PHYSICAL NFTS: SHOWING OFF YOUR NBA TOP SHOT MOMENTS WILL SOON BE A REALITY

Earlier this year, a 39-year-old man who calls himself Beeple sold a digital piece of art that he made on his computer for $69.3million. Imagine if someone had told you that 20 years ago. In fact, imagine if someone told you that today – it’s still pretty crazy.

But such is the booming world of NFTs. Many people still find this concept hard to fathom, but a lot of these same people wouldn’t blink at the idea of a piece of physical art going for a similar amount.

Of course, there is a difference – physical art can hang above your TV and you can more easily brag to your friends about it. In the past, that wasn’t the case with digital NFTs – your ownership of the asset really only existed on the internet. Our old friend Beeple, however – along with many other digital NFT platforms – has begun to combat this by producing physical copies of his digital art and sending them to buyers, enabling them to do as much bragging as they want. 

Many other online platforms which sell NFTs are taking a similar approach, and it’s easy to see NBA Top Shot eventually doing the same thing. We all already love Top Shot as it is and completely see the value of a moment whether we can hold it in our hands or not, but can you imagine the possibilities if bringing them into the physical world became a possibility?

Think about how many of us either have or wish we had a cabinet full of iconic sporting memorabilia - now imagine that instead of that cabinet being filled with signed photographs, it’s filled with moving moments. Front and center is a video of Zion posterizing Chimezie Metu; just alongside is LeBron dunking in front of Paul George on night one of his 18th season; while on the shelf below sits the first moment from your favorite young gun. 

We don’t yet know exactly what these physical moments would look like, but a group called Infinite Objects - who incidentally worked with Beeple on the physical copies of his art - have likely given us an idea. They’ve created NBA team video prints, and while these have a lot less on-screen movement than moments would have, they do offer some insight into what Top Shot might look like in the physical world.

Image: Infinite Objects

There’s still plenty of water to go under the bridge, and developing physical, high-quality copies of moving moments is probably a little more complicated than reproducing Beeple’s art, or creating the aforementioned team video prints. But these are problems with solutions, and once they’re solved, they could take NBA Top Shot to a whole new level.