The inventor of the non-fungible token says he has spent the last two years lurching 'from excitement to dread.' Although artist Kevin McCoy says he is 'gratified' to see people engaging with what started as his 'own private thought experiment,' he claims to be terrified by the gold rush it inspired. In March 2021 during the early throes of NFT mania a single token, tied to an artwork called Everydays: The First 5000 Days, by digital artist Beeple, sold for almost $70 million. When McCoy and his partner, entrepreneur Anil Dash, pitched the idea for a unique crypto-like token that demonstrated ownership of digital goods back in 2014, they had some sense it was an 'important idea.' The intention was to create a mechanism for tracing the provenance of digital works and give small artists a new way to make money. But McCoy says he never imagined NFTs would become a conduit for financial speculation. Over the course of 2021, beginning in earnest with the landmark Beeple sale, a frenzy of...
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