Megan Rapinoe Launches NFT Trading Card, Tragically Forcing Fans Like Me to Consider Buying Cryptocurrency

There are two things I love with unconditional passion in this world. The first is my dog and the second is anything that Megan Rapinoe endorses. She is the Regina George of my life. Megan Rapinoe wore a bucket hat during the WNBA wubble, so I bought a bucket hat. She did a commercial for Subway, so I ate Subway. She dropped a one-of-a-kind NFT trading card with her image on it, so I immediately clicked “place offer” in an attempt to buy that non-fungible token, a thing that I cannot touch or frame in my home or pass down to my future child—or even explain to any child.

Like the average American, I have no idea how an NFT retains value after purchase and yet here I am ready to empty out my joint savings account to bid on this online image of Megan Rapinoe. There is only one small thing standing in my way: ethereum.

Ethereum is one of the many forms of imaginary money known as cryptocurrency, a tender so volatile that Elon Musk tanks its value every time he sends a tweet. Like all forms of currency, ethereum, bitcoin, dogecoin, and regular coins fluctuate in value over time and right now the hottest and most stable form of fake money is ethereum. This is great news for investors and cryptoqueens, but as much as I love stonks, I refuse to ever get involved with crypto. For all I know the U.S. dollar could be extinct in the distant future and this is a huge investment error, but I’d rather rely on dollars I can hold in my hand over coins that rise and fall on the whims of eccentric billionaires.

But in this present moment, the only way to purchase my beloved Megan Rapinoe’s digital trading card is through an ethereum wallet. I’ve got a leather wallet and an Apple wallet. Neither of these wallets grants me access to the auction portion of the website and what I now face is a dilemma of principles. Do I follow this woman into a crypto rabbit hole or do I stick with the fiscal devil I know? Do I abandon regular human money in pursuit of my thirst for Megan Rapinoe? Catch me at the crypto ATM with no principles and no clue what I’m doing.