In May 2007, Beeple set out to create a new work of art online every day. He hasn’t missed a day since, creating a new digital picture every day for 5,000 days straight, eventually making up EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS.The art market’s fascination with non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, has reached a fever pitch. In March 2021, a piece of NFT (non-fungible token) artwork sold for US$69+ million at Christie’s. The work, EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS, is a collage of purely digital artwork created over 5,000 days by the digital artist Beeple. You can’t hang it on your wall. It is simply a bunch of pixels.This sale marked many significant shifts in the art industry. It was the first major auction of a wholly digital work of art with a unique NFT. It was the first auction to accept cryptocurrency as a standard form of payment. The sale positions Beeple amongst the top three most valuable living artists, behind Jeff Koons and David Hockney.So how did this happen, and what are the wider ramifications for the creator economy and art market in general?Quickie introduction for the unaware, NFTs, or non-fungible token, are one-of-a-kind digital assets on a blockchain that can be bought and sold but have no tangible form of their own. Whereas Bitcoin or any standard banknote is fungible, trade one for another, and you’ll have exactly the same thing, each NFT can represent an individual digital object, so they are not interchangeable. They are one of one.Traditionally, singularity is what adds to a work of art’s value, whereas digital assets can be quickly and easily duplicated. But NFTs “tokenise” artwork, creating a digital certificate of ownership. Blockchain has long been touted as the potential future of traceability, from baby formula to votes. As seen with cryptocurrencies, like…