So, you may have come across the recent Business Insider, “A metaverse mega yacht that just sold for $650,000 is the most expensive NFT sold in The Sandbox virtual world.” Or, perhaps you came across the news story that the President of El Salvador is planning to build a “Bitcoin City” at the base of an active volcano? Or maybe you’ve just been seeing a bunch of really weird cartoon-like illustrations of monkeys and lions on your newsfeed or timeline and are wondering what they’re all about? And why they’re selling for tens — sometimes hundreds — of thousands of dollars?
Well, in this episode of Upstream, we’ll tell you how all of these things are related. If you don’t know what NFTs — the latest phenomenon in the crypto, blockchain, asset speculation world — are, if you’ve heard of NFTs but want to know more, or if you want to hear why NFTs might be leading us to an (even more) dystopian future — this episode has got you covered.
Upstream brought on two guests to help unpack the NFT craze:
- Nathan Schneider is an Assistant Professor of Media studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, journalist, founder of the Media Enterprise Design Lab, and author most recently of Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition that Is Shaping the Next Economy, published by Nation Books.
- Cory Doctorow is an activist, journalist, and blogger, editor of Pluralistic.net, former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and author of the novels Attack Surface and Walkaway, as well as nonfiction books like How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism.
