CryptoPunks, one of the most popular non-fungible testimonials, was shown in Times Square on May 12, 2021.
Alexi Rosenfeld | Getty Images
Visa is the latest major company to jump into NFT fashion.
The payment processor said Monday it bought a “CryptoPunk,” one of thousands of NFT-based digital avatars, for about $ 150,000 on ether.
An NFT (meaning non-fungible token) is a unique digital resource designed to represent ownership of a virtual element. Unlike bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies, NFTs cannot be exchanged in a similar way to other NFTs.
Proponents say this makes NFTs scarce, increasing their value. NFTs have often been compared to collectible physical items such as rare trading cards and artwork.
“We believe NFTs will play an important role in the future of retail, social media, entertainment and commerce,” Cuy Sheffield, head of cryptography at Visa, said Monday.
“To help our customers and partners get involved, we need to know first-hand the infrastructure requirements for a global brand to be able to buy, store and leverage an NFT.”
Sheffield said the CryptoPunks have become a “cultural icon for the crypto community.”
“With our CryptoPunk purchase, we’re jumping first,” he said. “This is just the beginning of our work in this space.”
Anchorage, a federally contracted digital asset bank, facilitated the purchase, Visa said.
Big companies join the NFT fashion
Recently, several large companies have experimented with NFT.
Christie’s has auctioned off several NFTs, some worth millions of dollars. The auction house set records in March when an image created by digital artist Beeple sold for $ 69 million.
Meanwhile, several media outlets, including CNN, The New York Times and Fortune magazine, have sold their own NFTs.
But some critics are skeptical about NFTs. Although these tokens represent a digital certificate of ownership, buyers do not own the underlying item and Internet users can still view the associated media online. Some people have even stolen the work of other artists and sold them as NFT.
“The buyer of Beeple’s $ 69 million NFT artwork,“ Everydays – The First 5000 Days, ”owns the single testimony,” said Adam Rendle, a partner at law firm Taylor Wessing, in a post.
“However, they do not own copyright or any other intellectual property rights over the digital work itself. They may not distribute or market the represented good.”