NFTs offer economic opportunities, but first India needs a clear policy

moneycontrol.com:

The year 2021 witnessed international and Indian brands catching onto the non-fungible token (NFT) fervour wherein celebrities either launched their digital collectibles, or aligning with the NFT bandwagon.

An NFT is a unique digital code stored on a blockchain, a form of distributed or digital ledger. In simpler terms, the NFTs are digital representation of ownership that is recorded on a blockchain. An NFT could be representing a digital or physical asset which has value. As the name suggests, these are non-fungible, and this characteristic forms its very foundation.

As per market data tracker DappRadar data analytics, the sales of NFTs reached $25 billion in 2021 backed by the crypto asset surge and rising interest of celebrities and tech evangelists across the world.

Considering India's digital growth story, the country is well positioned to become the front runner in the NFT space. At present, there are about 11 NFT companies headquartered in India, after the United States, and Singapore.

India is a powerhouse of creativity, rising talent, and young population. The NFTs provide immense opportunity to utilise this potential, and simultaneously the much-needed reach for artists/ originators to digitally showcase their work to a much larger audience.

Given their unique characteristics, the NFTs can be used as a digital ownership record for authenticating ownership of both digital as well as physical assets. The NFTs may be awarded without any monetary considerations, or may be bought and sold using either cryptocurrencies or even fiat currencies. Both the NFTs and cryptocurrencies are built on blockchain technology, and while cryptocurrency is fungible wherein one bitcoin is the same as any other bitcoin (like the cash in a