# Why I've Changed My Mind on NFTs By [emino.eth](https://paragraph.com/@emino) · 2021-10-06 --- I recently read an article with the headline “Why I’ve Changed My Mind on Bitcoin” which inspired me to write a short article about NFTs in general. In my friend circle, I’m known for my abilities to ELI5 (Explain Like I’m 5 \[…years old\]) complex technical topics, especially around Blockchain and Cryptocurrency topics. I have a long background in writing, publishing, community and company management and IT product development and engineering management. In short: I always put myself in a position where i had to talk (and write) which I’m still enjoy doing nowadays. With the discovery of mirror.xyz, I thought i spend a couple of minutes to write a few sentences here and see where it goes. I recently bought my first NFT, a Creature, after I saw the Winklevoss Twins buying one themselves, so I just Ape’d in. [https://opensea.io/assets/0xc92ceddfb8dd984a89fb494c376f9a48b999aafc/743](https://opensea.io/assets/0xc92ceddfb8dd984a89fb494c376f9a48b999aafc/743) The purchase made me part of a community of NFT enthusiasts, and I must say, it is fun to be part of (the Discord Channels, Twitter Buzz and Digital Art Collectors). But this is not what I want to write about. I want to write about NFTs. Since a couple of month I am planning to publish a new video of my YouTube Explain Crypto Series about NFTs. I even wrote the script already, which I was going to use when I film myself with one of these Teleprompter Apps for the Smartphone (I enjoy speaking freely, but I also enjoy to write, the combination of writing an article and speaking it into the camera is something that I enjoy. A big advantage are also the auto-subtitles and the translation of transcript with a few clicks in multiple languages). Before it gets lost, I publish it here, now. The letters NFT mean non-fungible token. The definition of fungible is, if you can exchange something for the the same thing. Example are dollar bills, or Bitcoin. If I send you one Bitcoin and you send me one Bitcoin, both Bitcoin are exactly the same. My Bitcoin is not different from your Bitcoin, meaning, Bitcoin is fungible. The same counts for any other currency, I can exchange every euro for another euro. My one euro is the same as your one euro.  Non-fungible is everything that is unique. If you own a painting and I own painting, they differ from each other. We could exchange them, but they are not the same. There is no second exact same painting, this is why paintings are non-fungible.  A non-fungible token, or NFT, in most cases represents a certificate for something non-fungible, for example an artwork, a music track, or a poem, or patent.  In the non digital world, collecting unique items have a humanity long history. Humans always collected unique physical items such as shells, first edition prints of books, handwritten letters, stamps, jewellery, precious stones or watches. It is easy to understand that items that are scarce (they can be unique or only a limited number of pieces exist) often become a valuable item for collectors. We see this in Oldtimer car, and fashion items. Some items become so valuable, that people start to create copies, counterfeit them. Experts and chemists analyse historical paintings, compare signatures and handwritings or hand out certificates with serial numbers and histories of owners, to preserve their value and to proof their authenticity.  But in the digital world, everything could easily be copied. Every copy of a photo, a video, a written text or an audio file is absolutely identical to the original. Every data is fungible. With one click of a button I can create hundreds or thousands of copies. Digital items could not be unique and scarce, until Bitcoin and Blockchain appeared.  The Blockchain made Bitcoin possible. The idea is simple. A digital register that can’t be changed. You can add information (data), but you can not delete or edit previously added entries. An immutable ledger. Every data that gets added is also time stamped, meaning, that you basically know that your data has been added at a certain moment in time. You can see that data has been added before, and after you. Think about adding data like writing in a physical notebook: first page, followed by second page, then third page, and so on. If you fill page by page, you get a chronology where page one has been filled with data (or writing) before page two. Page one is earlier in time. Before computers, especially in accounting and saving accounts at banks, you would always keep a historical ledger of all your transactions with all records in chronological order.  A good example is also the ownership of property. Or today’s car register. You will see a history of previous owners, starting from the first one until the current one, every owner listed one by one in chronological order.  With Blockchain you can now do the same, but digital. You can make an entry into a digital ledger, that can not be deleted or edited. This entry can contain any information. To simplify NFT, that information can contain a digital item and a owner and naturally a timestamp, which is the date and time it has been added to the Blockchain. Now, even if there are millions of copies of that digital item, I could still point at the Blockchain register and show that I am the first (and currently only) owner of that digital item. You could have a copy of it on your computer, but you are not the owner. If you want to become the owner of that digital item though, you could ask me (the person who first registered that item in the Blockchain) to transfer the ownership to you. If I agree to pass the ownership of my digital item to you, i would need to update the information in the Blockchain. As it is not possible to edit or delete the entry, I would add another entry which will state that the ownership of that digital item has been transferred to a new owner. That entry will appear after my first entry in time and would display you as the new owner. Now we have an immutable history of ownership, first me, than you, and now you can proof to everyone that you’re the legitimate owner of that digital item. You can decide to keep it in your collection forever, or pass the ownership again one day to someone else.  With this simple technology every registered digital item becomes a collectible, it has a owner, a timestamp, and can be transferred, auctioned or traded on an open market.  So why is it called NFT? NFT is actually called ERC-721 and is an open standard on how to register digital items on the Ethereum Blockchain. It has been designed in a way that every registered item follows the same structure.  Standards are important for ecosystems to grow. If credit and debit cards would not be standardised, they would not fit into the ATM machines. If paper sizes would not be standardised, they would not fit into your printer. If power plugs and usb cables would not be standardised, you couldn’t charge your phone or plug it into your laptop.  NFT or ERC-721 is nothing else than a standard to register digital items in the Blockchain. With the rise of NFT, a whole ecosystem is currently arriving around it. Digital items can now be displayed in many digital wallets. Websites and apps provide easy interfaces to register (add) new digital items to the Blockchain. With a few clicks you can transfer the ownership of a digital item to someone else.  If you are an inventor in the physical world and developed something unique and special that you think it’s worth patenting, you register a patent, in your country, or even world wide patents. You do that to protect your invention or brand, and to proof that you’ve been the first person that came up with it (and therefore the owner of the patent). You can also sell your patent. If you do that, you usually go to the parent office again and register that there is a new owner of the patent now - simple as that.  Blockchain can easily be such a register. It is immutable, decentralized and entries made can never disappear.  In the movement of NFTs digital creators have identified that potential and the ability, first time in human history, to globally agree on a standard to register digital items and make them easily tradable. If you are a creator yourself, you can, at any time, register your digital item on the Blockchain. As Blockchain is a public, permission less and decentralised network, you don’t need to ask anyone for permission. You can’t be denied from registering your work and no one can delete or edit your entry once it is inside the Blockchain.  At any time in history you can undoubtedly proof that you are the owner (or the creator who first registered the digital item) of that digital item. You can proof the age, or better said the date it has been registered, and you can pass it to new owners that might pass it along for eternity. The first time in history of the planet there is a register that can exist forever (for all time into the future) that holds information about the time of creation, creator and owner, for any digital item you could think of. An NFT can be an book, a song, a photograph, a painting, a video or any other type of data.  The future of digital collectors has arrived. Start becoming a collector, or creator, or both.  References: [https://www.youtube.com/c/eminmahrt](https://www.youtube.com/c/eminmahrt) [https://www.creature.world/](https://www.creature.world/) [https://ofdollarsanddata.com/why-ive-changed-my-mind-on-bitcoin/](https://ofdollarsanddata.com/why-ive-changed-my-mind-on-bitcoin/) --- *Originally published on [emino.eth](https://paragraph.com/@emino/why-i-ve-changed-my-mind-on-nfts)*