The topic I’ve chosen for my essay is the complicated topic of NFT digital art. NFT stands for non-fungible tokens. These tokens take the shape of something called a block chain, a sort of deed or ledger of ownership of something like bitcoin. How this applies to art is a recent development. People have started to apply these block chains to works of art and then sell them for anywhere from 60k, to millions of dollars. It seems absurd but it is true. The biggest issue with this, however, is that in order to compute these block chains you need an insane amount of computing power. The type of rig you need to be able to process all of this data is so painfully damaging to the environment. Some of these ‘bitcoin mining’ rigs can consume upwards of 26.5 terawatt-­hours of electricity a year. Most of these rigs are powered by fossil fuels and you can only imagine the level of carbon impact just one of these servers can produce. The controversy in this latest craze is, what are the environmental and social ramifications for this practice?

I intend to include images of already sold NFT art and other such things!