Why Did Someone Pay $560,000 for a Picture of My Column?

$98,000.

$143,000.

$277,000.

After greater than 30 bids, the public sale ended at 12:32 p.m. Japanese time, with a profitable bid of 350 ether, or about $560,000. A couple of minutes later, after the public sale platform had taken its minimize, practically $500,000 in cryptocurrency landed in my digital pockets. I used to be shocked. Congratulatory texts and media requests began pouring in. My colleagues joked about stiffing the charity and slipping off to the Cayman Islands. My editor stated I shouldn’t count on a increase.

The entire ordeal was surreal, and it raised the query: Why would anybody spend the worth of a high-end Lamborghini on a image of my phrases? In spite of everything, the NFT was simply a cryptographic signature linked to a picture of a column that anybody may learn on the Instances’s web site, albeit with a few bonus perks. (I additionally stipulated that I might function the winner’s identify and photograph in a follow-up column, and Michael Barbaro, the host of “The Every day,” gamely agreed to throw in a voice message for the winner.)

The winner, whose deal with on the public sale web site was @3fmusic, seemed to be a distinguished NFT collector. The profile on the positioning was linked to a Twitter profile belonging to a Dubai-based music manufacturing firm, and to an Instagram account recognized as that of Farzin Fardin Fard, the corporate’s chief government. The consumer’s NFT assortment included a selection of different costly digital works, together with a $14,000 “emoji portrait” of the musician Billie Eilish and a $8,000 piece titled “Leaping Spider having fun with espresso within the morning.”

I reached out to @3fmusic to supply my congratulations on the acquisition and to debate the bid. They (it’s not clear if the winner is Mr. Fard or another particular person or a number of folks) declined to be named — and, as a result of of the pseudonymous nature of blockchain-based transactions, there’s no straightforward manner for me to establish them past the knowledge they volunteered — however they despatched me a assertion over Twitter direct message that learn:

“We’re already concerned in artwork and media for a very long time now,” the message learn. “Our administration staff is at all times in cooperation with some extremely educated and skilled artwork advisers who consider that we should develop with technological actions that assist us to not solely promote our enterprise but additionally to assist artists and the artwork market. Thus, we’ve got proudly determined to dedicate enough funds and sources to put money into NFT as pioneers of this business.”

Additionally they gave me permission to incorporate a picture of their music studio’s emblem on this column.

Jiannan Ouyang, a NFT collector who dropped out of the public sale after a excessive bid of 290 ether (about $469,000) advised me that he had determined to bid on my NFT for each private {and professional} causes. He’s a former Fb analysis scientist who’s now a blockchain entrepreneur, and he’s married to a journalist.