It’s almost touching that the NFT world sees itself as radical

Some things are explained so many times that they become unexplainable: we can only relate to them as something complicated that needs to be explained. The global financial crisis was like this. Crypto-currencies were like this too. The newest thing that exists to be explained is the world of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.

NFTs are collectible digital objects. They are created with a technology called the blockchain, which unalterably and uniquely records their provenance. This means that if I mint an NFT of an image — a cartoon of Donald Trump, say, sitting naked astride the Capitol — I can prove definitive ownership of the image, no matter how many copies exist. In other words, NFTs can be authenticated, which means they can be sold. I use the example of a naked Trump because it’s a piece by digital artist Beeple, who this year sold a collage of his images for more than $69 million at Christie’s.