The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our society forever. And it's now ushering in a new "digital renaissance," where new technologies are allowing creators to flourish. Like Europe in the 14th century, many former workers are becoming merchants. Today, we would call them entrepreneurs. As of late 2021, the number of self-employed workers has risen by 500,000 since the start of the pandemic. This brings the total to 9.44 million, the highest figure since 2008. And like the renaissance, we are seeing an explosion of creativity and artistic talent being deployed thanks to new technologies-like non-fungible tokens (NFTs). These new artistic endevours can be organized under what many call "the creator economy."  And what is the creator economy? The strict definition of the creator economy is a whole range of businesses built by independent content creators like-social media, influencers, bloggers, and videographers. Even the narrow definition represents a large industry. Over 50 million people worldwide consider themselves members of the creator economy. That's 50 million people creating content for others to consume...all by themselves.                                                                                                                                                                         The highest paide YouTube star of 2021 was MrBeast, who made $54 million last year alone. A person named Ninja earned $25 million from streaming his video game feed on Twitch. Glenn Greenwald earned over $1 million with his investigative journalism publication on Substack. This thriving industry is valued at $100 billion currently. The digital artist Beeple-aka Mike Winkelmann, executed a historic deal for one of his artworks. The piece? It was actually a collage of 5,000 individual artworks Beeple produced over 5,000 days. He sold it for $69 million. Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchak made $91 million in 90 days selling his childish looking NFT friends called VeeFriends.