Kominers’s Conundrums: How Much Is That Avatar in the Window?

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, demanded our attention at the beginning of the year — then faded from the scene as if they were just a bunch of bits. But that was merely the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end.

The newest NFTs aren’t just about owning a piece of digital art that costs a shocking amount of cryptocurrency. They’re about gaining access to elite clubs offering exclusive avatars for social-media strutting. “It’s a collectible not to hang on the wall or exhibit on a shelf but to populate the tiny square or circle of screen space that’s supposed to represent your self,” according to The New Yorker. Pixelated “CryptoPunks” are selling in the eight figures, and people are going bananas over avatars of everything from “Bored Apes” to “SupDucks.”