Crypto: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

6 HOW NFTs CREATE VALUE

by Steve Kaczynski and Scott Duke Kominers

In March 2021, a work of art called Everydays: The First 5000 Days sold for $69 million at Christie’s auction house. It’s not out of the ordinary to see eight-figure art sales, but this one received a lot of attention because the piece was sold as a non-fungible token (NFT)—an electronic record corresponding to an image that lives entirely in the digital world.

Put differently: Someone paid almost $70 million for a picture on the internet.

Since then, NFTs have started to permeate pop culture in various ways. They’ve been spoofed by Saturday Night Live and embraced by high-profile celebrities like rapper Snoop Dogg and NBA superstar Stephen Curry. As of this writing, there ...