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Earlier this week, I received a call about an announcement: Glenfiddich was going to be offering investors a chance to buy a £13,000 bottle of whisky, and each purpose would be backed up by a non-fungible token (NFT).
For the uninitiated, an NFT is a way to use blockchain technology – the same system which underlies cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin – to register ownership of a digital asset. Their usage has exploded over the past year, as people buy tokens to own pieces of art that often only exist electronically.
The perceived value of the tokens has kicked off a raging speculative market, and many high-profile instances see individual assets being sold for millions of dollars.
If not quite a complete non-believer, I have so far remained gravely agnostic about the whole phenomenon. It had all too many similarities, for me, with the initial coin offering (ICO) craze of a few years ago, when the popularity of major cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether prompted all and sundry to think they could just launch their own cryptocurrency, and we ended up with a raft of stupidly-named coins, many of which are now worthless.
Others have compared NFTs to the dot.com boom, to tulips in Holland, and even to the 90s craze for selling the “right” to name a star.
Against this backdrop, the communications professional who called to tell me about the Glenfiddich news could immediately sense that my guardrails were up. Before I even said anything, he acknowledged the skepticism surrounding NFTs and sought to convince me that this one was different.
And as it happens, I think he had a point. The Glenfiddich whisky sale is an example of using the technology behind NFTs to record ownership of a real, tangible asset – not just a digital one. If they really want to, the buyer can send for their bottle and drink their £13,000 investment at home.
I’m not totally convinced that this isn’t a new marketing sheen…
