Paris (AFP)

The free daily 20 Minutes, at the origin of a series of articles on "NFT", these certified digital objects that are shaking up the art market, on Tuesday sold a unique digital copy of a supplement "collector" of the newspaper.

This six-page supplement entitled "The crazy 2020s" finally went for 3,000 euros, during a public auction organized by the Piasa house in Paris, for the benefit of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ).

The copy is guaranteed unique thanks to a certificate of ownership based on "blockchain" technology, a tamper-proof system that authenticates both cryptographic currency exchange transactions and sales of digital objects.

NFT stands for "non-fungible tokens" or non-fungible tokens in French.

Published on January 13, 2020, just before the outbreak of the pandemic in France, the number was chosen by the editorial staff and Internet users for "its prophetic side".

The creation of a first NFT turned out to be "quite complicated", recognizes the journalist Laure Beaudonnet, at the origin of the project.

He had to first create a digital wallet, buy ether (the cryptocurrency used by the Ethereum blockchain), then pay the transaction fees to register the digital "contract" permanently, not forgetting to transfer the copyrights associated with the number.

"You have to spend a few days there if you're starting out, and it's even more complicated for a business," she told AFP.

NFTs have seen their value soar this year in overseas auction houses.

Photo provided on March 10, 2021 by Christie's of Beeple's "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" digital collage auctioned off in New York City for $ 69.3 million on March 11, 2021 Handout CHRISTIE'S AUCTION HOUSE / AFP / Archives

A token associated with the digital work "Everydays: The First 5000 days" by artist Beeple notably traded for $ 69 million at Christie's in March, while an animation presenting the source code of the first web browser was sold in July for $ 5.4 million at Sotheby's.

On the internet, NFTs are also easily exchanged via specialized platforms such as OpenSea or Rarible.

On the other hand in France, "the digital representation of a work, intangible movable property, cannot be part, by itself, of a voluntary sale at public auction", explained Piasa on its sales prospectus.

In May, a modest auction house, Cappelaere & Prunaux, in Bar-le-Duc (east), created a surprise by launching "NFT" auctions, but under the aegis of bailiffs, which made it possible at look at the law.

To circumvent the ban on auctioning "incorporeal movable property", 20 Minutes sold in addition to the NFT "an offset printing plate featuring four pages of the supplement".

"Several projects to organize such sales without deliberately breaking the law, for example by attaching an NFT to a material work, have been set up with limited success so far," the Council told AFP. Sales.

Understanding the NFT John SAEKI AFP / Archives

The president of this sector regulator commissioned a report in June to assess the contours of a possible regulatory reform.

© 2021 AFP