Crazy new art that is earning creators millions

(This explainer was first carried on March 8)

I’m not a fan of musician Grimes. So I probably wouldn’t pay $400,000 (around Rs 2.9 crore) for a 50-second clip she’s recently released online - even if I had that kind of money. But somebody, er, just did. For the uninitiated, Grimes, equally well-known as Elon Musk’s girlfriend, recently dropped a set of songs on the internet which were sold, within 20 minutes, for $5.8 million. For those looking to own a slice of social media history, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is selling his first-ever tweet (from 2006) – which simply says “just setting up my twittr” – and the bid for it has already touched $2.5 million.
The big news was not just the amount, but also the fact that they were NFT, or non-fungible token art - digital creations that were sold using cryptocurrency on the Ethereum blockchain (Ethereum, like Bitcoin, is a cryptocurrency). These mega-buck sales have suddenly turned the spotlight on NFT. An article on the website of US venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz says that in the last month, NFT sales have touched $300 million [see table].