Non-Fungible Tokens or NFTs have a lot of hype around them lately, thanks to their exponentially growing valuations. Digital artworks are being sold for millions of dollars, celebrities are minting NFTs to engage with their fans, movie studios are using them as a means of promotion and merchandising, but is that all there is to NFTs? Experts at the Business Today Crypto Conclave argue this is just the tip of the iceberg.
“In India, 25 per cent of the Supreme Court cases and 66 per cent of all civil cases are of land disputes. Imagine if all the land records would be minted as NFTs, a lot of the court's time would be saved” said Kashif Raza, founder Bitnning and a crypto influencer.
It is noteworthy to mention that NFTs are unique tokens that are minted on the blockchain, which cannot be interchanged or tampered with.
Raza also threw light on how NFTs could help the government create a source of income. “The government can buy land on Decentraland and showcase the NFTs of our monuments and artifacts for the world to see”.
Ankit Wadhwa, CEO of Rario, a cricket-centric NFT marketplace, further highlighted the other use cases of NFTs. He pointed out how the very notion of NFTs are ever evolving, and with this, also evolve its use cases.
“The complete ecosystem is evolving and with it the use cases are also evolving. Goods as well as their ownership has become digital. Investors can get royalties from the NFTs they own. People can play games using NFTs or use them as digital avatars,” he said.
Toshendra Sharma, CEO of NFTICALLY further added to this thread by mentioning that NFTs can also be used for ticketing. It is worth mentioning that NFTs and ticketing is already being experimented around the world by sports leagues like NBA and NFL.
The NFT markets have corrected over 70 per cent as per data from Nonfungible.com. Some believe that this is a bubble set to burst but Sharma has a different opinion. He said, “This is actually good for the industry because now real innovation will take place. Now people are focussing on buying NFTs which have certain use cases, purposes, and underlying value rather than putting their money in random NFTs.”
Talking about acceptance by investors, Ramkumar Subramanium, CEO of GuardianLink, another NFT marketplace, is of the opinion that just like it happened with the Internet, NFTs too will take time to be fully embraced by people, and investors.
“As it happened with the Internet, as it happened with crypto, NFTs would also take some time to be fully accepted and understood by the investors,” he said.
NFTs certainly are a fascinating concept of the Web3. It would be interesting to see how they pan out in the future and what their use cases might be.