What are tokens?
The word “token” derives from the Old English “tācen,” meaning a sign or symbol.
In the physical world, you can use transportation, laundry, or game tokens as examples, they look similar to real one — coins. The physical versions of tokens have restrictions of using. They have limitations for specific businesses, organizations, or locations; physical tokens are not easily exchangeable and generally have only one function.
Tokens were known and used long before the first blockchain was created. They were used as units of value issued by various institutions. For example, access tokens (authorization keys) in computer networks or tokens to guarantee data protection. In the banking system, you will get the token that expires after some time, and you need to refresh the session again.
Tokens in blockchain represent the value if we use them for some purpose; it depends on what we actually need: we can use them for the distribution of goods, the sharing of rewards, voting systems, and even internally to reward employees for specific achievements. Everything valuable can be tokenized: real estate, land, works of art, or intellectual property.
Imagine you are a casino customer. The first thing you need to do is to exchange your money/cash for tokens. You already have the tokens, so you start playing. You can win a lot of money; you can lose everything. It’s up to you when you say stop and go back and change your coins for cash.
This analogy fits very well with the world of tokens in Blockchain and crypto :).
Fungible and Non-fungible tokens?
Fungible means the item is replaceable and can be interchanged; this means numerous items hold the same value, and you would not care which fungible item you possessed as they are of equal value.
