As NFTs become more popular, some collectors are getting rich

“It depends on the fandom,” he added.

Likewise, what many NFT artists create or invest in will be worth little or nothing in the long run. But there are a few NFTs that have become very valuable, making their owners and creators huge sums of money in a short amount of time.

The bored monkeys that Mr. Pollak bought, for example, could be minted – ie launched – for 0.08 ether ($200 last spring). Now, less than a year later, the cheapest is worth about 73 ether (about $190,000). (Ether can be traded on major cryptocurrency platforms such as coin base and Twins and then transfer to a bank account.)

Claire Silver, an artist in her early 30s who works with artificial intelligence, is another NFT success story. In 2017 she was given three CryptoPunksa collection of 10,000 unique pixel art characters generated by an algorithm from someone she met on Slack.

“I was in a cryptocurrency chat room and met this guy who was interested in art,” said Ms. Silver, who leads a nomadic lifestyle but is most recently based in Denver. He told her he had 730 CryptoPunks, she said, “and asked if I wanted three. I said, ‘Sure.’”

In 2017, collectors could claim CryptoPunks for free as long as they had an Etherum wallet. Now is the cheapest sell for around 68 ethers (nearly $175,000).

She held on to hers until 2020 when she heard rumors that they were sold for a lot of money. She sold one for about $60,000 in July 2021 and has two others. (Many are selling for six figures. One sold for nearly $600,000 last month.)

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