Okay, so everyone's heard of them, 12 year olds are getting rich off of them, the burning question is WHAT THE HELL ARE NFTs?? and do people outside r/crypto care?

A block-chain is a fancy word for a public and decentralized list of transactions, a ledger, that the entire ecosystem of the block-chain maintains. (Decentralized meaning you and everyone else can verify a transaction, without the need to trust a central third party such as a bank or a government)

This not only means that your transactions are verifiable, but also secure and in some cases, pretty anonymous. (Yes, this means that cryptocurrencies are often used for illegal activities, but authorities are doing a lot to catch crypto-criminals, though its not quiet as anonymous as some criminals think it is; Right now, we wanna get to NFTs

an NFT ( Non-Fungible Token) is a unique token on a blockchain that can only be produced (minted) once and then can be sold from one user of the blockchain to another.

The words non-fungible mean that it is literally not replaceable- theres just one of it- and this rarity is part of what makes an NFT valuable, but not in and of itsel; Kind of like how a limited edition game CD is super valuable, but a one-of-its-kind hobbyist project is not as much.

NFTs are a representation of ownership, they certify that a particular user of the blockchain owns a particular asset. People have minted all kinds of tings as NFTs- game skins, collectibles, sports cards. art, and even jpegs.

Speaking of sports cards, we can make a really good analogy: owning a LeBron James card doesnt make you the owner of LeBron, just the card, similarly, owning an NFT doesnt make you own what it represents, but you just own the representation of a particular thing.

A neat thing about NFTs is that the original minter can get a part of the value whenever an NFT is resold, allowing artists and creators to have greater ownership and independence over their works.