Nyan Cat NFT

2021

Date: 18 February 2021 · Place: Foundation, Ethereum mainnet · Figures: Chris Torres, creator · Foundation, marketplace · Anonymous winning bidder (oxmoonwhale) · Tags: Meme NFT, Foundation, 10th Anniversary 01. The First Meme To Mint Itself On 18 February 2021 Chris Torres mints a remastered one-of-one Nyan Cat on Foundation to mark the meme's tenth anniversary. The auction closes at 300 ETH, roughly $590,000, paid in Ether to a creator who had spent a decade watching his cat fly across other people's t-shirts without compensation. Torres frames the sale as recovery. The meme was made in 2011, escaped immediately, and only in 2021 do the rails exist to assign it a single canonical owner without removing it from the commons. 02. The Template Nyan Cat sets the meme-NFT template that every other 2011-era image will follow within months: a remastered file, signed by the original creator, sold on Foundation or SuperRare to an anonymous wallet, while the meme itself stays free everywhere else. Ownership and circulation are decoupled for the first time. By April, Disaster Girl, Bad Luck Brian, and Overly Attached Girlfriend are all at auction. The Nyan Cat sale is the proof of concept. Sources • Foundation auction page, Nyan Cat (foundation.app) • The Verge, 'Nyan Cat is being sold as a one-of-a-kind crypto NFT' (18 February 2021) • Chris Torres interview, NPR (March 2021)