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Dear Reader,

Many Indians were delighted when they found that the winner of the first NFT (non-fungible token) artwork auction was an Indian-origin crypto entrepreneur, Vignesh Sundaresan, who paid a record $69.3 Mn for a digital collage by Beeple titled Everydays: The First 5000 Days. Unlike traditional auctions, the biddings were done in the cryptocurrency Ether. 

While the world at large is still trying to understand why a piece of digital artwork can be worth so much, technology enthusiasts and art connoisseurs are currently debating on social media if NFTs will be the future of buying and selling art. 

But more importantly, the crypto auction conducted by the 255-year-old Christie’s has made people sit up and take notice of virtual currencies even as conversations about everything crypto have become more mainstream over the past year. It is not only due to the consistent rise in the value of popular cryptocurrencies traded on exchanges. The endorsements of popular technology entrepreneurs like Tesla’s Elon Musk, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and VC Chamath Palihapitiya have played a pivotal role.