Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sold an NFT of his first tweet for more than $2.9 million. Wait, what? He sold a tweet? Yes, but the 15-year-old post was sold as an NFT (non-fungible token): a digital certificate of authenticity that confirms this particular digital file is the one the buyer paid for. (Yep. That’s what it confirms.) Other than that, an NFT is a digital file you can just cut and paste. So… are NFTs a parlor trick or a paradigm shift? Is there value in NFTs, or is this another crypto scam?

I think there’s a real business here. Not for tweets, but for authenticated digital files. The ability to monitor transactions, add automatic follow-on royalties and commissions… put together all the features of NFTs and, after all the stunting is over, there’s a there, there.