Even if you'd never really paid any attention to the words "Blockchain" and "Cryptocurrency" before - you may have seen some things hitting the news recently. Bitcoin finally breaking $50k for example. Or that NFTs have become so hip that someone burnt a real Banksy and sold a digital copy online. Just a few hours ago Christies sold one piece of NFT digital art created by Beeple for life changing $69,346,250 positioning him among the top three most valuable living artists on the planet.

Funnily enough, this week I dipped my toes into the world of NFTs as well. I'd been inspired by a project called EulerBeats, which I would love to have invested in when they were dirt cheap, but honestly, I was too late, and they're beyond my risk appetite on what might basically be a complete gamble. However the inspiration of that project got me thinking about the future, and I wanted to dive deeper. I think you can only learn this stuff by doing it.

I remember that I had some BitCoinCash lying around in a wallet, that I'd received when Bitcoin forked. So I figured I'd be happy to use that "free" currency to play with. Having converted it to Ethereum, I promptly went and blew some on buying a Bit Bird at 0.042 ETH or just under 65 euros in real money. I like the fact that the creator is honest about it being a learning experiment for them too.

If you think that sounds like a silly amount of money for a piece of pixel art, you might be right. I have no idea whether Bit Birds will be come valuable collectors pieces like Crypto Punks and Beeple's works, and frankly, I don't care. This was about learning by doing, and I now know much more than I did a week ago. More learning to come for sure - there's a future here that doesn't look like the past.

Here's an identical copy to the one that I can prove, and you can verify that I own: