The NFT world expanded in new directions today as famed South Korean Go player Lee Sedol auctioned an NFT for $210,000. What makes this NFT special is that it represents his winning game against Google’s artificial intelligence in 2016.
Lee, whose Go player rank is 9 dan, defeated Google’s AlphaGo AI just once. But to this day, he remains the only human to ever beat it. The NFT, which sold for 60ETH, consists of a short video tracing the moves each player made during the fateful match.
Buying moments of Go history
This isn’t the first example of buying NFTs representing key moments in history. But it shows how NFTs are being used in new and exciting ways, and expanding into new arenas like Go.
Lee began playing Go professionally at the age of 12, winning 18 world championships over 25 years before his retirement in 2018. His victory over AlphaGo remains one of the key events in the evolution of AI. It proved that humans could still surprise machine intelligence once in a while.
NFT partnerships go big
The collection is managed by 22nd Century Media (the publisher of CoinDesk Korea) on Lee’s behalf. These types of partnerships will help the NFT world grow more quickly, as experienced managers sign on big-name talent.
At the time of writing, the AlphaGo win was the only NFT associated with Lee Sedol’s name. It remains to be seen if this is a one-off experiment for the Go star, or if there will be more tokens in his future. Either way, a key part of history was just added to the blockchain.
All investment/financial opinions expressed by NFTevening.com are not recommendations.
This article is educational material.
As always, make your own research prior to making any kind of investment.
