The world’s first NFT vending machine – or ATM – has been installed in Manhattan, NYC.
Now you can walk off the street, pick a number, swipe your card and receive a little box, not dissimilar to a pack of cigarettes, and you are the proud owner of a non-fungible token.
Neon, an NFT platform, came up with the idea with crypto curious people in mind, hence why you can buy it with your regular credit or debit card, rather than with crypto.
Each box contains a slip of paper on which you’ll find a QR code that you can scan to claim the NFT you just bought.
Prices range from $5.99 to $420.69 and here’s the kicker, you don’t actually know what kind of NFT you’ve bought until you claim it.
Neon CEO Kyle Zappitell said the element of surprise was part of the allure.
“As an NFT collector, one of the things you love is the randomness of, ‘which one are you going to get?’,” he said.
So what exactly is an NFT? The acronym stands for Non-Fungible Token, and is essentially a unique line of code to which you can attach anything from documents to music – and that’s what NFTs are mostly known for these days – digital art.
NFTs are immutable, they can’t be altered or duplicated, and they rely on blockchain technology.
These NFTs in particular are ‘minted’ (NFT jargon for ‘created’) on the Solana blockchain, which many people appreciate because it’s one of the fastest and cheapest blockchains, and it’s carbon neutral.
Spending $400+ on an NFT is a stretch but if you’re new to the world and driven by curiousity, $5.99 is basically the price of a cup of coffee in NYC so this project has potential to capture a wider market and really take off.
