In essence, an NFT is a digital certificate of ownership, almost always bought and sold using cryptocurrency, to which any digital file — a jpeg image file, a video, a song — can be attached. That Hilton is able to display Iconic Crypto Queen in her home, despite having sold it, is part of the NFT’s appeal — and the challenge it poses to the establ... See more

Now that digital ownership is exploding by way of NFTs, people are seeing bigger financial and status opportunities online than offline. This is the biggest catalyst for living online we’ve seen to date. Individuals are building status and identity in the virtual world the way that they do in the physical world. Why own a Gucci bag to impress a few... See more

NFTs are interesting in that they have built-in provable scarcity that ensures value. In the analog world, scarcity is something either circumstantial (the virus that wiped out tulip production) or mandated (Beanie Babies being “retired”). With NFTs, it’s in the code. CryptoPunks are valuable, for instance, because there will only ever be 10,000.

8. Intellectual property will become less defensible in the short term but it is still cultural gold. From “my kid could do that” to “right click and save,” new media from the early 20th century onward has been poorly received. As W. David Marx writes of NFTs in Dirt, “whether or not this particular NFT bubble bursts, we should take them seriously ... See more