A cryptocurrency entrepreneur recently paid $69.3 million for Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5,000 Days at a Christie’s auction. That record-breaking price purchased a work of art that can be seen only on a computer and the image of which, in large part, is available for use and enjoyment by anyone with an internet connection because the work is a non-fungible token, or NFT. NFTs have quickly caught the attention of the art world and beyond, touching the mainstream with the NBA Top Shot craze and its $250 million plus marketplace for visual highlights of NBA games. The company behind NBA Top Shot, Dapper Labs, recently raised $250 million at a $2 billion valuation. And the larger market for NFTs has grown from $42 million in 2017 to $338 million by the end of 2020. But for intangible assets whose value is largely driven by the creation of an original work only in cyberspace, owners and investors need to think carefully about what they own and how to protect their digital acquisitions.
NFTs are pieces of fine art, GIFs, songs, images, videos, or other digital media that are made into a unique digital token—or “minted”—and verified through a blockchain as…
