OUR HOSTS: 

Corinne Foxx - @corinnefoxx

Natalie McMillan - @nataliemcm and @shopnataliemcmillan 

What we're drinking: Gary Farrell Russian River Selection Chardonnay

TOPIC: 

Today, we’re talking all about NFTs, aka the cryptocurrency art market. Non-fungible tokens have been all over the news, mainly for being sold at insanely high prices, so we wanted to do a deep dive on what they are, how to go about purchasing one, and the pros and cons of this type of format. 

NFTs are a unique unit of data employing technology that allows digital content, like videos, songs and images to become logged and authenticated on cryptocurrency blockchains, primarily Ethereum. If all that sounds like a word jumble, check out episode 58, our pre-schooler’s guide to digital currency, to establish a base knowledge on cryptocurrency! Listen in as we explore the latest art trend and figure out how to get on board. 

In this episode, we discuss:

• The history of the NFT industry 
• What does ‘fungible’ mean 
• Factors to consider when picking a marketplace to buy and sell from 
• What actually courts as an NFT 
• How to use your NFT 
• The environmental impact of NFTs and potential low-energy solutions
• Advice for investing  

END OF THE SHOW: 

Corinne and Natalie introduce Hottie of the Week: Shawn Mendes 

WINE RATING:

Gary Farrell Russian River Selection Chardonnay = Shawn / Shawn

WRAP UP:

To wrap up the episode, we play Citizen’s Arrest. Corinne is ready to lock up the construction industry due to the incessant noise it produces. And as much as it pains her to say it, Nat has to arrest Rihanna for holding out on a new album. The world has gone downhill since Anti was released in 2016. Just sayin. 

We have a brand new newsletter for our Am I community. You can sign up for the newsletter on our website: amidoingthisrightpod.com

You can email us for episode ideas or Random Advice: amidoingthisrightpod@gmail.com

Follow us on Instagram: @amidoingthisrightpod 

Don't forget to rate and review the podcast! It really helps us grow!

[00:00:08] Natalie McMillan: And I'm Natalie McMillan.

[00:00:20] Natalie McMillan: And each week we cover a new topic and we pop open a new bottle of wine.

We did promise you guys a while ago. We did. Where you're talking the ABCs of AF T and how to invest in cryptos latest trend. We're going to be talking about what is an NFT. If you guys don't know what it is, don't

[00:00:46] Corinne Foxx: We had no idea we're

This is layman's terms. This is level levels, 0.1. Yeah.

This is the one for you. And we did get rave reviews from all. Crypto episodes. We had an official experts say that we did a great job out of the

[00:01:22] Corinne Foxx: we too, but now what are we drinking? This little epi?

I wonder if it's going to be one of those situations again, where we're like, we don't like Chardonnay and then we're like, well, we kind of like Chardonnay.

I have to tell you my conspiracy theory. Well, sorry. Yes, very, but

[00:01:58] Corinne Foxx: settle, settle on end. So you know that there's been construction outside my house for awhile. Do you know that? I think so. Let me tell you, there's this restoration project happening outside my home and they've been doing construction work, but they've been drilling.

And when I say drilling, I don't mean like a little jackhammer. I mean, a crane is going into the ground and it has been for like two weeks now and it's vibrating the ground so violently and so loudly that I had to. I had to walk out with my hands and my hips. I said, sir, how long has this going on? Okay, how long are we drilling?

And they said ma'am is going to be at three, four week drill. What? Right.

[00:02:41] Corinne Foxx: back on the side of my building. Oh, okay. Okay. And so at first it was just like, this is annoying at two 30 every day, the same dude opens his window and goes.

[00:02:53] Corinne Foxx: so for him, you know, I normally don't like putting negativity out into the world. Right. But I feel him from a very dark place. We all feel. Yes. And, but then I was driving. This drilling is happening at this point, we're drilling to another universe. We're drilling to Narnia. We're drilling

As we used to say, there's something sinister happening.

[00:03:30] Natalie McMillan: actually hiding alien bodies under LinkedIn channels for alien.

Cause I'm

[00:03:38] Natalie McMillan: weeks? Can you ask them, what are you drilling? I could,

[00:03:45] Natalie McMillan: I'm going to show you the drill. Oh, I need to see it. This is the.

[00:03:53] Natalie McMillan: Okay. People, this looks like this is a huge piece. It's a tall, it's a Palm tree. It's not, it's not able to drill. It looks like an oil rig. That's what I'm saying.

[00:04:10] Natalie McMillan: it's

[00:04:14] Natalie McMillan: this case? They probably already are.

Right. And the FBI is behind all the conspiracy. That's

[00:04:29] Natalie McMillan: with. Yeah, a hundred percent. I definitely see that for you. I definitely see that

[00:04:44] Natalie McMillan: You're going to have to update us whenever things progress. I'll let you guys know, let us know

[00:04:54] Natalie McMillan: TZ, please. Ooh, well, we promised you guys a while back that we would do this episode. And if you haven't listened to the previous episode on cryptocurrency, you can go back right now and listen to that.

It's episode 58, and it's called decoding crypto a preschooler's guide to digital currency. And this makes sense.

[00:05:20] Natalie McMillan: moved up just a hair. And so in that episode, we really laid out all those basic facts on crypto and how the technologies are even in existence.

But in that episode, we just very, very briefly touched on NFTs and we said, we'd circle back. And we did our research and. We are here and we're going to dive into it. Yeah. So

[00:05:51] Natalie McMillan: F T yes. Okay. An NFT. It stands for non fungible token, and it's a unique unit of data employing technology that allows digital content.

So from videos to songs, to images, kind of anything that it can become logged and authenticated on cryptocurrency blockchains primarily is theory. Okay. So once the content is logged onto the blockchain, every transaction from transfers to sales is recorded on the chain, creating an easily accessible ledger of provenance and.

History. So the main impact of NFTs is making it easy to own and sell digital content.

[00:06:43] Natalie McMillan: Yeah. Oh, she explains the blockchain as if she is goddamn. Einstein. It's incredible.

So the history of NFTs and the man who first created one, Kevin McCoy began on May 3rd, 2014. He minted his non fungible token quantum way before the crypto art market exploded. So quantum is, I saw a picture of it. It's just like pixelated image of an octagon filled with. Denoting circles, arcs and other shapes.

It's like, um, it looks like, remember when Mack had those screensavers that like, kind of moved in

[00:07:33] Corinne Foxx: like that, you know why it's not that impressive.

[00:08:02] Natalie McMillan: that mean?

How is it not fungible or fungible? What is

[00:08:11] Natalie McMillan: Yeah.

You might not want to carry around five, $1 bills for whatever reason. So you can exchange those. Four one $5 bell. Yes. And you still, the value of your money is still $5, regardless of the fact that it's in a different form now. Okay. I'm following. So that's fungible. Not a fungible assets are the opposite.

Each one is unique and can't be substituted for something similar. For example, like the Mona Lisa, I can't be swapped out for something similar, like a Mona Lisa poster, right? It is. That is, that is the wrong. Nothing else is a substituted value for it. So like another example is like a Bitcoin. Bitcoin is fungible.

You can trade one Bitcoin for another Bitcoin and you'll have exactly the same thing. A, one of a kind like trading card, like a baseball card, like that's non fungible. Like if you traded it for another card, you'd have something completely.

It collected prices from 2017 to April of 2021, and reported that $15 was the average sale price of 75% of NFTs with only 1% reaching prices higher than $1,500. So that, you know, 7 million situation, that's not all in a pizza rarity, it's a rarity, but this data, however, should be taken with a grain of salt.

It is heavily skewed because the majority of its data points hail from a time before NFTs were adopted at the current scale.

But yeah, that's what I'm saying with like 1% or higher than 1500. So it's like, I love you Danielle, but I think your odds are well,

[00:10:37] Corinne Foxx: be anything digital, such as drawings, music, your brain downloaded and turned into an AI.

It can really be literally anything, but there's a lot of current excitement is around the tech to sell digital art. Yes. And actually found some really crazy and FTS.

[00:10:57] Corinne Foxx: have you heard of flying war babies? Okay. So, you know, Grimes like the musician, she was like also

[00:11:07] Corinne Foxx: grandma and friends.

So her collection warden catches the eye it's babies with wings armed with swords. Oh. And the war babies guard, Mars. And are surrounded by an apocalyptic, apocalyptic. Yeah. Background.

[00:11:24] Corinne Foxx: So there were only 10 of these digital artworks and she sold them in 20 minutes for $5.8 million.

[00:11:37] Corinne Foxx: of them. And I dunno. And then we created value on all the same 10. No, no, no. There's 10 different ones. Oh, 10 different war series called flying

[00:11:48] Corinne Foxx: collection. It's a collection. There's a collection.

There's only 10 of them and she sold all 10 of them within 20 minutes for $5.8 million. Okay. Another fun, little crazy NFT was the digital toilet paper with. Oh, so Sharman introduced

[00:12:07] Corinne Foxx: Did they introduced the first digital toilet paper in March, 2021? And the digital toilet paper is individually designed with colorful flowers and grasses.

As an NFT. Yes, it's merely a picture, but it costs a whopping 4,000 us dollars and Sharman reportedly keeps only 0.01% of the proceeds for itself. The rest goes to a humanitarian organization called direct relief.

[00:12:36] Corinne Foxx: get I'll. I'll let you slide. If you want some digital toilet paper, it costs 4,009.

[00:12:44] Corinne Foxx: Okay. And the last really crazy NMT that I found was actually the world's first digital perfume. Oh. So you can't smell it right.

[00:12:55] Corinne Foxx: no, no, no. It's digital. Right. But Berlin based look labs is offering its cyber. love

[00:13:07] Corinne Foxx: digital form.

Okay. It's the world's first digital fragrance. The inventive developers have used near infrared spectroscopic to scan the packaging, the bottle and the fragrance of the perfume. And this created a digital image of the fragrance, the molecular wavelengths of cyber, a dip of farm sold as an NFT for $18,000.

So they like, they scan the molecule and it made it. And you can combine the perfume, which you can't wear it, and it costs $18,000. Right?

Like, like with the grind thing, Oh, there's 10 of these digital artworks. It's like, oh, but you own it, but you don't actually own it. Let me, let me explain. Okay. So a common question that people have when discussing NFTs is why would I pay for something that is free all over the internet? For example, an NFT have a clip of LeBron Duncan.

Yeah, those

[00:14:22] Natalie McMillan: memorabilia. Yeah. That's what for $208,000, even though the clip has been viewed millions of times for free, just like on YouTube, but the NFTs value actually lies in the fact that the purchase clip is the quote unquote official clip of LeBron dunking. However, this is where it gets a little tricky with the NFL.

When someone buys an NFT from a creator, they obtain ownership in the sense that it becomes their property. After all an NFT is a digital certificate of ownership representing the purchase of a digital asset traceable. The block chain, but the NFT holder does not have any other rights to the work.

Right.

So imagine a long ass CVS receipt. You're you're the top of the line. And then if you sell it, yeah, yeah. Seat is

[00:15:46] Natalie McMillan: Yeah. So the problem though, with this type of format is while the NFTs are very safely documented on the blockchain, the actual thing that it was purchased. On isn't so NFTs they're all on third party hosting sites.

So for example, if the LeBron clip was stored on a sports website and then the owner of that clip clicked on the link to view it, but the website was taken down for some reason, like the link was like a 4 0 4 error. There is no way. It's a similar thing with, if you listen to our first crypto episode about how, like, if you lose your password, it's, it's all gone.

So similarly, if the actual clip is no longer on the internet, that's it. Okay.

[00:16:41] Natalie McMillan: why I'm very cute. I

Most marketplace currently use the Ethereum network to power their transactions. So you will know. Ethereum's native token ether to buy an NFT. So you have to have ether to purchase the NFT. And if you don't have it, you can open an account with an exchange like Binance or, you know, the Coinbase. There's a lot of ones that you can like purchase.

Step one, you've got to purchase an EA to purchase. At MFT.

[00:17:19] Corinne Foxx: Exactly. Exactly. And then you also need to set up a crypto wallet compatible with Ethereum, which we talked about in our crypto episode, a crypto wallet is a digital address where you can store cryptocurrencies and you can again, open them on something like Binance, Coinbase, CoinDesk, things like that.

So you'd have

[00:18:25] Natalie McMillan: And then people start

[00:18:27] Natalie McMillan: like an eBay thing. And so after the successful bid, like let's say you're the winner, you will complete the transaction and all the necessary amount will be debited from that wallet, the crypto wallet.

And remember that you may also have to pay a transaction fee to the marketplace, but the fee will also depend on the marketplace where you're buying it from. Yeah. So consider that if you want to pick your market. If there's a little fee there, but let's go back to, so let's say somebody gets it. Okay.

They have successfully bid for a comic book cover. Okay. What now?

And all you need to do is make an account and follow the on-site prompts to prove ownership. And in a couple of minutes, you're able to show off your unique digital collection that you own to the world.

[00:19:42] Corinne Foxx: Yeah. Like beanie baby.

Okay. You can also resell your NFTE so you can sell your price on the same marketplace that you bought it from. For example, somewhere like rebel.com, like you just said, Put it on there, resell it, pick a new prize, you know, um, appreciate it yourself. But keep in mind, there is that service fee for even items that are sold.

So on the other end.

[00:20:11] Corinne Foxx: because you, it okay. And the last thing you can do with it is you can hold on to it. You can also profit off NFTs without ever touching one. Some users like. Um, like stocks. So by purchasing an NFT of something potentially profitable early on, you may be able to make decent profit later on, but keep in mind, unfortunately the opposite could happen too, and it could depreciate and it can be worth less later,

Yeah. So you probably wouldn't want to borrow. Hoping that it's going to.

[00:20:55] Natalie McMillan: we, we kind of talked about it a little bit in, uh, the crypto episode because running the blockchain technology does require like a shitload of energy.

Yeah. And so currently a single transaction on Ethereum consumes as much electricity as a house in a workweek, according to Forbes. What? Yeah. Why? Yeah. And remember in the NR crypto episode, it was. One thing was, it takes like the amount of, to power, all of Sweden or something. It's like a lot shit. Okay. So while there are alternative cryptocurrencies with a much lower environmental footprint, like this thing called , they've not yet been adopted widely.

And then actually the NFT platform built on tasers dissolved recently. So that kind of fell under some NFT platforms by carbon offsets to mitigate their impact. But the actual efficacy of carbon offsets has been debated. The majority of the NFT community has looked past the environmental impacts because a theory 2.0 is coming.

Oh wow. Which is said to utilize a significantly less. Polluting infrastructure. And it's supposed to come early this year, although its deployment has been imminent for years. So it's kinda like, we'll

Should we invest in NFTs? Well,

Their crypto cousins have experienced over the past couple of years. So Bitcoin for instance, goes for around $50,000 today, but a year ago it was worth less than a fifth of that.

[00:23:21] Natalie McMillan: all about scarcity too. Like the NFTs. The sense of scarcity. Like I have to buy like collectibles, right?

Like beanie babies. Yes. Diana beanie baby was like $10,000. And my boss was like, it's just a beanie baby. Yeah.

Yeah. But don't invest anything that you're not willing to lose. Yeah. And

[00:23:55] Corinne Foxx: first. Yeah. Like if you're strapped for extra cash, we always recommend padding up your emergency fund retirement. First before any investments and on a personal note, we think you should have some.

Stock and index fund investment as well before there, before you dip your toes into crypto and NFTs, like we need to be really solid. Yes. This is our fun money to play with. It's like, if we lose it, we lose it. And I'm sure there's people listening to this. Like, no, I don't know if T's all the well, crypto is sure, but like, we don't know that.

And we can't recommend that on the podcast.

[00:24:36] Corinne Foxx: little money in it. It has

[00:24:44] Corinne Foxx: Yeah. So if you're feeling super secure and want to get for risky, there's no reason not to buy yourself a little cutie NFTE, one that makes you happy, makes you smile.

Crypto kitty, crypto, kitty. I don't know what it is. Well, we hope you guys have a better understanding of what NFTs are, how they gain value and how to invest in them if you choose to do so. That was like that wasn't bad. It was a gripping a band-aid I,

I certainly do. Oh,

[00:25:24] Natalie McMillan: guys know. Everybody know what it is, what it would even be actually. Should we talk about our audio of the week?

Because I find this NFT situation.

[00:25:35] Natalie McMillan: to introduce it?

[00:25:42] Natalie McMillan: Mendez. I was surprised we haven't had him yet. I know

So the reason we chose Sean Mendez is not because he's a top not, but because he auctioned off an NFT collection of digital clothing, including a virtual copy of his guitar and a vest that he wore to perform in Mexico city, it is not the vest. It is a digital version of the vest. So buyers are able to wear these items.

Personal digital

[00:26:25] Corinne Foxx: And then all of a sudden done that NFT collection sold for over $37,000 and Mendez donated his portion of the proceeds to the Shawn Mendez foundation. Wonder grants, which we looked into and it like gives grants to young activists who like want to start their organizations and like need the funds to do so.

So I love that. I love that. We love Shawn Mendez he's unproblematic. And, um, I, I'm just very curious who owns his virtual guitar and his virtual vest

[00:27:05] Corinne Foxx: me. Okay. I don't know.

Do you have to buy an NFT of an avatar to then have the NMT of the vest? And I don't know how you would put the mask onto the

[00:27:20] Corinne Foxx: don't know. It does. It says that they were able to wear

So let's go ahead and rate here. Okay. What's the line again? It's the Gary Farrell. Chardonnay. Okay.

[00:27:36] Natalie McMillan: I have no problem. I love it. It's good.

[00:27:41] Natalie McMillan: Sean at a Schwann it's I think, especially for a Chardonnay, Sean and Sean, and a shot, I'm almost finished my glass, which almost never had

I was like, I like

[00:28:01] Corinne Foxx: Okay. Good. Oh, cheers. It's great.

The part of the episode where we play a little wrap-up game and this week we're playing citizen's arrest.

[00:28:29] Corinne Foxx: Okay. I'm going to go first because I already said my citizens, a restaurant construct. Oh, yes. At all. At any time place, here's the thing with construction. That's kind of going to freak you out. It's never done. It's never, even if it's done one place, it's still going on somewhere else, especially in New York city.

Like there's just, it's, there's always construction happening.

[00:28:57] Corinne Foxx: constant. Like, is there ever going to be a time in space where everything's been. And there's nothing left to be constructed.

I just hope I get some

[00:29:12] Natalie McMillan: they should, but I'm glad you were arresting them. They need to be arrested to be arrested my arrest. I really don't want to make this arrest, but I have to. Oh, on yourself again, is it? No, it's worse. It's on miss Robyn, Rihanna, Fenty. I'm going to citizens

I for the album, for the album, where's the album. Where's the

[00:29:40] Corinne Foxx: You know what, since, when, when was her last album released? I'm really into conspiracy theories. The world has kind of gone to shit since her last album.

I'm like, there's not been one good thing that happened since prince died. Yeah. But I like where your head's

[00:30:00] Natalie McMillan: insane. Auntie auntie

[00:30:07] Natalie McMillan: shit. It's truly gone to shit.

[00:30:16] Natalie McMillan: Ms Robin,

[00:30:24] Natalie McMillan: Exactly. And that's why I must arrest her. That's

[00:30:32] Natalie McMillan: and we love her. We love her, but she's got to go to jail. She does. She

[00:30:38] Natalie McMillan: she can come out.

She can finish the album in jail.

If you sign up a, get to know us, If you sign up on our website, am I doing this right pod.com? You can get our newsletter and receive our fun backs. Ooh, I love that. Or secret fund fact, I

[00:31:19] Corinne Foxx: Corinne that, okay.

Maybe that will meet in our newsletter

[00:31:26] Corinne Foxx: And lastly, don't forget to rate and review our podcast. We love reading your reviews and read them on the pod. We will. If you guys leave a nice one, so we'd love to see it and we'll be back next week with another episode. .