Topics: Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, Chris Rock, Cryptocurrency, Oscars
Will Smith will certainly want to forget about slapping comedian Chris Rock at Sunday's 94th Academy Awards show.
However, those who do want to cherish that iconic moment forever now have the opportunity to do so, thanks to the medium of NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
On OpenSea, one of the world's biggest NFT marketplaces, you can already find the 'Will Smith Slap Dao' collection, which has the entire incident available to buy in digital form.
A total of 1,999 JPEGs of the 1 min 30 sequence can be found, with a variety of meme text overlays on offer.
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The slap instantly became one of the most viral moments of the year, as a clearly incensed Smith stormed the stage to slap Rock, who had just made a joke about the actor's wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith.
The star of Men in Black and King Richard (for which he won an Oscar this year) appeared to take umbrage with a joke that Rock made about his wife's alopecia - leading to the now infamous slap on stage.
Smith has since apologised to the Academy for his actions, but that hasn't stopped the meme economy from going into overdrive, with some of the NFTs from the slap collection being sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds.
As mobile syrup.com notes, the most expensive JPEG is currently listed for 69 ETH - which is almost £180,000 ($235,427).
However, those who aren't quite in the market for an NFT that eye-wateringly expensive can also purchase their own JPEG from the Slap Dao collection for as little as 0.003 ETH - or around £8.
As things stand, 721 people have already purchased an NFT from this collection, making the creator very well off indeed.
Little is known about the origin of the collection, meaning that you should always exercise a great deal of caution before spending a vast sum on any of it NFTs.
Like any hype driven collection, expect interest to wane in the coming days and weeks, as the world slowly moves on to the next great celebrity scandal.
Nevertheless, the 'Will Smith Slap Dao' is yet another example of how cryptocurrencies and NFTs are changing the world around us - for better or worse.
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