New York Times column sold as NFT for $500,000

Art, music, tweets and now a newspaper column has joined the ever-expanding list of non-fungible tokens, as NFT craze gets bigger.

A New York Times (NYT) technology column by Kevin Roose was sold as an NFT, a type of digital asset, for $500,000 at an auction, making it the first of its kind sale for a newspaper.

The column named  'Buy This Column on the Blockchain!' was converted into an NFT and received 30 bids on the NFT marketplace website Foundation. The proceeds from the sale will be donated to an NYT-affiliated charity, the New York Times said.

"Why can’t a journalist join the NFT party, too?” Roose said in his column.

An NFT is a digital asset that exists on a blockchain, which serves as a public ledger, allowing anyone to verify the asset’s authenticity and ownership.

It is non-fungible because it is the only one of its kind, and cannot be interchanged—a kind of digital bragging rights.

Roose tweeted about the sale saying: "We have a winner! The NFT version of this column has sold for 350 ETH, or about $560,000, with proceeds going to the NYT's Neediest Cases Fund."

The market for NFTs has soared in recent months as enthusiasts and investors use spare savings to buy up items that exist online. The digital artwork of an artist called Beeple was sold for nearly $70 million. On March 25, a digital artwork by humanoid robot Sophia was sold at auction for $688,888 in the form.