In February 1637, at the height of the speculative frenzy in the Netherlands we now know as “tulip mania,” a single bulb of the prized Viceroy tulip sold for 6,700 guilders, enough to buy a grand house in one of Amsterdam’s most desirable districts. The market for tulips collapsed later that month, with prices of more common bulbs falling by as much as 95 percent. Since then, tulip mania has become a byword for the irrationality of financial bubbles. So what about NFT mania? Last week, Nifty Gateway, a specialist online marketplace for nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, held an auction that included a computer-generated illustration by the digital artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, whose JPG collage “Everydays — The First 5000 Days,” was sold online by Christie’s earlier this month for a sensational $69.3 million.

Source: New York Times March 30, 2021 17:15 UTC