There's a long-standing, and somewhat annoying, tradition at Georgia Tech of stealing the "T". It started as a prank 50 years ago, and continues in various forms to this day.
In response, Georgia Tech has created a non-fungible token (NFT) of their iconic "T" which will be digitally protected and impossible to steal.
In case you haven't been on the Internet recently, you may be wondering WTF is an NFT? The digital art world is being turned upside down by non-fungible tokens (NFTs), but they are a little hard to wrap your head around. In a nutshell, to create an NFT you start with something digital and easily copied (like a JPEG photo of the Mona Lisa) and end up with something one-of-a-kind (akin to the actual Mona Lisa), by leveraging cryptography and blockchain technology. This doesn't change the digital file at all, which can still be used and shared and identically copied in the same way it was before the NFT was created. But the NFT itself can be bought and sold just like a cryptocurrency. If you want to learn more you can find many good explanations online.
"We think that it just makes sense to use a blockchain to secure the Block Letter T," said Arial Roman, Associate Vice Provost of Institutional Fonts.
Not to be outdone, I, Loof Lirpa, am also getting into the NFT business. This very column is available for you to bid on as an NFT! That's right, I'm selling a copy of this webpage (as an image) in what is likely
THE FIRST APRIL FOOL'S JOKE ABOUT NFTs, AVAILABLE AS AN NFT!
That sounds valuable, right? Probably worth more than that Princess the Bear Beanie Baby you just put in the quarancleaning giveaway box.
Unlike my usual posts, this part is not a joke. All proceeds from the sale of this NFT will be donated to the Georgia Tech Foundation for the official COVID-19 Graduate Student Support fund in the College of Sciences. It's very real, and a great way to get rid of some of that extra cryptocurrency burning an imaginary hole in your digital wallet.
