Hi, I'm Dan Pramath and welcome to Axios Recap, where we dig into one big story.

Today is Monday, June 14th.

Oil prices are up, some national parks are bringing down their gates due to overcrowding,

and we're focused on fine arts digital future.

Ladies and gentlemen, a small incremental increase from

$1,800,000 to $10 million here on my left at $10 million. Last week, Sotheby's auctioned off

artwork that was never painted or sculpted. These were digital creations, and what's being auctioned

off were NFTs or non-fundable tokens.

Now, NFTs are something we've discussed on recap before.

We described them as a digital currency, receipt, and authentication process all wrapped into one.

They're kind of almost digital derivatives, but even though they're derivative of something

else, they themselves

can't be replicated. They sit on the blockchain, the one and only time they exist. So all of this,

NFTs, it's either the future of art, as a lot of people in that Sotheby's auction believe,

or a little more than proof that some people have way too much money. Now, the Sotheby's auction wasn't the first time

that an NFT for digital art had been sold by a major auction house. That happened back in March,

when won by the artist Beeple was sold at Christie's for a whopping $69 million. Instead,

the Sotheby's one was literally the first NFT, as in the first one ever created.

It was minted back in 2014 by an artist named Kevin McCoy, who called it Quantum.

The sale price was $1.5 million.

To a buyer named Silly Tuna.

And before you roll your eyes at the idea of someone known as Silly Tuna doing much of anything,

...