- The 'Bad Luck Brian' meme sold for $36,000 on March 9 as a piece of digital art.
- The meme first appeared in 2012.
- Now it's part of a series of non-fungible tokens containing internet memes and other historic digital artifacts.
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'Bad Luck Brian' hit a stroke of good luck this week when the creator of the schadenfreude-fueled meme sold the original photo as a piece of crypto-art for 20 ethereum, or around $36,000.
The auction took place on Foundation, an online marketplace for non-fungible tokens that has hosted several other high-profile sales of crypto-art. The winner of the auction, which closed on March 9, is identified as @a on the Foundation platform.
@a will have a digital signature, or proof of ownership, inscribed on the blockchain data for the Bad Luck Brian photo.
The subject of the "Bad Luck Brian" meme, whose real name is Kyle, shot to fame after an awkward yearbook photo of him went viral in 2012.
At the time, selling the digital ownership of the meme as an NFT might have seemed out of the realm of possibility. But with the rise of blockchain technology, interest in owning pieces of internet history is increasing. NFT's are a non-duplicable digital token, similar to cryptocurrency. But unlike digital currencies, NFTs cannot be directly exchanged or traded, or split into smaller values.
The NFT meme market is red-hot. The Nyan Cat meme sold for almost $600,000 as an NFT in February. Jack Dorsey is auctioning off ownership of the first-ever Tweet to benefit charity.
And elsewhere on Foundation, another early internet joke is up for sale. Sadly for "Scumbag Steve," nobody has yet bit on him.