<Anchor> It is a
friendly economic time. Today (20th) will be with reporter Kim Hye-min. Reporter Kim, I saw the word'NFT' more than newspapers these days, but I wasn't sure what I meant. Let me first explain what this is.
<Reporter>
NFT, when translated and translated into Korean, it means'an irreplaceable token'.
Among the tokens circulating on the blockchain, a unique password is given and cannot be replaced with another token.
To take an easy example, the token that can be replaced is similar to a condo membership, but the room changes each time you make a reservation, and you can replace it with a different room.
In contrast, non-replaceable tokens are similar to apartment ownership. Even if you own an apartment, you cannot exchange it for the next door.
So, this irreplaceable token, NFT, can prevent duplication and forgery by assigning a serial number to any asset using blockchain technology, provided it can only be recorded digitally.
It is especially good to apply it to content fields such as paintings, music, and videos where proof of ownership is important.
<Anchor>
Is that so? Recently, some art works were sold at a large price through the NFT method, and there was news like this.
<Reporter>
A painting by digital artist'Beeple' was sold for a large price. It was a work titled'Everyday: The First 5000 Days', and the amount sold was 69.3 million dollars. In terms of Korean money, it is more than 78.3 billion won.
It is the third most expensive work among existing artists, but as you can see now, it is just one 300-megabyte JPG file that simply combines digital art created by Biffle for 5,000 days since 2007.
Let me introduce another case. Banksy, a faceless graffiti painter, now knows a lot.
Recently, a team called'Burning Banksy' purchased a work of Banksy's print'The Dumb' for about 100 million won, and then scanned this work and converted it to NFT.
And the scene of burning the original was released on YouTube, and now the original is completely gone and only digital art remains.
The NFT was then sold for 430 million won, more than four times the price it bought at the auction. It is said that the price of digital art has increased due to the disappearance of the original.
The person who won the NFT in this way depends on the contract, but most of them do not receive the original picture.
Transaction information and contracts are recorded on the blockchain, and this can only be verified with letters and numbers. Only the URL connected to the original file of the picture is provided.
<anchor>
After all, this means that cloning and manipulation are now impossible. In the case of paintings, for example, you might want to take an original and hang it at home to view it, but there seems to be a reason to make it virtual even if you can't own the original.
<Reporter>
I was curious about this part the most during the interview, so I asked an expert once. The biggest advantage is being able to secure market flexibility and liquidity.
So, you can buy and sell this work without exchanging the original. Compared with gold trading, it is similar to the state that you have left gold at an exchange and only have a gold deposit certificate.
It means that if you want to sell gold, you can easily trade with a gold depository. Also, it is virtually impossible to lose or destroy as it is stored on the computer network on the Internet.
NFT also guarantees the copyright of the original author, and since all works are recorded even if they are sold again, it is said that 10-25% of the copyright fees can be returned to the original author each time it is sold again.
<Anchor>
So now, if you give something like the original and buy and sell it, it may be damaged when you move it, and you can reduce those concerns, it is a story like this. Even so, I still have questions about whether I can trust and invest in this NFT. In particular, like virtual currency, the price volatility is very large and it is likely to be so, how about it?
<Reporter>
It is very similar to virtual currency. So, in fact, there are various prospects. Following Christie, a world-renowned auctioneer, Sotheby's also entered the NFT auction, with the expectation that the NFT is the future of the art market.
In Korea, Seoul Auction also entered the NFT through its subsidiary, and there is a prospect that it will be a new opportunity for many artists to easily sell their works in the future.
On the other hand, there is also a lot of concern, and there are claims that the value of cryptocurrency has skyrocketed recently, and investors who made money here even bought NFT artwork and made it a speculative market.
The average transaction price plummeted by about 70% in February, so there is a risk that this price adjustment could come again.
The New York Times also pointed out that the NFT art speculation craze resembled the tulip speculation craze in Holland in the 1600s.