NFT has been this year’s economic buzzword, but does one truly understand the entire significance and potential of the new industry for the worlds of art, media, gaming and financial markets?
While emerging initially in 2016, NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, became known to the masses in 2021 amidst the COVID-19 outbreak and the quarantines that brought people to create and trade in NFTs. The technological innovation that the NFT world represents in the financial markets also penetrates the art, media and gaming worlds as artists such as Snoop Dogg incorporate NFTs in their artwork in some form.
According to Yariv Gilat, chairman of Tectona, a digital-assets company, and a leading technology entrepreneur, “The one thing that’s important to understand about the NFT industry is that for the first time, a tool has been created that allows proof of ownership and authenticity for every digital assets in a very accessible way.”
The NFT industry, which until COVID was a space inhabited by merely a few, has infiltrated the public sphere mostly through artists. According to Gilat, “At the beginning of 2016, few people in the crypto world were interested in NFTs. But today, the raw potential of NFTs in various realms is very clear to those in the industry.”
With this in mind, Tectona has developed an artificial-intelligence tool that allows every one of us to create, mint and sell our own NFT. Recently, the company launched the Bored.Ai project, with more than 70,000 community members, giving the masses the tools to create art using AI and without any previous technical experience.
According to Guy Benartzi, co-founder of the Bancor DeFi protocol and a leading tech entrepreneur, “By now, everyone has heard of the Bored Ape series that changed the NFT industry. The entrepreneurs who created this series weren’t wealthy, famous or had connections. They merely knew how to create the right content at the right time and were able to capture the spirit of this period in the crypto world. Today it’s the most important brand in the Metaverse.”
Tectona, a public Israeli company, has already reported stunning success in the presale phase, with revenue reaching 800 Ether, worth approximately $2.8 million. These early sales granted buyers access to technology developed through memberships. According to Benartzi, “Our mission at Tectona is to invest today in the new projects that will shape the future of the industry and to provide a haven for Israeli talent in the creative fields.”
Each of us will have our own Netflix
Tectona’s vision includes the creation of “AI Netflix,” which means in the future, entire movies will be created with the help of artificial intelligence, including the script, the actors and filming. When tested, these movies will be able to pass the Turing Test, and we will not be able to differentiate between movies created by AI and those created by humans.
According to Gilat, “The development of artificial-intelligence technology and the integration of blockchain technology through NFT creates an initial opportunity for the near future for every person to have his own Netflix and the ability to take part in the creation of content that we consume in every creative field, like music and movies.”
The NFT industry has an immense potential. According to Benartzi, “We have a new tool that allows everyone true ownership of every asset that you can think of, and the result is a line of new markets. We still don’t understand the full range of potential of the NFT market, just like we didn’t immediately understand the full significance and impact of the Internet on our lives.”
In addition to its work in NFT-related ventures, Tectona is also invested in companies in the blockchain industry and holds digital assets and early trading in digital coins (algo-trading and other advanced trading methods).
Tectona’s mission is to make digital assets accessible to the Israeli capital market. Therefore, the company chose to structure itself as a publicly traded company that maintains standards of transparency and the administrative enforcement that comes along with its status.
“We want to be regulated and to conduct ourselves transparently so that all of the players in the market – the regulators, the banking system, the Securities Authority, the Tax Authority and Capital Market Authority – will be our partners in this journey to make Israel a global leader,” Gilat said. “If there won’t be an active system of regulation, Israel will lose its advantage.”