This is the first issue of Geek Week, my newsletter about whatever nerdy things have happened to catch my eye over the past seven days. Here’s me, musing about something I don’t fully understand in an attempt to get my head around it: I imagine that’s how most editions will be. If you’d like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week, you can sign up here.
I am intrigued by NFTs, because I don’t understand them. Everything I read about them is either: “Here’s why you should definitely buy NFTs, preferably from me” or “lol, you can just right-click and download the image, it’s all a techbro Ponzi scheme”.
But I’ve found it very hard to find something that will explain to me why people are excited about them, without trying to sell them to me or assuming that everyone involved is either an idiot or a grifter, which seems unlikely to me. So when I read stories about things like a $1.7m NFT phishing heist, I’m usually pretty confused. I thought I’d have a go at working out what’s going on.
For those who haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about: NFT stands for “non-fungible token”.
“Fungible” roughly means “exchangeable” – a penny coin can be exchanged for any other penny, with no loss of value for either party. It uses similar technology to cryptocurrencies.
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum exist on distributed databases, “blockchains”, on which all transactions are immutably recorded. So if I buy a pizza…
