Lauren Walker posted a message on Twitter that she was ‘stealing’ non-fungible tokens (NFTs). This prompted Crypto Twitter to mint Walker’s tweet into an NFT worth several thousand dollars.
Walker, in turn, posted that she owned NFTs worth over $8 trillion. She claimed that she had saved the images by right-clicking on them and saving them to her hard drive. Her claim attracted criticism from the community. The criticism was based on the known scarcity around tokenizing images and other artwork.
Walker maintained that she had stolen NFTs of over 4 terabytes. She claimed to have used the hacker technique “right click->save as”. Her collection is worth a reported $8 trillion.
The aftermath
Quite remarkably, two enterprising crypto users took screenshots of messages and responses posted by Walker. They then minted them as NFTs and put them up for auction.
Another user, CaptainFantastic, using the name “have fun staying poor”, bid 1.5 ETH for the NFT. The approximate worth is reported to amount to $5,100. Another user, Clown World NFT, is still awaiting bids.
Walker’s claim is understandable. Tokenizing an image lends its uniqueness. It also makes it valuable to someone ready to ascribe value to it. Such value cannot be similarly ascribed to the image in JPG or GIF formats.
In a similar case, a Tesla Roadster, in working condition, was recently exchanged for a single NFT. The value of the trade was $100,000. Mike Winkelmann, who is a digital artist, recently sold one of his creations as an NFT. The value of this trade reportedly being worth $69 million.
It does appear that there is enormous potential for moneymaking in NFTs. However, the market is extremely volatile – similar to the volatility also associated with cryptocurrencies.
