Hi, I'm Dan Pramak and welcome to Axios Recap, sponsored by Amazon. Today's Tuesday, March 2nd.

New U.S. COVID cases are up, stocks are down, and we're focused on the digitization of the art and collectibles business.

This week, Canadian singer and visual artist Grimes put a portfolio of digital artwork

up for auction.

Several hours later, she'd earned around $6 million.

But Grimes didn't put them on eBay.

She used something called Nifty Gateway, a platform for a type of cryptocurrency known as non-fundable

tokens or NFTs. All right, I can hear some of your eyes glazing over, so bear with me for a minute.

Think of NFTs as a currency and a receipt and an authentication process all wrapped up into one.

Grimes makes her art, and then the NFT is used not only to

help buy it, but to prove that she made it and to verify how many, or how few, copies of

that artwork exist. Three things to know. First, NFT's first made headlines several years back

when a couple of programmers created a series of digital

cartoon cats known as CryptoKitties. But the idea was a little bit ahead of the technology.

Two, those same programmers have since signed an exclusive marketing deal with the NBA to create

a series of short collectible videos under a brand called NBA Top Shots.

They're also traded via NFTs and talk is that their company just raised venture capital at a $2 billion valuation.

3. NFTs can be applied to almost any digital asset, from collectibles to fine art to music. The bottom line is

this might just be the latest example of moving something from the physical world into the

digital world. And before you dismiss it as ludicrous, remember how much people pay for pieces

of cardboard with photos of dead baseball players on them, or what people pay for certain pieces

of modern art. So in 15 seconds, we'll go deeper with venture capitalist David Packman,

...