‘NFT’ a Sure Candidate for 2021 Word of the Year – The Economist
The Oxford Word of the Year is a word or expression that attracted a great deal of interest over the last 12 months.
By Nath Cajuday
“One candidate for the Oxford English Dictionary’s “Word of the Year” for 2021 will surely be “NFT”.”
This is the declaration of digital magazine The Economist in their article published last October 22, 2021, together with the magazine’s announcement on selling its cover as an NFT.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are a distinct, unique, and easily verifiable type of digital item that can represent digital items. Such as but not limited to digital art, virtual real estate, in-game creature, sports, fashion, music, memes, etc.
NFTs have been around since 2014, but a boom in the market happened last March this year as “Everydays—The First 5,000 Days”, an NFT artwork of Mike Winkelmann was sold for $69 million.
“Now The Economist is getting in on the act. On October 25th we will auction off the cover of our issue from September 18th, which depicts Alice in Wonderland embarking on a journey into the world of decentralised finance (DeFi)—a world in which NFTs form part of the foundation of the digital economy,” the magazine said.
The Economist stated that it opened its cover as NFT to the online auction that ran on Foundation, a platform for digital artwork, from October 25 until October 26 in Spain.
The illustration for sale was made by digital artist Justin Metz and is based on Sir John Tenniel’s drawings for the first edition of “Alice in Wonderland” last 1865.
According to Oxford Languages, the Oxford Word of the Year is a word or expression that attracted a great deal of interest over the last 12 months.
“Every year, we debate candidates for word of the year and choose a winner that is judged to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of that particular year and to have lasting potential as a word of cultural significance,” the Oxford team said.
In 2020, Oxford Languages did not release an official “Word of the Year”, instead called it as “Words of an Unprecedented Year.”
NFT is enjoying the hype it deserves this year. The expansion of the community that accepted it this year proves that it is a flexible item to the market. From arts, to games, to social media, to local artists, and even religion.
- Hiscox Online Art Trade Report 2021 revealed earlier this month that NFT sales of crypto art and collectibles have already hit an estimated $3.5 billion as of September, 2021.
- Social media giant Tiktok released its first-ever NFT tokens, known as Tiktop Top Moments, featuring Lil Nas X, Bella Poarch, Curtis Roach, and more creators.
- The first-ever Catholic NFT was released as Mosaic of Pope Francis.
- The first ever “move-to-earn” game, which rewards its players for the steps they take in real life, has successfully raised $8.3 million in a seed funding round.
- Last October 22, the Philippines’ First Story Book NFT: The Last Moon by Yvette Tan was released at Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF), the oldest and largest book fair in the world. It is the first story book NFT that was released by a country. (Read more: https://bitpinas.com/nft/the-last-moon-opensea/)
- Actress Heart Evangelista will be releasing her own NFTs in November.
Hiscox Online Art Trade Report 2021 highlighted that the sudden bloom of online art market is due to the pandemic’s left and right lockdowns, quarantine, and social distancing that affected physical art markets.
(To know and learn more about NFT, read our NFT 101 article.)
Whether it will be a nominee for “Word of the Year” or not, “NFTs are here to stay”.
This article is published on BitPinas: ‘NFT’ a Sure Candidate for 2021 Word of the Year – The Economist
