Tyler Smiley Photography

View Original

NFTs: One of the Hottest Things Around

I haven’t had a chance to really go anywhere recently, so I’ve been neglecting the blog a little more than I probably should be. Sometimes I struggle to come up with topics to write about because I don’t want the blog to be all about me. It is about helping you experience the world through photos, and showing you different perspectives on things.

That said, I wanted to put a blog post together, and figured I would share one on a topic that has become a really fun interest of mine recently: NFTs aka Non-Fungible Tokens.

Before getting into this part of the online photography community, I did a lot of research into NFTs, but the best article about them I could find was by Gary Vaynerchuk. He has been pushing the power these things will have for a long time, and I genuinely believe if you want to understand what they are, you should read his article on them.

In essence, if you are in a time crunch, NFTs are unique, virtual collectibles purchased and stored on a cryptocurrency system. As an example, think about it as if you were looking at the Nikes worn by Michael Jordan during the Flu Game. There is only one pair of those shoes, and proof of ownership is easily verified through auction records, wills, etc. The same applies to NFTs - they are generally one of one and provide you with a verifiable certificate of ownership through the cryptocurrency blockchain (I say generally because you can have multiple copies of one token, which makes them Fungible instead of Non-Fungible).

So, now that you know what NFTs are, let’s get into a side of them I really like: the community.

There is such a fun an amazing community building around these things. It’s really something else, and essentially a direct extension of your typical social media platforms. When one person on Twitter tweets about a certain collection or having purchased from a specific artist, it generates buzz around that artist and introduces them to a wider audience.

I’m super excited to be a part of this growing community, and can’t wait to share my work with the other members. It is a lot of fun to connect with other creators, then learn from them and grow my skills even further. Seeing how incredible some of their work is helps me challenge myself to reach even greater heights, but I highly suggest you look into NFTs as well as a way to support creators like myself in pursuing our passions.

You can find some of the pieces I currently have for sale by following the links in the photos in this article, or by checking out my full collection on OpenSea, and also check out some of the creators I follow on Foundation.