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[ad_1] By Shubhangi Shah A revolution or just another fad, NFTs attract opposing views. Short for non-fungible token, an NFT can be anything digital – a JPEG image, a GIF, an audio or a video clip. Powered by blockchain technology, these are traded via cryptocurrency. You can think of it as an art auction. Just like you bid for artwork and purchase it in exchange for money, the same happens with respect to NFTs – only in this case, the artwork is any digital asset. The first NFT was created way back in 2014. It was a digital artwork named ‘Quantum’ created by New York-based artist Kevin McCoy. On the face of it, NFT appears to be a great deal. It gives artists the platform to sell their digital creations, which otherwise might not get them the same money. Among the several pieces of artworks sold as NFTs were some quirky ones that grabbed widespread attention. Canadian musician Grimes grabs headlines frequently, be it for her past relationship with billionaire Elon Musk or the eccentric name (X Æ A-Xii) of the ex-couple’s first-born. Last year, she made it into the news for selling her digital artworks as NFTs for a whopping $5.8 million, that too in just 20 minutes. One of her artworks featured a sword-bearing winged baby who appeared to guard Mars. (Did it ring any bells?) If cherubs fetched $5.8 million, a naked Donald Trump with ‘loser’ inscribed on him raked in $6.6 million. The digital artwork titled ‘Crossroads’ was created during the 2020 US presidential elections by artist Mike Winkelmann, famously known as Beeple. Not just artists and celebs, several brands have also joined the NFT bandwagon recently and have churned out products that can surely leave you scratching your head. Ever heard of digital toilet paper? That is what the US toilet paper company Charmin offered as an NFT in exchange for $4,100. No, you cannot do your actual business using it but can sell the image of a toilet paper roll, something you can easily download on your computer, for more money. Yes, it can fetch you more than 4,000 bucks. Charmin wasn’t the only one. The American fast-food chain Taco Bell had last year put a taco-themed GIF up for sale, which got sold out in just 30 minutes. Pringles, too, came up with CryptoCrisp, the “NFT-flavoured” crisps. That ‘NFT flavour’ was a five-second video of animated spinning golden Pringles. The price? $1,500, only. If NFT-flavoured chips weren’t enough, there was digital perfume on the shelf for $1,000 apiece. So much for the digital smell! After digital toilet paper and perfume, the world of NFTs cannot go any farther, you might think. Wrong. Not just you, this world caters to the canines, too. Otherwise, what can explain the idea behind NFT sticks? Not a real stick your dog can play with, but a picture of one for $1,200. Outlandish, right? We can no longer tell. While we are at images, let’s delve into the most famous ones. You must have stumbled upon the ‘disaster girl’ meme at some point, the one with a little girl grinning while a house is on fire behind her. The picture of the four-year-old ‘disaster girl’ Zoe Roth was taken in 2005. Decades later, when the now-adult Zoe put out the original picture for sale as an NFT, it got her $500,000. Now that’s profiting from a ‘disaster’. While Zoe’s picture is a world-famous meme, 1,000 expressionless selfies of a 22-year-old Indonesian student, which he sold as NFTs, got him twice the amount. Just when we thought that the world of NFTs cannot go any more bizarre, we stumbled upon a stinky one. During the Covid-induced lockdown, when many didn’t have much to do, American film director Alex Ramirez Mallis decided to audio-record his farts. If that wasn’t enough, he put out the 52-minute-long audio clip up for sale as an NFT. With this, was he profiting or mocking people’s intellect? That, only Ramirez can tell. As most were selling digital assets, Croatian tennis player Oleksandra Oliynykova sold a section of her right arm as an NFT for $5,000. The owner can commission a tattoo or body art. “I will bring your art object or message to every tennis court I play,” the tennis player wrote in the listing. Not a bad deal, right? Clip arts, GIFs, audio and video files are fine, but can someone sell the world wide web? Not the Internet, but the ‘www’ source code, its creator Tim Berners-Lee sold it as an NFT for $5.4 million last year. While we are speaking about the firsts, do you know what was the first tweet ever? It was “just setting up my twttr,” by none other than Twitter co-founder and former boss Jack Dorsey. Do you know its worth? A zilch, you might think, given the platform doesn’t pay in exchange for money. True! But this one is no ordinary tweet and got Dorsey over $2.9 million when sold as an NFT. Going through this list, one cannot help but think about the NFT phenomenon. What is it? A tool for people to earn millions, a means for buyers to show off, or just a quirky fad that will gradually fade away? Only time will tell. [ad_2] Source link

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[ad_1] Panama’s president says he won’t sign crypto bill into law ’at this moment’ [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] After being sent to prison for a year over a 1988 road-rage incident, Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu chose to skip dinner on his first night in prison, sources were quoted as saying to news agency PTI. Lodged in Barrack No.10 at the Patiala Central Jail in Punjab, Sidhu is housed with four other prisoners. Since he had already taken his dinner, Sidhu decided against having his meal at the prison, sources further told PTI. As a part of his rigorous one-year sentence, the 58-year-old Sidhu will also be required to work in prison. Incidentally, Shiromani Akali Dal leader and Sidhu’s political rival Bikram Singh Majithia is lodged at the Central Jail over a drug case. Sidhu had stood against Majithia from Amritsar East in this year’s Punjab state assembly polls. Both of them lost to AAP candidate Jeevan Jyot Kaur. On Friday, the Congress leader surrendered in a Patiala court, a day after the Supreme Court sentenced Sidhu to one year in prison. This development came moments after Sidhu had approached the apex court asking more time for surrender on medical grounds. Sidhu was involved in a 34-year-old road rage incident which resulted in the death of a 65-year-old man, Gurnam Singh. After allowing a review petition from the victim’s family, the SC added a one-year jail term to Sidhu’s sentence along with a fine of Rs 1,000, which was already imposed by the SC. “We have allowed a review application on the issue of the sentence. In addition to the fine imposed, we impose a sentence of imprisonment one one year to be undergone by respondent 1 (Sidhu),” Live Law quoted Justice Kaul as saying in the operative part of the judgment. On December 27, 1988, Sidhu and his friend Rupinder Singh Sandhu, a co-accused in the case, parked a Gypsy car in the middle of the road. On being asked to remove the car by Gurnam Singh, who was driving a Maruti car, Sidhu got down from his car and started beating up Gurnam Singh at the crossing, while removing Singh’s car keys before running away. By the time Singh was brought to the hospital, he was declared dead. [ad_2] Source link

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[ad_1] WEF 2022: Blockchain and digitization to take center stage at Davos [ad_2] Source link

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[ad_1] Australia ousts conservatives after nine years, PM Morrison concedes [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] A total of 92.66 per cent students passed the Higher Secondary School Certificate (HSSC) or Class 12 examination conducted by the Goa Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (GBSHE) in April 2022, as per the results declared on Saturday. A total of 94.58 per cent girls and 90.66 per cent boys cleared the examination, said board chairman Bhagirath Shetye here.c The examination was conducted offline. GBSHE had adopted a special assessment scheme for academic year 2021-22 in view of school closures and challenges of conducting examination during the coronavirus pandemic, Shetye told reporters.Of total 18,112 students who appeared for the examination, 16,783 passed. Commerce stream had the highest passing percentage of 95.71 per cent, followed by arts stream at 95.68 per cent.As much as 93.95 per cent of science streams students and 79.04 per cent of vocational stream students cleared the examination. Some 349 students availed of sports merit marks. [ad_2] Source link