ElI5: How do owners/creators of memes make money from them and how does a meme NFT buyer make money from their purchase?

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ElI5: How do owners/creators of memes make money from them and how does a meme NFT buyer make money from their purchase?

In: Technology

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Imagine you own a piece of land. How do you sell that land to someone else? You can’t take the land and put it in a bag and give it to someone. Instead, you write on a piece of paper: I sells this land to Susan.

If Susan needs to sell the land, she shows the paper to the buyer, then adds another sheet of paper that says Susan sells the land to the new buyer.

Now, the problem with this setup is that Tommy can show up with a sheet of paper that says Susan sold the land to him already and he owns the land!

So, you and Susan register the land sales with a trusted third party which keeps a ledger of land sales. If Tommy shows up saying he owns the land, just look in the ledger and see who owns the land.

An NFT is just a digital way of doing the transfer documents and ledgers using computers. It uses Blockchain tech which is basically a digital ledger that is nearly impossible to fake (as in Tommy can’t break into the ledger and insert his name in there.)

So, an NFT for a meme is just the same idea of transferring ownership of something that can’t be physically owned like land or the rights to a video or picture that can be copied easily on a computer. The NFT just takes care of the ledger and records of transfers. A similar thing could be done without technology with lawyers and a contract saying the rights to the meme are being sold.

How do you make money? You can make money selling whatever people will buy. I can sell you air, if you are willing to pay for it. I can sell you my soul if you are willing to pay for it.

A meme creator can sell someone an NFT to the rights of the meme if someone will pay for it.

Of course, someone needs to confirm that the meme creator is who they say they are and that the NFT being sold can be traced to the original creator or rights holder. But after that, every transfer of the NFT can be digitally confirmed and traced.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Most memes aren’t going to make anybody any money. However, if the meme is a picture of you, or a photo that you took, you’ve got rights to the original image. You aren’t making money from people posting it on the internet, but you could make money from printing t-shirts and things like that. Merchandising, merchandising, merchandising.