Welcome to the state wealthy podcast. I'm your host, Taylor Schulte, and today I'm continuing

with our technology theme for the month by diving into the world of NFTs or non-fundable tokens.

Specifically, I'm sharing what an NFT is in plain English, what makes them so valuable,

and if this is an asset class that retirement savers should be taking seriously.

So if you want to know why pixelated drawings and three second video clips are trading hands

for millions of dollars and what to make of this craze. Today's episode is for you.

For the links and resources mentioned, head over to you staywealthy.com forward slash 102.

By now, you've probably caught wind of the $69 million JPEG, a digital image that was sold for, yes,

$69 million in a recent art sale through Christie's, which is an online auction company.

This was a new record for artwork that exists only digitally, and it's the third highest auction

price achieved for any living

artist.

If that doesn't already sound crazy, this 69 million dollar JPEG was essentially just a collage

of other digital images taken by the artist known as Beeple, 5,000 pictures that you and I can grab screenshots of for free

thrown into a collage that sold for $69 million. If this story is new to you and you want to hear

more, check out the short episode that Planet Money did on the topic a couple of weeks ago. I'll be sure to link to it in the show notes. But the reason I'm sharing it with you today is because this image, this JPEG that recently sold and set records, is an NFT or non-fundable token. Let me break down this confusing term in plain English before we go any further.

A non-fungible asset is something that can't be quickly exchanged.

A relatable example might be a valuable baseball card or a wine collection or a piece of land or even a classic car.

And unlike a $20 bill, which is fungible, you can't quickly and easily swap your $50,000 wine collection for cash.

A token, the T in NFT, is simply a type of virtual currency that lives on the blockchain, and it represents a specific

assets such as a digital image, like the $69 million JPEG.

So if we put all this together, an NFT is simply documentation of ownership of something that is one-of-a-kind,

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