In the digital world, sales of so-called non-fungible tokens (NFT) are booming.

These are basically digital certificates of authenticity and ownership.

For this purpose, a video clip or a digital work of art is registered on a blockchain and its owners, purchases and sales are entered in the process.

By registering, the NFT receives a unique digital signature which, due to the blockchain technology, cannot be changed in practice. Even if the underlying work can be reproduced millions of times, this process gives the registered object a uniqueness. It remains unique, whereby the unique position does not refer to the object itself, but to the certificate.

Some investors are betting that growing interest in the arts, sports and media worlds will keep prices for properties in this still quite new crypto asset class rising.

In August, NFT sales jumped to $ 1.9 billion so far, announced the largest NFT trading platform OpenSea.

This means that the volume has increased more than tenfold in the past five months.

In January, the volume on the platform was just over eight million dollars.

The boom is apparently mainly due to increased trade in properties.

In the past few weeks, some collections have been offered that were very successful and sold out when they were launched, says Ian Kane from the analysis company DappRadar, which is tracking the market.

This activity then spilled over to OpenSea.

An NFT with a picture of a monkey cartoon was sold on OpenSea for 39 Ethereum last week.

This was equivalent to $ 124,205 at the time of purchase.

Two weeks earlier, the monkey NFT had been bought for 22.5 Ethereum, or $ 61,329.

An NFT of an abstract digital work of art started the week trading for 1000 Ethereum ($ 3.3 million) after it sold for 0.58 Ethereum ($ 1366) in June.

The NFT market data vary depending on the provider.

DappRadar had 32 known NFT sales valued at more than $ 1 million in the past 30 days alone.

"Bubble stupidity"

MichaelK, a 30-year-old NFT buyer who doesn't want to give his real name, said he has spent about $ 250,000 on NFTs since September. He now holds 90 percent of his assets in cryptocurrencies and NFTs. At the beginning of the month, according to the Etherscan website, he bought an NFT of a penguin cartoon for Ethereum for about $ 139 and resold it four days later for about $ 3956.

MichaelK believes that the coronavirus pandemic, which is forcing people to spend more time at home and online, has given NFTs a breakthrough. Rising cryptocurrency prices could also have played a role. NFTs are often rated in Ethereum. The price of the second most important cyber currency after Bitcoin rose by around 23 percent in August. “I don't want to think of it as a bubble. I want to see it as something new that will be a big wave, ”MichaelK said.

Not everyone on the market is equally euphoric. Michael Every, Rabobank's Asia Pacific expert, said he was "stunned" by the "bubble-like stupidity" of the NFT market. An NFT is more like buying a lottery ticket. In view of the potential for returns, young people in particular who have difficulties building wealth are drawn in. However, Every was convinced that NFTs are a bubble that will "surely" burst.