an exchange of an asset that has a similar value and a token is a digital item in this case. So, when combined, it means that NFTs are digital items that cannot be exchanged for something similar.

NFTs are items stored on the Etherium blockchain, that ensure that the item, in this case the Nyan cat, is not interchangeable. Therefore making only one Nyan cat.

Now you may be thinking how can there only be one copy of it if I can find dozens of this image on the internet. You can even have your own copy of this image if you save it as a .jpeg or .png. Well, though it is true you can have your own copy of the image, the thing that makes NFTs unique is that there is only one true version of the image which is the NFT, all the others are simply just copies and aren't worth anything**.** So when the Nyan Cat was sold for $561,000, it was the original image that was bought. That’s what motivates people to buy NFTs. They are the beginning of digital collectibles just like Pokemon cards or figurines. They can be sold to each other and though you may be able to replicate a rare trading card it still doesn't negate the fact that the trading card is fake.

Now NFTs aren’t just pieces of art, they can be videos, audio, and even tweets. You can even make your own NFTs using the website https://crypto.com/nft/ and sell your own digital collectibles. Who knows, maybe one day you will be able to make millions selling your own NFT.

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