When Reese Witherspoon took to Twitter in December to advocate for investment in cryptocurrency and NFTs, it seemed like a strange pivot. Normally you’d expect to find her selecting some of the most mediocre novels in the English language for her book club, or maybe adapting one of those mediocre novels into a television series, so middle-aged women from the suburbs can imagine their lives being enlivened, briefly, by a little infidelity, and maybe a horrific murder or two. But no; she’s now into NFTs. 

She’s not alone. Even as the NFT space is being rocked by one scam or theft after another, famous athletes, musicians, and dead people are coming out with their own blockchain digital collectibles in an attempt to cash in on this delirious investment bubble we are in. Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon were this week smugly comparing their NFTs on the Tonight show, while former One Directioner Liam Payne – who launched his NFT collection last June – has now gone as far as to create an entirely new Twitter account solely dedicated to the cryptocurrency. 

I know what you’re thinking: don’t these people already have enough money? The answer to that question is always going to be “no”, especially when they can sign off on someone else’s aesthetically half-hearted artwork and make themselves richer by bestowing their glowing aura on a Jpeg file. You would think, given the ridiculous contracts, the Pepsi endorsements and forgetfulness about paying taxes, someone like Lionel Messi would be content with what he has, but instead he’s selling “autographed” illustrations of himself as a robot. 

It’s like a poster you would hang in your teenage bedroom, yet somehow both more ugly and more expensive. Also it doesn’t really exist in the material realm, you just look at it on your phone. 

Celebrities, having run out of physical objects to sign, have decided to extend their brand by selling transitory things instead. For a while, Snoop Dogg was putting his face on bottles of truly terrible wine. (The kind of wine that somehow gives you a hangover at the same time as it gets you drunk.) Now he’s auctioning 30-second videos with an animated collage of his face while he says words that sound vaguely tetchy.