PARIS HILTON has sold one for more than £800k, John Terry has got into a row with the Premier League about his and Liam Payne is so obsessed he’s created a special Twitter account.

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, have taken the celebrity world by storm as stars flock to cash in on the frenzied digital gold rush.

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And that’s despite the fact the tokens don’t exist in the real world. Confused? Plenty of people are — but that isn’t stopping them investing, with the global market for NFTs hitting £16.5BILLION last year.

And there is serious money to be made. Digital artwork Everydays — The First 5000 Days, by American artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, was sold by London auctioneer Christie’s for £50million last March.

The buyer said he was getting the NFT “for a steal”. Only real-world works by two other living artists — David Hockney and Jeff Koons — have sold for more

So how did assets that you can only see on a screen become the most hyped investment on the planet?

Once the preserve of geeks, NFTs first appeared in 2012 and are digital certificates of “ownership” of the likeness of an artwork, a video or even a tweet, which are bought with cryptocurrencies, or non-regulated digital currencies. They are stored on a blockchain, or digital ledger.

Fungible means interchangeable, like money — a £10 note can be changed into food, beer, or whatever, whereas an NFT is Non-Fungible, meaning it can’t be changed from the physical asset it represents, such as an artwork.

However, the tokens can be bought and sold like a house or a car, though they don’t exist in the real world, and there is nothing to stop the creation of more NFTs with identical digital files.

Anyone can access and even download your digital asset, but only the owner of the “non-fungible” or non-exchangeable “token” or certificate of ownership can say it’s theirs.

With the advent of the metaverse — the predicted “new internet” where people will increasingly interact in virtual reality — NFTs are likely to become even more desirable. If you exist as a digital avatar, you’ll want to show off your digital possessions.

Celebs and sports stars are already desperate to get a piece of the action, with NFTs seen as a way they can control and monetise their brand.

Kate Mosssold a gif of herself sleeping for more than £12,500 and US rapper Grimes has made around £4million in sales of digital art.

Paris Hiltonsold her Iconic Crypto Queen NFT for £815,000 and American rockers Kings Of Leon made more than £1.6million by selling their latest album When You See Yourself as an NFT collection.

On Tuesday pop star Liam Payne, who launched his NFT collection last June, announced to his 34million Twitter followers that he was opening a new account solely for NFT news.

CARTOON APE

He wrote: “Hey guys I’ve decided to start a new Twitter account to just talk about NFTs . . . I know I get pretty excited about it sometimes.”

His account, with a Twitter handle inspired by the blockchain Ethereum, gained 26,000 followers in 30 minutes.

Footballers have also been getting in on the act. Wayne Rooney is selling digital artworks of himself at £40 a pop — far short of the $1million (£743,000) Lionel Messi made from an NFT he sold in August. Rooney is in partnership with Blockasset, an “NFT platform and ecosystem” which also has the late sports heroes Muhammad Ali and Jonah Lomu on its books.

Blockasset says of its collection: “It is inspired by childhood memories of opening sports cards and stickers, not knowing which athlete you’ll land.”

Former Chelsea captain John Terryhas linked up with Ape Kids Club on a set of cartoon ape NFTs in football card style. He tweeted that he has been made Head Coach of the virtual AKFC — the first “football club on the blockchain”.

And he has been busy introducing his “team-mates” on Twitter, each with a cartoon ape caricature. Terry is thought to have paid around £29,300 for his own NFT from the Mutant Apes collection.

But he and other footballers could find themselves in legal hot water with the Premier League and Uefa over the use of images of their trophies in their NFTs, and Chelsea are also looking into Terry’s posts because some have included images of the club’s badge. The trophies and badge are protected trademarks.

Despite such hiccups, the NFT hysteria shows no sign of stopping. On February 7 John Lennon’s son Julian will sell some of the Beatles’ most treasured memorabilia as NFTs in Beverly Hills.

The items include the cape that John wore in the 1965 movie Help!, the Afghan jacket he wore in the 1967 movie Magical Mystery Tour and three of the Beatles’ guitars.

Notes by Sir Paul McCartney for the song Hey Jude are expected to fetch the highest price, with advance bidding starting at £22,267, though it is predicted the successful buyer may need to pay at least double that.

Buyers are reminded: “This NFT is a one of one edition of the physical item and does not include the physical item.”

Last February an animated gif of Nyan Cat — a 2011 meme of a flying feline with a Pop-Tart for a body — sold for more than £365,000.

A month later Twitter founder Jack Dorsey sold the NFT to the first ever tweet, posted on March 21, 2006, reading: “Just setting up my twttr.”

It made £1.7million, which he donated for Covid relief work in Africa.

An NFT of a black hoodie from streetwear label Overpriced sold for £19,000 last April, then in May, Boris Johnson’s former senior adviser Dominic Cummings threatened to sell what he said was documentary evidence of Government malpractice as an NFT to raise cash for charity, as well as present it to a Commons investigating committee.

NFTs have also taken the art world by storm. After artist Beeple’s First 5000 Days artwork sold for £50million, this week relatives of the legendary Pablo Picasso revealed they are selling 1,010 NFTs of one of the artist’s ceramic works which has never previously been seen in public.

Florian Picasso, the artist’s great-grandson, said: “Everything is evolving. We’re trying to build a bridge between the NFT world and the fine art world.”

Meanwhile, the British Museum is flogging a collection of oil paintings by JMW Turner as NFTs through a tech firm. It will retain a royalty percentage on each sale.

DIGITAL CLOTHES

The world of commerce is catching up too. Selfridges has revealed it will be the first shop in the world to sell a clothes range in digital form only.

A dozen 1966 Paco Rabanne dresses, costing from £2,000 to more than £100,000, will be sold as NFTs. The bizarre concept will give customers a digital certificate of ownership for each outfit — but not the original item.

But the NFT market is not all rivers of gold. Their sale value fluctuates depending on demand — what goes up can also come down.

Some fear the unregulated NFT market, which has been likened to the Wild West, may be ripe for a financial crash.

The craze can also fan climate change, depending on which method is used to produce the NFT.

A digital record of who bought and sold the NFT is kept on a blockchain, and NFTs need a network of electricity-consuming computers to power their blockchains.

If they are powered by “dirty” energy sources such as coal, then the NFTs sold can contribute to global warming. Companies have seen the value of NFTs as marketing tools and to link owners in different communities.

Yet experts say the NFT market could take years to become stable after a “frenzied” 2021.

George Monaghan, analyst at research firm GlobalData, said: “It’ll be years before any crypto market, let alone NFTs, comes to resemble anything that conventional markets would call stable. I wouldn’t throw your rainy-day fund into any meme NFTs quite yet.”

The Financial Conduct Authority watchdog has warned investors to “be prepared to lose their money” if dabbling in NFTs.

The industry itself is reacting to environmental concerns. Record-breaking artist Beeple has pledged to invest his profits in renewable energy and carbon capture projects to make his artwork carbon neutral or negative.

And switches to the blockchain’s algorithm can make buying and selling NFTs greener.

Aussie Daniel Maegaard, who made millions on Bitcoin then made a second fortune investing in NFTs, says the tokens are here to stay.

He says of the future: “We will be displaying digital art in digital apartments, wearing digital clothing which you have bought from Gucci.”

But former Christie’s auctioneer Charles Allsopp said buying NFTs made “no sense”, adding: “The idea of buying something which isn’t there is just strange.

“I think people who invest in it are slight mugs, but I hope they don’t lose their money.”

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