NFTs - If You Don’t Know, Now You Know | The Daily Social Distancing Show

over the last few weeks you may have heard people talking about nfts which i found out too late does not stand for nudist fishing trip again i'm sorry but what are nfts and why are people trying to get rich off them well let's find out in another episode of if you don't know now you know if you've heard about nfts you probably know that it's the latest hot trend that teenagers have to explain to their parents and grandparents and boyfriends but this trend also has big money behind it it's a new craze breaking out in the crypto world and it's all about crypto collectibles non-fungible tokens or nfts are exploding in popularity in february alone nft sales hitting 340 million dollars that's up from 12 million dollars in december nft stands for non-fungible token now in economics fungible means you can trade one identical unit for another i think a dollar bill gold oil or bitcoin non-fungible means it's unique it can't be replaced in music the kings of leon releasing an nft only album in social media jack dorsey's first tweet selling for nearly three million dollars the art world just turned upside down with the sale of this digital collage entitled the first five thousand days a work that took 13 years to create it sold thursday in an auction for 69.3 million dollars that's right move over gamestop there's a new confusing internet money thing in town but yes nfts are blowing up so much right now that one digital collage sold for 69 million dollars 69 million dollars i would never pay that much for a collage never unless it was the one from that tupac video where all the little videos of tupac turned into one giant image of tupac you remember that yo that blew my mind but if i did spend 69 million on a picture best believe that would be the only picture i show people ever again didn't you just have a baby trevor yeah don't don't worry about that don't worry about it look at this though look at this picture 69 million dollars 69 million dollars shut up huh the problem though is that if digital pictures become the new status symbol you realize that rap videos are about to get boring as hell because i mean instead of showing off expensive cars or pet tigers man what rappers are just gonna be clicking through their computer now this may all seem insane but the truth is guys the idea of spending money on digital collectibles isn't much different than spending money on anything else you know anything else that people collect like baseball cards or beanie babies or the fingers of secret service agents nfts are really just a new twist on that the idea of collectibles has always been very physical you have comic books that you read or you have art that you hang on your wall but with these it is meant to be entirely digital on the surface buyers appear to be purchasing what's already on the internet for free like this video of a monstrous dunk by lebron james the clip recently sold as a digital trading card for two hundred eight thousand dollars but you can still watch it online at no cost think of the mona lisa it's an original piece of art it couldn't be swapped out for say a mona lisa poster from the louvre gift shop because the poster doesn't hold the same value exactly a mona lisa from the gift shop isn't as valuable as the painting itself unless leonardo da vinci also painted mona lisa onto a mouse pad oh if you don't mind can you stay a little longer please this one is for greg and hr's desk okay yes a smile but not too much a smile just like a kind of smile ah perfect perfect oh he's gonna love this one for the mouse huh and i know i know right now you might be saying but trevor why would i want a clip of lebron dunking i'd rather have an nft of something you never see like the knicks winning a championship but it's not just a clip of lebron dunking it's the official clip of lebron dunking and that's what makes it valuable because people love to have things that no one else has check out this dog turd ew gross it's the only turd that dog ever made i'll give you a million dollars for it and if you're thinking that's kind of unusual but it would still be cool to buy the original version of a digital artwork or a song or a video well here's where it gets weird that's not exactly what you're buying either an nft is kind of like a certificate of ownership for virtual assets essentially when you buy an nft you're not buying the horse the horse is somewhere else you're buying the racing papers that say here's where the horse came from here's who who's owned it over all these years here's this horse's record what the buyer gets is essentially a long string of numbers and letters it's a it's a code that exists on the ethereum blockchain it relies on blockchain technology sometimes described as a kind of digital record keeping it's a secure way to track when digital items change hands online yes essentially what you're buying with an nft is a long digital receipt that has your transaction along with every transaction that has ever happened so basically it's like a cbs receipt you know it's miles of irrelevant information but somewhere buried in there it says that you bought a gatorade and some pretzels and maybe condoms but not condoms you went for the gatorade and pretzels in other words the point of nfts is to create artificial scarcity and this isn't just so that speculators with too much money can make even more money it can also be a way for artists and musicians to make a living in the digital age like right now one of your favorite musicians is probably scraping by on a fraction of a penny every time someone streams one of their songs but if they auction off that song to the highest bidder as an nft now that musician that you love won't have to rent out his face for ad space but there are also some potential problems with nfts for one thing like cryptocurrency making some nfts requires massive amounts of energy which contributes to climate change so every time you buy one you basically have to think how many polar bears am i willing to kill for this distracted boyfriend meme i mean not five obviously but maybe four oh and there's something else you might want to consider before you sync your life savings into an nft along with all the hype around nfts experts have raised some concerns basically the blockchain is is a permanent record while the record is permanent and stable the location where the work is hosted may not be effectively you're buying access to a code that runs through a gateway online if the gateway effective the website goes down you've lost whatever you just bought and if that server happens to be holding the object goes down or it's moved who's ever controlling it forgets to pay their hosting fee then your nft could point to nothing let's say that i buy an nft and i go to the link for the third party hosting thing that has gone down and what i see is the most expensive 404 of my life man if i spend 69 million dollars on a jpeg you better believe my basement is gonna have more backup servers than hillary clinton imagine if you spent millions of dollars to own the crying jordan meme and then you lost it now you don't even have a meme to show how sad you are like this would be the dumbest way possible to lose a valuable collectible at least if you lose a rare piece of artwork what happened a cat burglar that's a pull off like an ingenious heist to lose an nft you just need a janitor to bump the surge protector with a vacuum so now you know about nfts and they may be the next big thing in the world of collectibles but if you invested in one you better pray the server that's hosting it never goes down otherwise that rap video is about to get real sad mom the thing shut down [Music] mom you

Channel: The Daily Show with Trevor Noah

Views: 872,797

Rating: 4.9194236 out of 5

Keywords: the daily show, trevor noah, daily show with trevor noah, the daily show episodes, comedy central, comedians, comedian, funny video, comedy videos, funny clips, noah trevor, trevor noah latest episode, daily show, trevor, news, politics, NFT, NFTs, Non-Fungible Tokens, cryptocurrency, bitcoin, crypto

Id: _V0-HGMB8SI

Length: 9min 11sec (551 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 08 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/LordHughRAdumbass]

Finally, robotic morons rule the world.

[u/Mr_Koreander]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zcSlcNfThUA

Edit: Two Lips