It’s the latest craze sweeping the internet. NFTs, or “non-fungible tokens”, have been snapped up by celebrities from Jimmy Fallon to Justin Bieber.

They are most well known in the form of digital artworks, such as the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection, featuring a series of bored-looking apes. There are many others, of course, and last year the venerated auction house Sotheby’s sold an NFT for $US69 million.

So, it’s time to figure out, what is an NFT? How are they created? How do you buy one? And do they have potentially broader social applications than just cute pictures of primates?

Today on Please Explain, business reporter Dominic Powell joins Jess Irvine to unpack it all.