Nyan Cat: The Pop-Tart Rainbow Kitten (2011)

In April 2011, an illustrator named Chris Torres posted a GIF to his personal website: a pixel-art cat with the body of a strawberry Pop-Tart, flying through space leaving a rainbow trail behind it. Days later, a YouTube user combined the GIF with a Japanese Vocaloid song called “Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!” The result became Nyan Cat, and the 3-hour loop on YouTube racked up hundreds of millions of views.

In 2021, Chris Torres sold the original Nyan Cat GIF as an NFT for nearly $600,000. A decade-old meme about a pastry cat became one of the earliest proof points that internet culture had monetary value. Nyan Cat bridged two eras: the era of free viral content and the era of digital ownership.