If you're wondering what an NFT, aka Non-Fungible Token, is, well, you're not alone. CryptoPunks and CyberCats are selling for six and seven figures and even Christie's is getting in on the digital art action. So we've got questions...what are these digital items, why are people investing a fortune in them (and should you?), and what does that mean for the financial sector and the art world?

 
Featured Guests

Buvaneshwaran "Eshwar" Venugopal, Ph.D. - Assistant Professor of Finance at UCF
Carla Poindexter, M.F.A. - UCF Professor of Art
Lory Kehoe - Director, Digital Assets & Blockchain, BNY Mellon

Episode Highlights

0:26 - Introduction
2:04 - What the heck is an NFT?
04:01 - What do I actually own?
05:58 - What's actually in the blockchain?
11:33 - Why did the bank become interested in an NFT?
15:10 - When the world gets back to normal, will this all go away?
21:40 - What keeps you up the most at night about NFTs?
24:45 - 10 years from now are NFTs going to be around and what are they mainly going to be used for?
28:15 - Dean Jarley's final thoughts

 
Episode Transcription
Paul Jarley: Eshwar, I'm going to start with you. What the heck is an NFT?

Eshwar Venugopal: I think the world is trying to figure it out.

Paul Jarley: This here was all about separating hype from fundamental change. I'm Paul Jarley, dean of the college of business here at UCF. I've got lots of questions. To get answers, I'm talking to people with interesting insights into the future of business. Have you ever wondered, is this really a thing? Onto our show. (singing). On March 11th, CryptoPunk 3,100, a piece of digital art, sold for $7.6 million with an NFT. That broke the record set the day before by CryptoPunk 7804, which had sold for $7.5 million. Then on March 21st, Beeple's the First 5,000 days sold for $69.3 million. Needless to say, people took notice. I took notice. Well, honestly, Josh told me to take notice. I was hesitant. This all seemed pretty esoteric. Techno geeks with stupid money doing techno geeky things, I thought.But then Forbes did an article. I noticed Christie's auction house was involved. And so I started to send some emails and make some phone calls. My resident blockchain guy had an interest in this. The dean of arts and humanities, Jeff Moore, put me in contact with an artist interested in NFTs. The kicker was Jeff Stokes. Jeff is a member of my dean's advisory board, with BNY Mellon, who put me in contact with their digital asset guy. If Alexander Hamilton's bank was interested in NFTs, I figured I should be too. So to shed some light on this new phenomenon, we have with us today, Eshwar Venugopal, who is an assistant professor here in the finance department at UCF, Carla Poindexter, who is the professor of art at UCF, and Lory Kehoe, who is the director of digital assets and blockchain at BYN Mellon. Listen in.

Paul Jarley: Eshwar, I'm going to start with you. What the heck is an NFT?

Eshwar Venugopal: An NFT is basically a certificate of ownership of a digital group. Basically giving artists an ability to offer limited additions of their artwork. I'm going to use artists as an example over here, since we have Carla over here. But I have a problem with that, but I'll come to it later on. But the idea is that you have a certificate of ownership and it is a limited edition product and it is more of a digital collection rather than a physical good. That's how it has been envisioned. But things have been changing rapidly. These days, if you take some of the latest NFTs that are being minted, there is a physical aspect of it. One guy actually sold his house on NFT. So, things are a little bit blurry now, but if you take a look at it from a property perspective,