The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, are a new craze breaking out in the world of cryptocurrency, but what are you actually buying? #DailyShow #TrevorNoah #NFTs Subscribe to The Daily Show: Follow The Daily Show: Twitter: w Facebook: w Instagram: w Stream full episodes of The Daily Show on Paramount+: /> Follow Comedy Central: Twitter: l Facebook: l Instagram: l About The Daily Show: Trevor Noah and The Daily Show correspondents tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and pop culture. The Daily Show with Trevor Noah airs weeknights at 11/10c on Comedy Central.
Over the last few weeks, you may have heard people talking about NFTs, which I found out too late does not stand for nudist fishing trip. Again, I’m sorry. But what are NFTs and why are people trying to get rich off them? Well, let’s find out in another episode of If You Don’t Know, Now You Know.
? ? If you’ve heard about NFTs, you probably know that it’s the latest hot trend that teenagers have to explain to their parents and grandparents and boyfriends. But this trend also has big money behind it.
NEWSWOMAN: There’s a new craze breaking out in the crypto world and it’s all about crypto collectibles– non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are exploding in popularity. NEWSMAN: In February alone, NFT sales hitting $340 million.
That’s up from $12 million in December. NEWSWOMAN: NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token. Now, in economics, “fungible” means you can trade one identical unit for another. Think a dollar bill, gold, oil or Bitcoin.
“Non-fungible” means it’s unique, it can’t be replaced. In music, the Kings of Leon releasing an NFT-only album. In social media, Jack Dorsey’s first tweet selling for nearly $3 million. NEWSMAN: The art world just turned upside down with the sale of this digital collage entitled The First 5000 Days, a work that took 13 years to create.
It sold Thursday in an auction for $69.3 million. That’s right. Move over GameStop. There’s a new confusing Internet money thing in town. But yes, NFTs are blowing up so much right now that one digital collage sold for $69 million! $69 million! I would never pay that much for a collage.
Never. Unless it was the one from that Tupac one, where all the little videos of Tupac turn into one giant image of Tupac. You remember that? Yo, that shit blew my mind. But if I did spend $69 million on a picture, best believe that would be the only picture I show people ever again.
Didn’t you just have a baby, Trevor? Yeah, yeah, don’t worry about that, don’t worry about it. Look at this, though. Look at this picture. $69 million. -(baby crying) -$69 million. Shut up! Huh? The problem, though, is that if digital pictures become the new status symbol, you realize that rap videos are about to get boring as hell.
‘Cause, I mean, instead of showing off expensive cars or pet tigers, man, what, rappers are just gonna be clicking through their computer. ? This what getting money sound like, hey ? ? This what getting money sound like, hey ? ? This what getting money sound like.
.. ? Now, this may all seem insane, but the truth is, guys, the idea of spending money on digital collectibles isn’t much different than spending money on anything else. You know? Anything else that people collect, like baseball cards or Beanie Babies or the fingers of Secret Service agents.
NFTs are really just a new twist on that. WOMAN: The idea of collectibles has always been very physical. You have comic books that you read, or you have art that you hang on your wall. But with these, it is meant to be entirely digital.
NEWSMAN: On the surface, buyers appear to be purchasing what’s already on the Internet for free, like this video of a monstrous dunk by LeBron James. The clip recently sold as a digital trading card for $208,000.
But you can still watch it online at no cost. Think of the Mona Lisa. It’s an original piece of art. It couldn’t be swapped out for, say, a Mona Lisa poster from the Louvre gift shop, because the poster doesn’t hold the same value.
Exactly. A Mona Lisa from the gift shop isn’t as valuable as the painting itself, unless Leonardo da Vinci also painted Mona Lisa onto a mousepad. Oh, if you don’t-a mind, can you stay a little a-longer please? This one is for Greg in The HR Desk, okay? Yes, a-smile, but not too much a-smile.
Just a-like a kind of smile, ah? Ah, perfect, perfect. Oh, he’s a-gonna love this one for the mouse, huh? And I know, I know right now you might be saying, “But, Trevor, why would I want a clip of LeBron dunking? “I’d rather have an NFT of something you never see, like the Knicks winning a championship!” But it’s not just a clip of LeBron dunking.
It’s the official clip of LeBron dunking. And that’s what makes it valuable. Because people love to have things that no one else has. Check out this dog turd. Ew! Gross! It’s the only turd that dog ever made.
I’ll give you a million dollars for it. And if you’re thinking, well, that’s kind of unusual, but it would still be cool to buy the original version of a digital artwork or a song or a video, well, here’s where it gets weird.
That’s not exactly what you’re buying, either. NEWSMAN: An NFT’s kind of like a certificate of ownership for virtual assets. WOMAN: Essentially, when you buy an NFT, you’re not buying the horse– the horse is somewhere else.
You’re buying the racing papers that say: here’s where the horse came from, here’s who’s owned it over all these years, here’s this horse’s record. MAN: What the buyer gets is… essentially a long string of numbers and letters.
It’s a code that exists on the Ethereum blockchain. It relies on blockchain technology, sometimes described as a kind of digital record keeping. It’s a secure way to track when digital items change hands online.
Yes. Essentially what you’re buying with an NFT is a long digital receipt that has your transaction along with every transaction that has ever happened. So basically, it’s like a CVS receipt, you know? It’s miles of irrelevant information, but somewhere buried in there, it says that you bought a Gatorade and some pretzels, and maybe condoms, but not condoms– you went for the Gatorade and pretzels.
In other words, the point of NFTs is to create artificial scarcity. And this isn’t just so that speculators with too much money can make even more money. It can also be a way for artists and musicians to make a living in the digital age.
Like, right now, one of your favorite musicians is probably scraping by on a fraction of a penny every time someone streams one of their songs. But if they auction off that song to the highest bidder, as an NFT, now that musician that you love won’t have to rent out his face for ad space.
But there are also some potential problems with NFTs. For one thing, my cryptocurrency. Making some NFTs requires massive amounts of energy, which contributes to climate change. So every time you buy one, you basically have to think: How many polar bears am I willing to kill for this Distracted Boyfriend meme? I mean, not five, obviously.
But maybe four? Oh, and there’s something else you might want to consider before you sink your life savings into an NFT. NEWSMAN: Along with all the hype around NFTs, experts have raised some concerns.
Basically, uh, the blockchain is-is a permanent record. While the record is permanent and stable, uh, the location where the work is hosted may not be. NEWSMAN: Effectively, you’re buying access to a code that runs through a gateway online.
If the gateway affecting the website goes down, you’ve lost whatever you just bought. WOMAN: And if that server that happens to be holding the object goes down or it’s moved, or whoever’s controlling it forgets to pay their hosting fee, then your NFT could point to nothing.
Let’s say that I buy an NFT, and I go to the link for the third-party hosting thing that has gone down, and what I see is the most expensive BORA BORA of my life. Whew! Man, if I spend $69 million on a JPEG, you better believe my basement is gonna have more backup servers than Hillary Clinton.
Imagine if you spent millions of dollars to own the Crying Jordan meme, and then you lost it. Now you don’t even have that meme to show how sad you are. Like, this would be the dumbest way possible to lose a valuable collectible.
At least if you lose a rare piece of artwork, what happens? A cat burglar, they had to pull off, like, an ingenious heist. To lose an NFT, you just need a janitor to bump the surge protector with a vacuum.
So, now you know about NFTs. And they may be the next big thing in the world of collectibles, but if you invested in one, you better pray the server that’s hosting it never goes down. Otherwise, that rap video is about to get real sad.
? This what getting money sound like, hey ? ? This what getting money sound like, hey… ? -Wait. Stop-stop the music. Stop the music! -(music stops) Mom! They’ve been shut down! Mom!