The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)’s official inclusion of eight CryptoPunks works into its permanent collection is not only eye-catching news for the blockchain community, but also a symbolic event in the history of contemporary art. This marks a rare moment in which a “native Internet” NFT collection is recognized on equal footing with painting, sculpture, or photography within one of the world’s leading museum institutions.
1. From a technology trend to an object of artistic preservation
CryptoPunks emerged in 2017, at a time when blockchain was still largely an experimental space—one in which developers and the crypto community were grappling with a core question: how can ownership and scarcity be established for digital assets? From this perspective, CryptoPunks were not originally created for “exhibition” or for entry into the traditional art system. Rather, they functioned as a technological–social experiment, combining generative algorithms, on-chain data, and an Internet-native user community.
At the time, CryptoPunks’ 8-bit pixel characters were often dismissed as crude and lacking aesthetic depth by the standards of painting or sculpture. They existed mainly in digital wallets and online forums, closely tied to meme culture, hacker ethos, and the DIY (do-it-yourself) spirit. As a result, CryptoPunks were once regarded as “toys for tech people,” or worse, as a short-lived speculative phenomenon associated with cryptocurrency hype.
However, the decision by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) signals a turning point in how cultural institutions assess NFTs in general and CryptoPunks in particular. Instead of viewing them through the lens of market prices, MoMA approaches CryptoPunks as historical artifacts—records of the moment when humans first became able to own, exchange, and authenticate purely digital art without intermediaries.
This approach is not new for MoMA. Throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries, the museum has repeatedly moved ahead of public opinion by collecting:
- Video art, once considered “non-art” because it lacked a physical object,
- Performance art, where the artwork exists only in a moment and in memory,
- Graphic design, interface design, and video games—fields long placed outside the realm of “academic fine art.”
Within this historical trajectory, CryptoPunks are positioned where they belong: as a founding milestone of blockchain aesthetics. Not because each individual Punk is a standalone masterpiece, but because the project as a whole represents a fundamental shift in how art is created, distributed, and preserved in the digital age. Bringing CryptoPunks into the permanent collection means that MoMA acknowledges that:
artistic value does not reside solely in form, but also in the technological, social, and intellectual context from which a work emerges.
In this sense, CryptoPunks are no longer merely products of a technology trend. They have become cultural evidence—a “historical anchor point” that helps future generations understand the early phase of art’s entry into the blockchain space.
2. Why CryptoPunks—and not another NFT collection?
When selecting works for a permanent collection, museums such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) rarely place market price at the top of their criteria. What matters more is this question: what does the work represent in the history of art and human culture? Viewed through this lens, CryptoPunks possess qualities that very few other NFT collections can claim.
First is their pioneering status. CryptoPunks appeared in 2017, before the concept of NFTs became mainstream and even before the ERC-721 standard was formally established. The project directly laid the groundwork for the idea of unique digital assets whose ownership can be authenticated on the blockchain. In art history, “firsts” often carry special significance—much like the earliest photographic prints or the first motion pictures. Even if the techniques were still rudimentary, their symbolic value is irreplaceable.
Second is their minimalist yet evocative visual language. CryptoPunks employ an 8-bit, pixel-art style—a choice that seems to run counter to the hyper-realistic, high-resolution imagery dominating contemporary digital art. Yet this very reduction creates historical depth. It recalls the early era of personal computers, video games, and digital art of the 1980s and 1990s. For museums, this is crucial: CryptoPunks do not only represent blockchain technology, but also connect NFTs to the broader visual history of digital culture.
Equally important is the role of community and decentralization. CryptoPunks were not released through galleries, auction houses, or traditional curatorial systems. They spread via the Internet, digital wallets, and online forums, with their value shaped by user communities rather than critics or the established art market. This reflects a broader shift of power in contemporary art—from centralized institutions to distributed networks.
From a museological perspective, CryptoPunks thus resemble the “first prints” of a new artistic movement. Just as museums once prioritized preserving early photographs or the first works of video art, MoMA’s choice of CryptoPunks enables it to tell the origin story of NFTs clearly and authentically. Not every NFT collection needs to be preserved, but the one that opened the path for an entire ecosystem almost certainly does.
It is precisely this combination of pioneering status, historically resonant visual language, and decentralized community structure that makes CryptoPunks a compelling choice—not because they are the most expensive, but because they tell the most important story about the birth of blockchain-based art.
3. NFTs in museums: new challenges to the concept of “preservation”
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)’s decision to include NFTs in its permanent collection is not merely an acquisition choice—it also opens up a complex academic problem for the field of museology. Unlike paintings or sculptures, which have clearly defined physical forms, NFTs exist in a hybrid space of technology, data, and Internet culture, forcing museums to rethink what “preservation” actually means.
The first and most fundamental question is: what exactly should be preserved? With NFTs, the image displayed on a screen is only the visible surface. Beneath it lie the smart contract, metadata, wallet addresses, transaction history, and the entire blockchain infrastructure that enables the work to exist. If a museum preserves only the image file, the NFT loses its core qualities of authenticity and on-chain provenance. Yet if it attempts to preserve the blockchain itself, the museum must confront technological change, potential network forks, or even the possibility that the blockchain may no longer be maintained in the future. As a result, preserving NFTs is no longer about safeguarding an object, but about preserving a digital ecosystem at a specific historical moment.
The second issue concerns ownership. In the traditional model, when a museum owns an artwork, control and storage are almost entirely in the hands of the institution. With NFTs, MoMA may own the token, but the blockchain itself is a decentralized system beyond the control of any single organization. This blurs the boundary between “ownership” and “participation”: the museum is both a holder of the artwork and a node within a much larger network. From an academic perspective, this directly challenges the notion of exclusive ownership that has shaped museum practice for centuries.
The third issue is exhibition. NFTs cannot simply be “hung” on a wall like oil paintings. For viewers to understand the work, museums must layer multiple elements: display screens, on-chain data, information about smart contracts, and interpretations of the technological and Internet culture contexts from which the NFT emerged. The viewing experience thus becomes more educational and interactive, pushing museums to shift from displaying objects to telling stories about systems and contexts.
It is precisely these challenges that make NFTs a serious subject of study. They compel curators, conservators, and scholars to revisit fundamental questions: what is art, where does the artwork reside, and what does preservation mean in the digital age? When an institution like MoMA chooses to engage with these questions, it signals that NFTs have moved beyond the status of a “passing trend” and entered the long-term academic and historical discourse of contemporary art.
4. Long-term impact: legitimizing NFTs within the flow of art history
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)’s decision to include NFTs in its permanent collection does not mean that all NFTs are automatically recognized as art. However, the event sends a clear and directional message: NFTs have become an indispensable part of contemporary art history, regardless of ongoing controversies surrounding markets, prices, or speculation.
Throughout art history, every time a new medium has emerged—from photography and cinema to video art—it has gone through a period of skepticism, and even exclusion from the realm of “official” art. Only when major academic institutions and museums began to study, collect, and exhibit these media did they gradually gain legitimacy. NFTs are following a similar path, and MoMA’s decision can be seen as a moment of institutionalization for blockchain-based art.
In the long term, this may lead to a shift in how academies, museums, and critics approach NFTs. Rather than viewing NFTs as a homogeneous category, they now have grounds to classify them much like other artistic movements: conceptual NFTs, algorithmic art NFTs, NFTs rooted in Internet culture, or NFTs with performative and interactive elements. This approach allows NFTs to step out of the shadow of technology and be evaluated through artistic language and cultural context.
Another important consequence is a clearer separation between artistic NFTs and purely financial NFTs. As museums and scholars develop curatorial criteria, projects with the highest trading prices or largest communities will not automatically be considered art. Instead, factors such as conceptual intent, historical contribution, social impact, and connections to broader currents in contemporary art will become the primary measures. This helps reduce the confusion between cultural value and speculative value—a problem that fueled negative perceptions of NFTs during their market boom.
Looking further ahead, the legitimization of NFTs within the art-historical continuum opens the door to developing distinct aesthetic, historical, and social criteria for blockchain art. Questions such as what “uniqueness” means in digital space, the role of algorithms in creative authorship, or the relationship between artists and communities will become serious subjects of scholarly inquiry. At that point, NFTs will no longer be seen merely as products of new technology, but as an artistic medium with its own language and value system.
From a broader perspective, the long-term impact of this moment lies not in the number of NFTs exhibited, but in the opening of academic and institutional doors to blockchain art. Once those doors are open, NFTs will be acknowledged, debated, critiqued, and filtered—like all other art forms—until they ultimately find a stable place within the history of contemporary art.
5. Conclusion
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)’s decision to include eight CryptoPunks works in its permanent collection can be seen as a symbolic turning point in the history of contemporary art. This move marks the moment when NFTs officially pass through the “front gate” of the art system—shifting from a phenomenon tied to technology and cryptocurrency markets to an object of long-term study, collection, and preservation.
What matters most is that this recognition is not dependent on market cycles. NFT prices may fluctuate, speculative manias may fade, but once an institution like MoMA records CryptoPunks in its permanent collection, their cultural value is separated from their financial value. At this point, NFTs are being understood as part of the history of creative thought, reflecting how humans interact with technology, the Internet, and the concept of ownership in the digital age.
From a longer-term perspective, this event also lays the groundwork for how future generations will understand the early phase of blockchain art. Looking back decades from now, CryptoPunks at MoMA may no longer impress in terms of visual style or technology, but they will function as historical evidence—much like crude yet irreplaceable artifacts in archaeological museums.
In this sense, CryptoPunks can be likened to:
“The cave paintings of the blockchain era.”
They do not represent a technical pinnacle, but rather a moment of origin—the moment when humans first sought to inscribe their creative presence within an entirely new space. And it is precisely this moment, more than any short-term market fluctuation, that makes CryptoPunks worthy of a lasting place in the long flow of contemporary art history.
Disclaimer: The information provided here is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial, investment, legal, or professional advice. Always conduct your own research, consider your financial situation, and, if necessary, consult with a licensed professional before making any decisions.
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