The Collins Dictionary has officially announced its annual ten-word list for the 'word of the year 2021', in addition to stating that NFT - although technically understood as an abbreviation for non-fungible token - is its word of the year, beating out cryptocurrency, metaverse. and hybrid work, among others.
The blog post spoke candidly about the prospect of a digital revolution through a "convergence of money and the Internet," which seeks to challenge and evolve traditional means of payment into the 21st century.
How Solana and Cardano are breaking new ground for NFT growth
Collins Dictionary defines an NFT as "a unique digital certificate, registered on a blockchain, that is used to record the ownership of an asset, such as a work of art or a collectible," and was further stated in the publication of his blog that NFT stands for:
"A piece of digital data that records who belongs to a digital work ... what has really captured the public imagination around NFTs is the use of this technology to sell art."
Beeple's NFT auction closes with a record $ 69.3 million
The institution cited the infamous NFT artist Beeple as a prominent contributor to the space and unsurprisingly denoted his landmark masterpiece, Everydays: The First 5000 Days, a piece auctioned for a market peak of $ 69 million in March. this year, the third largest sale of physical or digital art in history.
The NFT market has witnessed parabolic growth over the past twelve months, attracting a wave of celebrities, influencers, and Web 3.0 fans to interact with the space. Collections like CryptoPunks, Bored Ape Yacht Club, and Cool Cats have captured the essence of the Twitter-native profile picture (pfp) project space.
Additionally, the emergence of NFT auctions by traditional auction houses such as Christie's and Sotheby's are on a global pedal stool to drive adoption, a theme that was shared by CoinGecko co-founder and COO Bobby Ong in a recent conversation with Cointelegraph.
NFT sales are on the rise, but ownership is highly concentrated
Total combined sales of art and collectibles NFT exceeded $ 7.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021. For comparison, art and collectibles sales were $ 17.8 million and $ 55.5 million, respectively, earlier this year, figures that seem incomprehensible in today's burgeoning market.
For further context in the inclusion of NFTs, the Oxford Dictionary, the UK establishment, recently awarded its prestigious word of the year to Vax, a symbol of the significant impact that COVID-19, and subsequent vaccination programs have had on the world for the past two years.
The Oxford Dictionary first debuted cryptocurrency terminology in its online edition in August 2013 with the introduction of Bitcoin. The word cryptocurrency followed just under a year later, while more recently, Satoshi joined the exclusive list of linguistic arbitrage.