A virtual art piece entitled “Everydays: The First 5000 Days.” The digital artist Beeple is the first NFT-based artwork to be put up for auction at Christie’s.
Christie’s
A non-fungible sign from artist Beeple is selling for more than $ 60 million at Christie’s, making it the most expensive NFT ever sold at auction.
The final sale price may move higher as final bids are processed and auction fees are added, totaling more than $ 69 million. But sales have limited two weeks of insane online bidding and ushered in a new era in collectibles, where prices for blockchain-based digital images are now paying competitive prices for Picassos and Monets. While the future of NFT awards and their long-term role in the art world remains an open question, and many view it as a speculative fad, the price of eight figures for the Beeple has caused the art world to suddenly take notice.
“Once I saw it, I saw it as this massive potential for this as a platform for digital ownership of a lot of different things, not just art,” artist Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple, told CNBC . “If I go forward, I think it will be seen as an alternative form of asset class.”
The record work, called ‘The First 5,000 days’, sold for the first time in a large auction house.
In 2007, Winkelmann posted a new work of digital art every day for the rest of his life and has not missed a single day. The first 5,000 of the works, which he calls ‘Everydays’, were put together to form ‘The first 5,000 days’.
NFTs, which are digital assets with ownership recorded on a blockchain, have become a $ 400 million market – many of them in the past month. Jack Dorsey turned the first tweet of 2006 into an NFT that currently has a maximum bid of $ 2.5 million. NBA Top Shots, which are NBA Highlights videos, have exploded in popularity, with sales of over $ 200 million and a LeBron James video for $ 208,000. Grimes, the musician and artist, has sold more than $ 6 million in videos and music.
Until the sale of Christie, the most expensive NFT ever sold was a Beeple work that was turned over by its owner for $ 6.6 million.
It is unclear whether large art auction houses will follow. Sotheby’s said he had not made any announcements about future NFT sales, and Phillips said he did not have any NFT news to share at the moment.