When You Marry NFTs and Emojis, You Get a Yat

Early adopters are using these hieroglyphic identifiers, called Yats, as URLs. The strings of emojis can be links in owners’ social-media bios, and the company that makes Yats says the identifiers will soon help facilitate electronic payments. But why would you want one?

“If your yat is Fire-Dragon, that says so much about someone. Versus your username being Naveen512. That tells you my area code,” says Yat Labs co-founder Naveen Jain, who lives in Nashville and uses the Eagle emoji as his Yat. (Fire-Dragon is taken.)

A one- to five-character design costs anywhere from $4 to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The shorter and more memorable the combination, the higher the price, typically. Yat Labs says it has sold nearly 160,000 Yats for a combined $20 million since last February, when the company launched. The highest price paid for a Yat was $425,000 for the single-character Key, it says.

Celebrity investors include Paris Hilton, Lil Wayne and G-Eazy. Those celebrities haven’t received discounts or freebies from Yat for their association, they say. G-Eazy, a rapper whose given name is Gerald Earl Gillum, bought Bat-Rose in April to use on his social-media profiles and marketing materials for future albums.

“I think it speaks to my identity as G-Eazy, as a creature of the night who’s a hopeless romantic,” says Mr. Gillum, a Batman fan since childhood. To him, Yats are a modern type of nickname. “It’s a place to find me and a way to associate with me and my brand,” he says.

Anyone can buy their own three- to five-character Yat on the company’s website using a credit card or Google Pay. Certain forms of cryptocurrency are also accepted. (A Twitter account called Yats After Dark is devoted to risqué Yats, many featuring eggplants or peaches.) Many one- and two-character designs were snapped up by early customers.

Investor Michael Arrington, who also has a stake in Yat Labs, says he recently spent $200,000 of his asset-management firm’s money on Rocket-Moon. Taking a rocket to the moon is a common refrain in the cryptocurrency world, and Mr. Arrington wanted to use the Yat as a branding tool for his Seattle-based firm, Arrington XRP Capital. Because users can’t buy one- or two-character combinations directly on the site, the only way he could purchase Rocket-Moon was by participating in a virtual auction hosted by Yat Labs.

Mr. Arrington initially hoped to buy the Yat for $10,000, but was quickly outbid by another investor. “I had a hard cap of $150,000, but I learned that I’m a sucker,” Mr. Arrington says.

Yat owners make money when someone wants to buy a Yat they already own. Buying Sparkle-Sparkle-Sparkle doesn’t mean you get paid every time someone texts their friend three sparkle emojis in a row. Mr. Arrington says his firm isn’t stopping anyone from using Rocket-Moon—and it couldn’t if it wanted to.

“But we own it and it’s cool,” he says.

“This is all a fiction constructed in our heads, but all property is a fiction constructed in our heads,” he says.

Yats aren’t automatically NFTs. A Yat owner can choose to create a token that proves ownership of the emoji combination on a blockchain, a digital database that records ownership of assets.

Tying ownership of a Yat to a blockchain costs extra. The price of creating that token on the Ethereum network, one of the most popular blockchains for NFTs, can run over $100.

Yats have their skeptics. David Gerard, author of “Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain” and writer behind a news site of the same name, says that anyone could make his or her own emoji-based Yat competitor.

“I could say this NFT represents a string of initials, or this NFT represents my butt. It would be exactly as meaningful as turning a Yat into an NFT,” Mr. Gerard says.

The webpage associated with a Yat URL isn’t always easy to find, critics say, since typing in an emoji sequence on a standard QWERTY keyboard can be difficult.

Joseph Skewes, an IT professional in Adelaide, Australia, owns over 2,000 Yats and estimates he’s spent tens of thousands of dollars on them from his savings, which includes gains from cryptocurrency investments.

“I collected rocks when I was younger. I collected DVDs. I had a coin collection. So I guess it’s a part of my personality to be collecting or buying these odd things,” the 37-year-old says. He has minted a handful of his Yats as NFTs.

The Yat that Mr. Skewes uses on his personal social-media accounts is Sparkle-Upside Down Smiley-Sparkle. He likes the silliness and sarcasm that the smiley represents, and that it signifies living Down Under.

Matthew Callahan, an associate creative director for a New York City NFT company, offers custom Yats as a service to the brands he works with. (Say, a hotel in Miami that wants to be known as Beach Umbrella-Crocodile-Sun.) The 38-year-old also spent $425 on a Yat featuring five stars in a row for himself.

“It’s possibly one of the only repeating emoji Yats where the longer one is better than the shorter one. Nobody wants one star, but everyone wants five stars,” he says.

Jenna Pilgrim, the chief executive of a crypto software company in New York City, bought a Yat in May to signal to clients that she’s up on viral trends. The 27-year-old says she decided on Canoe-Evergreen Tree-Maple Leaf to represent her Canadian roots and outdoorsy spirit.

“[Yat is] a freaking emoji company that doesn’t make any sense, or it shouldn’t make any sense. But in this day and age, with NFTs coming along as they are, unexplainable versions of virality are the norm,” Ms. Pilgrim says.

Write to Rachel Wolfe at rachel.wolfe@wsj.com