India Gets Its First NFT Marketplace

Amidst the cryptocurrency boost across the globe, WazirX’s, India’s largest crypto exchange has launched first of its kind Non-Fungible Token (NFT) marketplace. NFT tokens are digital tokens that exist on a blockchain (a digital ledger). A unique digital asset that is not interchangeable in nature, it essentially represents ownership of digital items, like artwork and music.

Business Insider reports that, “unlike most NFT marketplaces, WazirX’s platform doesn’t run on the Ethereum blockchain. Instead, the WazirX marketplace runs on the Binance Smart Chain, a blockchain platform that was created by its parent company, Binance. It uses the WRX token for running transactions, and WazirX has committed 50,000 tokens as giveaways initially.” The same report informs that at this point, a fixed price model is going to be followed and it remains unclear whether WazirX will allow bidding in the future.

Money9 further reports that, “The selection of artists has been divided into ‘Spotlight’ and ‘Discover’ sections. Spotlight artists have been curated keeping in mind the diversity of their work, genre, popularity and credibility. WazirX NFT Marketplace will see the participation of well-known names like visual artist Vimal Chandran, India’s very own Banksy- the anonymous street artist Tyler, wall mural artist Sneha Chakraborty, Mixed media artist Ishita Banerjee from Montreal, Automotive Photographer Arjun Menon amongst many others. For artists in the ‘Discover’ category, the platform is announcing 50 selected artists each day from over 15 thousand applications received.”

They have been accepting applications from creators and collectors and claim that they have received 15000 applications so far and has whitelisted 300 creators who will be releasing their works on the marketplace.

What Is A NFT?

• NFT stands for non-fungible token.
• In economics, a fungible asset is something with units that can be readily interchanged – like money.
• An NFT is a digital asset that represents real-world objects like art, music, in-game items and videos. They are bought and sold online, frequently with cryptocurrency, and they are generally encoded with the same underlying software as many cryptos.
• With money, you can swap a £10 note for two £5 notes and it will have the same value. However, if something is non-fungible, this is impossible – it means it has unique properties so it cannot be interchanged with something else.

You can signup for WazirX here.

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