Million Dollar Pixel

Long before NFTs and crypto-art, a student named Alex Tew had an idea: sell 1 million pixels on a webpage for $1 each. It sounded stupid. It was stupid. And it made him a millionaire in months. "The Million Dollar Pixel" traces the history of digital scarcity. It connects the dots between the "Million Dollar Homepage" of 2005, the insane real-money economy of Second Life, the $600,000 virtual planet sold in Entropia Universe, and the modern craze of CS:GO skins. Why do humans assign value to intangible coordinates on a server? This book explores the economics of status, the psychology of ownership in a post-material world, and the thin line between a digital collectible and a "greater fool" scam. It is a deep dive into the weirdest markets on earth, where a JPEG of a rock can cost more than a house.