NEW YORK -- Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville, the tropical-themed restaurant and hotel in midtown Manhattan, is not usually the most exclusive place in New York City.

But it was standing room only beneath the propeller-plane-themed ceiling fans on Monday as some of the biggest names in tech shuffled in and out of the urban resort -- not to drink pina coladas and don flip-flops, but to wax poetic about non-fungible tokens.

Nine months ago, few people knew what a non-fungible token (NFT) was. But now, the blockchain-based phenomenon has leaped out of the virtual sphere and taken over Times Square.

The nft.nyc conference concluding Thursday is the first since its inaugural iteration in 2019, and the difference is striking.

The 2019 event drew 460 attendees. This year, over 5,000 people are attending hundreds of panels hosted by more than 600 speakers throughout midtown, with an untold number of exclusive parties and announcements night and day. The event appears to be a watershed moment for the nascent NFT tech.

NFTs are unique digital tokens that are stored on a blockchain, which serves as a sort of digital ledger. They have any number of potential applications, to which the list of panels at the conference can attest: There's panels on NFTs and fashion, how NFTs intersect with artificial intelligence, even a panel on how the notoriously energy-hungry tokens can save the oceans.

Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino announced NFTs from his film 'Pulp Fiction' at a private event on Nov. 2 in New York City. (Photo by Jack Stone Truitt)

But perhaps the most intuitive way to understand NFTs -- and the prominent space they occupy at the moment -- is the art world.

Many people first heard the term in March, when a digital image from an artist known as Beeple sold for $69 million. Anyone can download an exact copy -- down to the ones and zeros -- of the artwork for free. But the NFT for the same artwork gives the digital image the kind of scarcity that has long created value in the art world in the physical realm.

"The Mona Lisa doesn't lose value with every new T-shirt with its image on it," said Reddit co-founder and NFT enthusiast Alexis Ohanian.

Ohanian is not the only big name bursting with excitement at the conference. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales was there, comparing the early days of Wikipedia to the NFTs' current moment, and Quentin Tarantino made a big splash Tuesday when he announced seven NFTs for select scenes from his film "Pulp Fiction."

The NFTs include exclusive access to the scripts Tarantino wrote by hand, which were sitting in a filing cabinet before he took them out for the digitizing process. Noticing a doodle here, a note to himself there, Tarantino began to realize that having exclusive access to this -- even if it's just a digital replica -- could be considered as legitimate as any art.

There are no shortage of booths and products hopping on the crypto boom, from fashion to wine. (Photo by Jack Stone Truitt)

"I started almost getting emotional about it," he said.

After more than a year of coronavirus quarantines globally, in a period that coincided with an explosion of interest in cryptocurrency and online investing in general, the excitement and energy surrounding the in-person conference and the ongoing NFT boom -- or bubble, depending on whom you ask -- is palpable. And that may be a tad ironic for a technology so closely associated with the metaverse.

But not everyone is so bullish about the boom in NFTs and cryptocurrency.

Gary Gensler, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, warned about the lack of regulation in the space while testifying to Congress last month.

"Currently, we just don't have enough investor protection in crypto finance, issuance, trading or lending," he said. "Frankly, at this time, it's more like the Wild West."