Likewise, a blockchain can be useful in countries without land registries, certifying who owns a given plot of land.
The same applies to art: a blockchain can verify ownership of a particular work, allowing it to be sold. If the work is digital, it can be embedded in the blockchain. Thus, on March 11, a work by the American artist Beeple, Everydays: The First 5,000 Days, was sold for sixty-nine million dollars. Payment is made using NFTs, non-fungible tokens on the blockchain. A currency such as the euro is fungible: one one-euro coin is interchangeable with another. Bitcoin is fungible in principle, but it can in fact be traced. A non-fungible token is therefore not interchangeable. Non-fungible tokens were invented in 2017 by Dieter Shirley.