io9 is proud to present fiction from Lightspeed Magazine. Once a month, we feature a story from Lightspeed’s current issue. This month’s selection is “Money in the Bank” by John Kessel & Bruce Sterling.
The crumbling crypto empire that tech bros everywhere once hyped up has now claimed another victim. Nathaniel Chastain, former Head of Product at leading NFT marketplace OpenSea, has been sentenced to three months in prison for insider trading.
Even with the inclusion of collectibles from the Nickelodeon, Paramount, and Hello Kitty back catalogs, the NFT platform Recur is calling it quits after several years of pumping the internet full of monetized images of The Godfather’s similarly ineffective Fredo.
Look to your left, and see an image of a famed, extremely expensive luxury Birkin-brand handbag. On your right, is a non-fungible token, a digital image whose rights of ownership are recorded on a blockchain. On Wednesday, a jury in New York decided that these MetaBirkin NFTs were indeed a big ripoff of the famous…