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What are NFTs and are they really the next big thing?

Non-fungible tokens - digital certificates of art ownership - are selling for millions of dollars. But what are they? Suzanne Kianpour asks if NFT鈥檚 really are here to stay.

In 2005 a photo of four-year-old Zo毛 Roth standing in front of a burning house went viral on the internet. It became a meme known as 鈥渄isaster girl鈥. In April 2021, the image sold for $473,000 as an NFT, or non-fungible token - that鈥檚 sort of a digital record of ownership.

And the sales keep coming. Another NFT recently sold for $69 million. The first ever Tweet went for a huge $2.9 million 鈥 and a GIF of a pixelated rainbow cat sold for $690,000.

But what is an NFT, and is it really the next big thing? Suzanne Kianpour explores the world of NFT鈥檚.

Produced by Soila Apparicio and Olivia Noon.

(CryptoPunk digital art NFT displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square NY City, May 12 2021. Credit: Alexi Rosenfeld /Getty Images)

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23 minutes

Broadcasts

  • Thu 27 May 2021 07:06GMT
  • Thu 27 May 2021 14:06GMT
  • Thu 27 May 2021 21:06GMT

Podcast