When an auction on digital art was held on Dec 31 in Shanghai, the room was bustling with collectors, investors and crypto-savvy bidders ready to offer money to show their support for nonfungible tokens, cryptographic material on a blockchain.

"NFT art will be embraced by younger generations who live in cyberspace. We wanted to introduce the future art to collectors," says Yu Xiaowei, manager of the modern and contemporary art department at Shanghai Jiahe auction company.

NFTs are unique digital assets, including JPEGs and video clips, represented by codes on the blockchain. The technology can track the ownership and validity of each NFT when it is bought or sold.

It was the second time Shanghai Jiahe held an offline auction, featuring NFT art, a relatively new medium for the art world. In June, the auction house presented six pieces of NFT art for the first time and the number jumped to 87 at its December auction.

"From June to December, the situation had totally changed, especially after the concept of 'metaverse' hit the internet in October," Yu says.

Over the past few months, artists, collectors, investors and young buyers have turned to Yu to inquire about NFTs. Yu says NFTs are popular among people born in the 1990s and the 2000s－groups that are fond of inhabiting cyberspace. "NFTs are their bragging rights in the virtual world."

She adds, "We're investing in future generations."

Beijing and Shanghai have put "metaverse" into the agenda of their development plan in 2022, according to the government work reports released online. The local government of Xuhui district in Shanghai announced earlier this month that it would support and develop NFT art.