What did I just buy? I tried to use New York’s first NFT vending machine

Could buying an NFT the way one buys a bag of Cheetos demystify the process?

It's easy to miss the storefront that is home to the world's first NFT vending machine" in Manhattan's financial district. Squished between a sandwich shop and a tailor, the windows are bathed in pink neon light, with glowing letters that announce NFT ATM." When you walk through the entryway, you enter a tiny booth with the vending machine, filled with rows of little paper cartons, looking almost like cigarette packs. There are only two products: a color" for $5.99 and a party pigeon" for $420.69.

I was here to spend some of the Guardian's money on an NFT, or non-fungible token. NFTs are based on a blockchain feature called the smart contract," which is kind of like a virtual vending machine. Send some of your crypto to a smart contract, and it'll print a unique token - basically a digital receipt - that says you now own this cat pic. Anyone else can still right-click-save and share Mr Whiskers, but you'll know, and anyone else looking at the blockchain will know, that the image is yours. Or so the logic goes.