The NFT Handbook

CHAPTER 4History of NFTs

As with the history of anything, it’s challenging to point to an exact moment in time and say, “This is what started that.” Rather, there are moments that precipitate a change. These small moments run parallel to each other until they converge to create something special.

With regard to non‐fungible tokens (NFTs), the history can be quite blurry. It wouldn’t be correct to start talking about NFTs at the moment that the first blockchain was built in 2008, because that would ignore the decades of digital art up to that point that provided a reason for NFTs to exist. It also wouldn’t be fair to cover only digital art and overlook other art movements that would change the profile of art collectors and thus expand the group of people collecting art.

The story of Andy Warhol and Pop Art, the legend of Mike Winkelmann and his Cyberpunk creations, and of course, the rich history of digital art innovators have all played a crucial role in the history of NFTs.

Andy Warhol Presents Pop Art

Throughout the 1950s, years before the creation of Campbell’s Soup Cans or the Marilyn Diptych, you could find Andy Warhol at a New York City café called Serendipity. Here, he would trade his drawings for pastries and ice cream, while getting to glance at the celebrity elite of New York City.

A stone’s throw away from Madison Avenue, Warhol had his sights set on the advertising industry. Having grown up a poor Slovakian immigrant during the Great Depression—a time when his ...