Felix Xu figured he knew enough about art to navigate the analog scene at Art Basel Miami Beach. The 29-year-old Beijing co-founder and chief executive officer of the crypto startups Arpa and Bella Protocol has been buying NFT artworks at breakneck speed since the spring, ranking as one of the top 10 buyers of art on the digital art platform HicEtNunc. He now owns more than 3,000 digital artworks including examples by artists like Urs Fischer, Lucas Samaras and Damien Hirst.

But until Miami, Mr. Xu had never stepped foot into...

Felix Xu figured he knew enough about art to navigate the analog scene at Art Basel Miami Beach. The 29-year-old Beijing co-founder and chief executive officer of the crypto startups Arpa and Bella Protocol has been buying NFT artworks at breakneck speed since the spring, ranking as one of the top 10 buyers of art on the digital art platform HicEtNunc. He now owns more than 3,000 digital artworks including examples by artists like Urs Fischer, Lucas Samaras and Damien Hirst.

But until Miami, Mr. Xu had never stepped foot into a fair selling art in real life. He didn’t know about the power dynamics that determine where galleries show within the vast Miami Beach Convention Center. Or that Gagosian, one of the world’s biggest galleries, didn’t host a prefair party this year at Mr. Chow, historically a must-go event for celebrities and billionaires alike. On Nov. 18, Mr. Xu tweeted, “Coming to @ArtBasel later this month, what’s fun?”

He rented an apartment on South Beach and mulled the week’s priorities. “I love supporting underrepresented and emerging digital artists, so I’m not collecting anything outside NFT,” or nonfungible tokens, he said before the trip. A few exhausting days later, he admitted he was tempted to “cross over.”

Partying With the Crypto Crowd
Networking With NFT Pros

With NFT art moving from the art-world fringe to the mainstream this year—and Miami’s crypto-friendly mayor, Francis Suarez, offering to get paid in bitcoin—this year’s fair week saw the arrival of a swath of tech-related conferences and NFT networking events designed to draw both Silicon Valley transplants to Miami as well as crypto enthusiasts new to art.

Once word spread that Mr. Xu was Miami-bound, he accepted several invitations to participate in crypto-related events, largely populated by “practical” people “who don’t buy a lot of art yet,” he said later.

Getting Lost in the Aisles

Mr. Xu realized he was lost within minutes of walking into the vast warren of more than 250 fair booths at the Miami Beach Convention Center. He set out to find a friend from Tokyo’s Nanzuka gallery manning booth B-12, but it took several pivots to get oriented. Joining him was Daryl Xu, another friend who works at cryptocurrency company Coinbase.

Both men say they are avid collectors of digital art but know little about its physical counterparts, so the fair offered a crash course. “One of the things digital artists can’t do as well is the physical part of it,” Felix Xu said. “It’s amazing to see how painters and sculptors are experimenting with different materials like they’re in a chemistry lab.”

Write to Kelly Crow at kelly.crow@wsj.com