Visa (NYSE:) got itself a fancy new Twitter (NYSE:) avatar this August, and even though it didn’t stay up for long, the 8-bit-styled picture of a visibly unamused woman with a stylish mohawk still made dozens of headlines. The relatively high price was just one aspect of the story. Price tag: $150,000. Just the fact that the financial titan bought an NFT token, representing CryptoPunks’ image, set off fireworks within the media. It was the best marketing spend Visa’s done all year — the ROI on news articles alone must have paid for the purchase tenfold.

Yes! Visa “apes in” on NFTs these daysTo use a phrase NFT collectors lose a lot during the age of the rich pouringJPEGs with apes have been viewed by millions. But even though the technology’s journey from memes to riches has taken it into the digital art world, I don’t think that this will be its mass-market use case.