If you don’t understand NFT, then Mike Shannon might want to get a beer with you and shout about it along with you.
One of the most fascinating subplots of our third act of COVID quarantine was the explosion of NFT.
The rise of NBA Top Shot introduced the market to the idea of owning a non-fungible token, which is a unit of data stored on a digital ledger, called a blockchain, that certifies a digital asset to be unique and therefore not interchangeable.
It’s essentially owning something that isn’t physically real but being the only person that owns it. But ownership doesn’t extend to things like owning the rights to a highlight and getting paid each time it’s used, you just own the ability to say that highlight belongs to you.
The whole concept of NFT is pretty complicated, but it’s going to be something that makes a lot more sense in a few years when it’s been figured out by corporations and laundered into making them lots of money. Until then, it’s perfectly okay to scratch your head and make jokes that tech dorks will make fun of you over because you’re afraid of how far behind the times you are.
St. Louis Cardinals radio announcer Mike Shannon is one of those folks. Not a tech dork, but a guy who simply cannot comprehend how fast the proverbial train of life he’s on is going.
He decided to use a game earlier this week between the Cardinals and Tigers to get to the bottom of this NFT business and see what the young people are all raving about. As it turns out, opening that Pandora’s Box of knowledge was like opening the Ark at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark — it melted Shannon’s brain.
Shannon doesn’t so much tumble down the BFT wormhole as he does bounce off the sides of it as he careens into another dimension of consciousness. Buckle up and prepare to go on an absolute journey.
“You can bid now on one of…a Busch Stadium NFT. What’s NFT mean?… What’s an NFT?…I’ll ask Mike. Mike Claiborne, what’s an NFT? It says right there, NFT, Michael. We’re gonna find out if we have to turn this place upside down we’ll find out what an NFT is…No…Friggin…Touchdowns…no? No Friggin Tonsils. I got my tonsils taken out…and they promise you ice cream and cake and all that stuff. And they know you couldn’t eat…and someone said ice cream now and no thanks.”
Shannon can pick up that NFT if he wants, once he fully understands what exactly the hell it is. We might be waiting a while, though.