Communications of the ACM
Why an Animated Flying Cat With a Pop-Tart Body Sold for Almost $600,000
In the fast-growing market for ownership rights to digital art, ephemera, and media called NFTs (nonfungible tokens), buyers are buying bragging rights, and the knowledge that their copy is the authentic one.
Credit: Quickhoney
In the 10 years since Chris Torres created Nyan Cat, an animated flying cat with a Pop-Tart body leaving a rainbow trail, the meme has been viewed and shared across the web hundreds of millions of times.
On Thursday, he put a one-of-a-kind version of it up for sale on Foundation, a website for buying and selling digital goods. In the final hour of the auction, there was a bidding war. Nyan Cat was sold to a user identified only by a cryptocurrency wallet number. The price? Roughly $580,000.
Mr. Torres was left breathless. "I feel like I've opened the floodgates," he said in an interview on Friday.
The sale was a new high point in a fast-growing market for ownership rights to digital art, ephemera and media called NFTs, or "nonfungible tokens." The buyers are usually not acquiring copyrights, trademarks or even the sole ownership of whatever it is they purchase. They're buying bragging rights and the knowledge that their copy is the "authentic" one.
From The New York Times
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