Beep Beep. Beeple Beeple. (I will never understand the art world.)

Well, it looks like digital art is the new thing. Or is it that nonfungible tokens (NFTs) are?

Whichever way you look at it, NFTs - if you've got the right one in your virtual pocket - can be worth a lot. A helluva lot.

Since I first heard the word, lo these many years, fungible has been one I've loved to show off with, on the rare occasion - generally dissecting a business plan - when I had the opportunity. Ditto nonfungible. 

Fungible, of course, is just a fancy word for something that's evenly exchangeable: this bushel of apples is equal to that bushel of apples. Nonfungible: this bushel of wormy, half rotted drops is not equal to that bushel of wormless apples just plucked from the tree.

But a nonfungible token, an NFT? Say what?

Here's how Digiday defines NFTs:

They act as a non-duplicable digital certificate of ownership for any assigned digital asset...Some popular forms of NFTs include jpegs, gifs, videos and, of course, tweets. But really any digital asset that the creator wants to make unique can become an NFT, like articles or event tickets. (Source: Digiday)

But if this is really going to make sense to the average concrete thinker (which admittedly may not be possible), it needs to be put into context:

Last week, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey announced he is selling the social platform’s first-ever tweet: a post he made on March 21, 2006 that reads, “just setting up my twttr.”

Dorsey created a tokenized version of the tweet, an NFT, that gives the buyer the digital rights of ownership.

For nearly 15 years the tweet existed without any associated monetary value, but just one day after going on the virtual auction block the highest bid hit $2.5 million (or 1630.6 ETH — cryptocurrency Ethereum’s denomination).

Got that? Well, it gets even better. Built into the exchange of NFTs is the kicker that, from here on out, each and every time someone sells that NFT, the creator (in this case, Jack Dorsey), gets a 10% cut of the action. 

Jack's not alone, of course. Why even Taco Bell is out there selling some taco-related GIFs - now up to $3,600 in "value" - to collectors who love the brand. Or tacos. Or being part of the digerati cool kids. Or something. 

Speaking of something, what's really something is that yesterday, Christie's sold an NFT artwork for $69 million. 

The work, “Everydays: The First 5000 Days,” is by Mike Winkelmann, who goes by the name Beeple. The work is a collage of 5,000 drawings, one created and posted every day for the past 13 and a half years.

Originally created with pen and paper and now mostly illustration software, the sketches run the gamut from an angular line drawing of his first baby to Hillary Clinton and well-known cartoon characters.

The winning bidder owns the work in the form of a unique string of code, called a nonfungible token. The piece has no physical presence and will be "delivered directly from Beeple to the buyer, accompanied by a unique NFT encrypted with the artist’s unforgeable signature and uniquely identified on the blockchain," Christie's said. (Source: NBC News)

For years - almost as long as I've known the word fungible - I've thought that the art market was insane. I mean, over $90 million for Jeff Koons' Rabbit? But at least the buyer got something tangible to look at, not a few encrypted bits. 

This NFT market, I really do not get.

When you buy a work of art like Rabbit - which I would not, even if I had $90+ million to spend on art; it's way too pop-culture-y - you get the original creation of the artist. Sure, there can be knockoffs out there that look the same, but if you've got the real thing: from the artist's hands to your eyes. But something's that digitized? And can be so easily replicated, and replicated, and replicated - in ways that make it, to my simple mind, as close to fungible as you can get. And that you can't put on display in your living room? Huh?

At least, I guess, the creator can grab some of the resale value, which doesn't happen with "real" (non-digitized) art.

So good for Mike Winkelmann. As long as their are sheeple willing to buy Beeple, he'll keep on getting rich.

It all seems like one big cosmic joke.

But now that I think about it, "Everydays" is a compilation of 5,000 different drawings/illustrations that Winkelmann created over a 13 year period. As it turns out, I have nearly 4,000 completely non-monetized blog posts I've written since 2007. Sure, Pink Slip has always been a labor of obsession, if not of love. I get to do my "Sunday painter" writing thing, only every weekday, and my loyal little audience gets to read my work. Is there any way I can turn then into NFTs? If only I were Jack Dorsey, with folks willing to snap up that first tweet. 

But I'm not greedy. I'd be happy to make a Taco Bell's GIF's worth...

What am I bid?