mar 03, 2021 In May 2014, artist Kevin McCoy sold a GIF onstage at Rhizome’s Seven on Seven conference to Anil Dash, and published the transfer of ownership of a GIF on the Namecoin blockchain. The data written to the blockchain included a link to the license, a link to the work, a hash (a kind of digital fingerprint) of the work, and a plain English assertion of ownership, as part of a system McCoy called Monegraph. Dash paid the entire contents of his wallet for this early experiment in selling unique digital works via the blockchain, which amounted to $4. Fast forward to May 2018. Amid the sweltering euphoria of New York City’s early summer, an auction took place at the Knockdown Center, a sprawling warehouse in Maspeth, Queens, as part of a cryptocurrency conference. Fueled by amicable competition among notable investors in the room, bidding reached $140,000 for an artwork by Guile Gaspar that featured a kind of digital collectible called a CryptoKitty. A hardware wallet embedded in the physical work secured a digital token that allowed the CryptoKitty to be traded, sold, and (ugh) “bred” as a digital good in the CryptoKitties marketplace.