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A non-fungible token (NFT) by the artist Beeple sold at Christie’s for over $60 million, making it the most expensive NFT ever sold at an auction. The sale also puts his work in the top 3 of highest paid prices for a living artist.
With a final sales price that can shift to a total of more than $69 million with processing and auctioning fees added, the work called “The First 5,000 days” is a collage of 5,000 mostly digital illustrations. These digital illustrations were created for the “Everydays” series in which a new artwork was created every day since 2007 while not missing a single day in the process.
The winning bid came from MetaKovan, the pseudonymus founder of Metapurse. He eventually outbid Tron founder Justin Sun at the last minute. MetaPurse is an organization that describes itself as a “crypto-exclusive fund.”
In a statement pubished by Christie’s, MetaKovan said:
“When you think of high-valued NFTs, this one is going to be pretty hard to beat. And here’s why — it represents 13 years of everyday work. Techniques are replicable and skill is surpassable, but the only thing you can’t hack digitally is time. This is the crown jewel, the most valuable piece of art for this generation. It is worth $1 billion.”
It is not the first time MetaKovan bought Beeple’s work. In December of last year, MetaKovan bought 20 Beeple single edition works for over $2.2 million. The works will be displayed in a digital museum of which MetaPurse intends to sell shares in the form of digital tokens, thereby offering buyers a share in the artworks.
The auction of Beeple’s work has captured the imagination of many in the past two weeks and raised the popularity of NFT to unseen heights. Hereby contributing to the hype and possibly a start of a new era in the world of art and beyond, showcasing the multitude of potentialities the NFT has. While there are some who consider NFT a speculative fad, the world has taken notice, if not today.
Beeple, who is known in everyday life as Mike Winkelmann, recently expressed his believe that NFT’s have far reaching potential to change the world. He said:
“As soon as I saw it, I saw it as this massive, massive potential for this as a platform for digital ownership of a bunch of different things, not just art. Moving forward, I think this will be seen an alternate form of asset class.”
Commenting on the impact the record-breaking auction of “The First 5,000 days” will have, Andrew Golstein, editor-in-chief of Arnet News said:
“At this point, especially after today’s Christie’s sale, it’s not a question of whether NFTs will have an impact on the so-called traditional art market, but to what degree its impact will be felt.”
He added that the price is a sign that a new group of technology-enabled collectors can “destabilize the establishment in attention-grabbing ways.”
NFTs or non-fungible tokens are unique digital tokens based on blockchain, most often on the Ethereum blockchain. These tokens can represent just about anything on the internet and have become increasingly popular in the art and music world.