How much is a gif or meme worth anyway?
Well, if you’re the person who bought the remastered Nyan Cat GIF, that’s going to run you about 300 Ether. And that’s cryptocurrency speak for half a million dollars, or more specifically, as of this writing, $519,174.00.
To celebrate the beloved GIF's 10th anniversary, Nyan Cat’s creator Chris Torres did a few tweaks to his Pop-Tart cat flying through space leaving a trail of rainbows in its path, called it a “remaster,” (Torres removed a star that would pop up out of nowhere in the original gif) and will never sell another Nyan Cat for the rest of his days, making it a one-of-a-kind original GIF. The auction took place last Friday on the crypto art site Foundation.
Just opened up the flood gates to the future of meme economy in the Crypto universe, no big deal~
But seriously, thanks for believing in Nyan Cat all these years. I hope this inspires future artists to get into #NFT universe so they can get proper recognition for their work! pic.twitter.com/JX7UU9VSPb
— ☆Chris☆ (@PRguitarman) February 19, 2021
Now, if you’re anything like me and you use actual, physical dollars to buy your Dunkin’ every morning, Ether is not that at all. Sites like Foundation sell these original artworks with NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. The cryptocurrency works similar to Bitcoin, and you can trace ownership using blockchain.
Crypto art has been around for a few years now, and Nyan Cat is hardly the first piece to go up from sale. Next month, for the first time, auction house Christie’s will see off an NFT work by Beeple titled “Everydays: The First 5000 Days,” a pixelated image consisting of 5,000 smaller images, one for every day since May 1st, 2007. Supposedly, you can even purchase the work using Ether.
Anywho, now you can say a GIF of a cat with a Pop-tart body propelling itself through space via rainbow farts is worth half a million bucks. Welcome to the future.