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British Author Publishes First Ever Blockchain Novel

By: Issuewire
ITEM PREVIEW1

As collectible NFTs become the new in-thing, you can now spend $5,000 on an eBook

London, United Kingdom Mar 8, 2021 (Issuewire.com) - A Nyan Cat GIF selling for $460,000.

Grimes making $5.8m in twenty minutes from auctioning videos on the blockchain.

The Kings of Leon offering their latest album exclusively as an NFT.

There's something huge bubbling on the cryptocurrency circuit, and it's both intriguing and puzzling financial analysts and general punters alike.

So, for the uninitiated, what exactly is the blockchain?

According to one British author: "The blockchain is mental. To paraphrase Richard Feynman's description of quantum mechanics, if you think you understand the blockchain, you do not understand the blockchain."

Zeke Iddon, 36, is the first to have published an entire fiction novel as an NFT. That's a 'non-fungible token', a type of unique asset traded as a one-off on the cryptocurrency market.

Despite the technology and concept having existed since 2017, this strange digital realm has so far been dominated by traditional artwork and music.

"I was as surprised as anyone to see that nobody had turned a fiction novel into an NFT yet. There were an engineering textbook and a coffee-table book of artwork, but no novels. There isn't even a category for it in the main marketplaces - music, art, collectibles, but no works of fiction? This is a travesty and I simply won't stand for it." 

Iddon's novel, GO DIE IN a FIRE, is currently listed as a 7-day auction item on Mintable, a popular trade app for NFT collectibles. Set in a world in which Internet trolls are real, physical monsters and crowdfunding campaigns travel through time, Iddon's fictional parody of Internet culture is perhaps a fitting entry into the list of blockchain milestones.

Mintable itself confirmed on Reddit that it was one of the few crypto platforms to allow for eBook uploads, but as of last week was yet to receive a full book submission.

When asked to justify the 'Buy It Now' price of $5,000, Zeke replies: "crappy GIFs are being sold for upwards of five figures just for the novelty of it, so a one-off piece of Internet history - the first ever copy of a novel sold as an NFT - seems reasonable at $5,220.30."

"Plus," he adds, "it's the exact amount I need to pay off my credit card, so there's that."

The surge in popularity of NFTs has seen the price of 'minting' such Bitcoin-like tokens grow exponentially, commonly known as a 'gas fee'. While the price of listing such a collectible on the market can vary wildly (largely based on the value of Etherium, the cryptocurrency on which the marketplace is rooted), the payoffs can be huge for those who clear the overheads.

As yet, however, it is entirely unclear as to whether NFTs have a long-term future. Are they a mere novelty for the rich, or a viable marketplace for creators?

"It's a story as old as time," says Iddon. "An exciting new platform arrives that lets creators distribute their work to the masses, only for corporations to muscle in and funnel all the money upwards. Musicians are tired of insulting streaming revenues. I'm bitter that I only get 82p every time my £10 paperback sells on Amazon. Sure, you could try eschewing Spotify or Amazon altogether, but see where that gets you.

Maybe the idea of NFTs will blaze out as a novelty concept, but it feels bigger than that. I suspect it'll either seriously disrupt commerce on a fundamental level, or it'll get absorbed into the capitalist machine as everything else does. In theory, the decentralised nature will stop that from happening, but never underestimate the ingenuity of wealth ownership.

Who knows? All I can say for certain is that Jeff Bezos can go die in a fire."

The Mintable auction ends on March 14th 2021 with a minimum bid of $1.11 and no set reserve price.

Media Contact

Ray Harries - CKYX News


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Source :Mintable

This article was originally published by IssueWire. Read the original article here.

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