Watch: New Age Digital Artwork Selling For Big Price Tags

Art is going "state of the art," with canvas being replaced by computers.

While art is in the eye of the beholder, the collectors of digital pieces are left holding not much of anything. That’s because the works only exist online. A computer-generated work known as “Crossroad” was sold for a record $6.6 million by Miami collector Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile. "You can go into the Louvre and take a picture of the Mona Lisa, and you can have it there, but it doesn't have any value because it doesn't have the provenance or the history of the work,” he said.

They are known as “non-fungible tokens” or NFTs. Each image, video, or animation has blockchain technology certifying ownership and authenticating them as unique.

Even esteemed auction house Christie’s has launched its first-ever sale of digital art, with bids hitting more than $3.5 million and climbing. "In the first 10 minutes of bidding, we were at $1 million. Never seen anything even remotely close to that kind of activity,” said Noah Davis of Christie’s.

The rush in NFTs is tied to sports trading cards. Last fall, the NBA launched their “Top Shot” online platform where users can buy and trade video highlights from games. Sales for February alone climbed to around $200 million, with one collector paying $208,000 for a clip of a LeBron James slam dunk.

Buyers are also looking at NFTs as investments. While some warn of a bubble, others like Nashville collector Nate Hart say the hype is high, with real potential. “Early NFT guys have kind of been presented with the same opportunity as maybe people who found Bitcoin early were,” he said.

But for many, these buys are about the bragging rights, so that even if you can’t hang the painting, it is at least something to hang your hat on.