Are NFTs Valuable Digital Assets Or Near-Worthless Illusions?

Non-fungible tokens are seen by some as an exciting new way to own digital assets such as art, but seen by others as a global confidence trick akin to The Emperor's New Clothes.

Public awareness of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has increased as more digital assets are created and sold, often for huge sums. Interest in them took off so quickly last year that it was dubbed "The NFT craze". The artist Beeple sold a collection of his digital art as an NFT for $69m at a Christie's auction last year, with 22m people watching live online. Around the same time, Twitter boss Jack Dorsey sold an NFT of his first tweet for $2.9m.

Ukraine's Metahistory Museum issued a collection of NFTs in March this year depicting the war against Russia. On the first day, it sold 1,282 digital works of art for more than $600,000, the proceeds of which went into the crypto wallet of the country's Ministry of Digital Transformation. Not to be outdone, Rishi Sunak, Britain's Chancellor of