The masters of the metaverse — thousands of CryptoPunks and Bored Apes, artists and hackers, starry-eyed idealists and profit-hungry speculators — descended on Manhattan this past week, looking for a glimpse of the future. Officially, they were here for NFT.NYC, a conference devoted to the non fungible token, or NFT, the blockchain-based collectible that has upended the cryptocurrency and art worlds this year. The conference, now in its third year, attracted a record crowd of 5,000, plus a 3,000-person wait list, organizers said.