With help from Derek Robertson
The past couple of weeks have been bleak for crypto, with the collapse of a leading stablecoin and a deepening decline in the market for other digital assets.
But a story out of China offers a reminder that crypto isn’t just for investing. Increasingly, it’s also being put to political ends.
This one has to do with Non-Fungible Tokens — unique digital assets best-known as ways to collect digital art.
Lately, NFT’s have attracted attention mostly because of the outrageous sums these digital artworks — including a series of drawings of bored-looking apes — were regularly fetching in online sales, at least until the market crashed.
But NFTs, at heart, are just entries on a blockchain that contain unique data.
Because blockchains store information across a network of independent computers, there is no single party — like a social media company or web host — that can decide, or be ordered to, take down content. A meme posted to Reddit can be removed from Reddit, but the same meme — or metadata and links to it —…
With help from Derek Robertson
The past couple of weeks have been bleak for crypto, with the collapse of a leading stablecoin and a deepening decline in the market for other digital assets.
But a story out of China offers a reminder that crypto isn’t just for investing. Increasingly, it’s also being put to political ends.
This one has to do with Non-Fungible Tokens — unique digital assets best-known as ways to collect digital art.
Lately, NFT’s have attracted attention mostly because of the outrageous sums these digital artworks — including a series of drawings of bored-looking apes — were regularly fetching in online sales, at least until the market crashed.
But NFTs, at heart, are just entries on a blockchain that contain unique data.
Because blockchains store information across a network of independent computers, there is no single party — like a social media company or web host — that can decide, or be ordered to, take down content. A meme posted to Reddit can be removed from Reddit, but the same meme — or metadata and links to it —…