Token Supremacy

A New York Times investigative reporter wades into the murky, pixelated waters of the multibillion-dollar NFT market--the virtual casino that sprang up overnight in 2020 and came crashing down, with all its celebrity hucksters, just two years later. A vibrant and witty exploration of the increasingly blurry line between art and money, artist and con artist, value and worthlessness. 'A perfect book to understand and to laugh at the craziness of the art world today.' --Jerry Saltz, author of How to Be an Artist In 2021, when the gavel fell at Christie's on the sale of Mike Winkelmann's Everydays series--a compilation of five thousand digital artworks--it made a thunderous announcement: Non-fungible tokens had arrived. The ludicrous world of CryptoKitties and Bored Apes had just produced a piece of art worth $69.3 million (at least according to the highest bidder). On that day, the traditional art market--the largest unregulated market in the world--put its stamp of approval on a very