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Digital NFT Collage Sells for $69 Million at Christie’s Auction
By Shane Addinall Mar 16, 2021 IndustryBeeple’s latest digital art piece sold as an NFT on auction for $69 million, proving that there is merit to the idea of digital assets sales on the blockchain. Will NFTs be as hot as Bitcoin in the future? Read on and decide for yourself.The sale of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) is trending massively in digital circles, thanks to the Bitcoin craze. Last week saw artist, Beeple, receive a $69.3 million payday when his colourful collage was sold by the prestigious Christie’s Auction House.
The sale is a world record for digital art pieces and is the third most lucrative piece of artwork ever sold by a living artist, behind works by Jeff Koons and David Hockney.
In an interview, the artist known as ‘’Beeple’’ (Mike Winkelman), made clear that he never thought his art would ever amount to anything and is astounded at how well the crypto world has responded to his collection. He said:
"I honestly, like, I never thought I could sell my work. Kind of late September, early October, people kept hitting me on being like, 'Oh, you got to look at this NFT thing.’”
The rest is history! His work caught on like wildfire and attracted the attention of Christie’s Auctions, which finally landed him the ultimate payday for his 5,000-image montage.
Outlandish Digital Hype
Unlike other top-selling artwork, the ‘Everydays: The First 5000 Days’’ piece is a digital masterpiece, which means that there is no physical rendering of the expensive work. Rather, the transaction equates to the purchase of a unique image file developed for the blockchain as an NFT.
Beeple is the latest seller to benefit from this skyrocketing trend of NFTs over the blockchain, but this concept has been around for a while now and has been doing rather well in the digital realms. The sale of non-fungible tokens traces back to as early as 2017 with Dapper Labs’ CryptoKitties game. Here, buyers could purchase and trade unique animated cats across the blockchain – a surprisingly popular trend with tech fans.
Last year, the NBA stumbled on gold when partnering with Dapper Labs for their ‘Top Shots’ initiative. They began selling digital images of famous basketball players as NFTs. In four months, the initiative turned into a multimillion-dollar business, having generated $230 million since its launch.
Art does seem to be a great avenue for NFT enthusiasts though. The famous artist known by the pseudonym, Banksy, created a satirical art-piece called ‘’Morons’’, which is a piece aimed to make fun of the inflated art auction industry. The work was ironically auctioned off to an independent buyer for a lucrative $32,500 in 2019.
The painting has since been set on fire by a group of crypto enthusiasts, who live-streamed the burning but not before turning the art piece into a unique non-fungible token. It will now be sold as a digital asset for top dollar at an auction this week, where all the proceeds of the sale will go to charity.
Non-Fungible Tokens
Just when people are beginning to wrap their heads around digital currencies, the tech world complicates matters by introducing digital assets in a bid to show the versatility of blockchain technology.
While based on the same premise as a tokenised money, NFTs are digital files that can be traded via the digital ledger. It provides the holder/owner of the file authentic ownership of a particular digital asset, like an image, video, song, or something similar.
NFTs are a unique and innovative way of turning a digital file into something saleable. Even though the ‘item’ is not something physical, it seems to hold value by way of bragging rights, as each NFT is usually one-of-a-kind.
Digital technology is showing the world that the value of something is not necessarily linked to how tangible and usable an item is, but rather by how much joy it gives a person. NFTs are a newfound way for people to own rare things within in a safe and secure environment locked behind coding and secured with the best safeguards in the world.
There is no limit to where this trend could take us. We should ask the question: Is this all simply a temporary fad, or will this new concept continue to help the world transition into a virtual reality focussed age?
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