WHAT IS A NON-FUNGIBLE TOKEN?

THEY have been likened to trading cards and offer a revolutionary new way of selling art.

NFT stands for non-fungible token – a digital certificate of ownership, almost always bought with cryptocurrency.

Some artists never produce physical versions of their work, always preferring the digital form, and they can attach a JPEG image of their masterpiece to an NFT for sale to the highest bidder.

Others, such as Trevor Jones, start off with physical paintings, which they then copy, creating an NFT by deconstructing the image in Photoshop and reconstructing it in various animator packages to create something entirely different with music and sound effects.

Both are regarded as distinct pieces of work, so they can be sold separately.

NFTs enable artists to trade directly online, typically via specialist auction sites.

Anyone can find and download the file associated with an NFT for nothing but only the owner has the right to sell it, with all transactions logged on the blockchain – the database invented in 2008 for recording the movement of cryptocurrency.

In the first half of last year, estimated sales of NFTs rose by more than $2 billion (£1.47 billion).