New York
Fans have been flocking by the thousands to the Top Shot online platform to buy short videos of dramatic sequences from professional basketball games, as a new virtual market enjoys astonishing success among collectors, sports fans and art lovers.
To the untrained observer, one video clip showed NBA superstar LeBron James in one of his more spectacular moves; but it lasted no more than a few dozen seconds. On Top Shot, however, it instantly became a collector’s item that sold on Monday for an eye-popping $208,000.
The video sequence is an “NFT” — a Non-Fungible Token — a virtual object whose identity, authenticity and traceability are theoretically indisputable and tamper-proof, thanks to the same “blockchain” technology used to ensure the security of cryptocurrencies like the hugely popular bitcoin.—AFP
