NFTs have been growing in popularity, and many artists and content creators have decided to give them a try. The non-fungible tokens have been the spark of many debates surrounding the way ownership of digital art actually works, considering that buyers end up owning the license for it rather than the actual thing. Some fans who tried to explain what NFTs are used the example of Pokemon cards, meaning that buyers get the original artwork's license, but that it can be reprinted and copied by anyone else.
For those unfamiliar with why NFTs are popular, they allow anyone to buy or sell any piece of art online for a price and currency of their choice, with the artist getting support for their work and buyers getting basic usage rights. Of course, each NFT is unique, or at least it's supposed to be, and many people use that to their advantage to buy and then resell precious NFTs when they increase in value. Again, this is not too dissimilar from Pokemon trading cards and even in-game Pokemon, to a certain extent.
As such, a Reddit user by the name of philjorts made the ultimate comparison between non-fungible tokens and a very peculiar Pokemon: Spinda. Spinda is a Normal-Type Pokemon introduced in Generation 3 that has the unique trait of changing its appearance every time one is generated by the games. Specifically, all Spinda specimens have a different pattern of fur that is unique to them - or rather, the chance of two Spinda being identical is extremely slim.
Considering that Shiny Pokemon can be very valuable due to their rarity, a Shiny Spinda is pretty much guaranteed to be the most distinctive Pokemon one could ever find, as the odds of two identical Shiny Spinda being found are extremely low. However, a fellow Redditor explained that duplicating a Spinda is almost impossible, whereas duplicating an NFT is often a couple of clicks away. As for the lovely confused Pokemon, though, there seem to be over 8.5 billion possible different patterns.
Recently, renowned content creator and streamer Asmongold criticized people that spend absurd amounts on NFTs, based on the recent craze surrounding monkey images. NFTs remain a controversial topic, and especially so within the video game industry, due to the impact they can have on microtransactions or owning digital assets like plots of land, weapons, or other in-game items.