On Thursday, March 11, a piece of digital art – a JPG file – sold for $69 million. Why would a purely digital work of art ever sell for that much? Scarcity and proof of ownership. That’s right, the underpinning of popular cryptocurrencies – blockchain – is being used to create NFTs (nonfungible tokens) to mint unique pieces of art and other digital collectibles.

The piece, titled “Everydays – The First 5000 Days” was created by Mike Winkelmann, who goes by the name Beeple. Minted as NFT last month, it consists of a collage of all of the artwork Beeple has posted online every day since 2007. You can view the work here.