Nyet to Nyan...

(Before we start, let me say that my reaction to this story totally reflects my age and my life experience. Just imagine me shaking my head as I type it.]

Do you recognise the cat above?

His name is Nyan.

He is a digital cat created by Chris Torres and uploaded to you tube 10 years ago.

The pixelated gray cat is a throwback to 1980s video game characters seen in Pac-Man or Atari. It flies in a straight line through an equally dated-looking starry night backdrop, a stream of rainbow colors trailing behind. and spawned dozens of memes.

The creator of the wildly popular Nyan Cat GIF decided to celebrate its 10-year anniversary by selling a digital asset known as an NFT—a non-fungible token—at auction. The sale, hosted by the new NFT marketplace Foundation, pulled in a whopping 300ETH—that’s for the blockchain called Ethereum—or the USD equivalent of roughly $561,000.

The price shot up in the final 30 minutes of bidding from 15ETH (roughly $18,000), after having started around 3ETH ($5,000).

After this sale, Torres said in a tweet “I hope this inspires future artists to get into the #NFT universe so they can get proper recognition for their work.”

I have read this story about four times and I still can’t get my head around it.

The world in which we now live, is seeing people starting to pay good money to collect digital creations as works of art. Someone somewhere has just paid over half a million dollars for a GIF.

I have never felt older. I’m going to my bed. I’ll see you on Tuesday if I ever get up again.

Queen Marie

x