Christie’s Auctions Beeple NFT for over $69 Million

Updated by Anirudh Tiwari
In Brief
  • Christie's closes on digital art for $69.3 million
  • First auction house to ever close on digital artwork
  • Christie's also first to offer Ether crypto payment option
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Christie’s is officially the first world-renowned auction house to close on digital artwork. Selling for a little over $69 million, the entire transaction was made using a unique NFT.

With history made, Christie’s is the first auction house to close on NFT digital art. Furthermore, they were the first to add crypto payments (Ether) as an option for the listing. As if that’s not enough, the backstory to the artwork is just as impressive as the sale itself.

A quick visit to Christie’s listing of the Beeple piece will immerse you in the artist’s story:

“On 1 May 2007, Mike Winkelmann, aka the digital artist Beeple, posted a new work of art online. He did the same thing the next day and the next, and the next one after that, creating and posting a brand-new digital picture, or ‘everyday’ as he called it, every single day for 13-and-a-half years. Now those individual pieces have been brought together in EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS, a unique work in the history of digital art.”

Art NFTs are Bringing in the Money

In the last several months, the digital art community exploded, creating new revenue streams for artists who deservedly need it. Christie’s Beeple auction sale has helped cement this new outlet for the art community. Indeed, everyone is buzzing about NFTs.

Celebrities are engaging in it, successful entrepreneurs are investing in it, and everyone else’s attention has been captured. Just last week, Mark Cuban tweeted about his most recent NFT digital art bid:

Here’s What You’re Buying

To clarify how NFTs work, non-fungible tokens are encrypted works that operate on a blockchain network. Each NFT generated has its own digital signature, along with information about the artist and copyright information. This information can never be changed, and most importantly, it can never be stolen.

NFTs Create a Better Experience for Fans

The music industry has also been busy soaking up the NFT market, creating new ideas for tokenizing assets every day. Since any intellectual capital can be turned into a non-fungible token, the options are limitless. If there is a better experience out there for fans, they will take it. Celebs and personalities have been selling gifs of themselves, tweets, rare collectibles, anything they can think of to create an additional income source.

Experimenting with unique NFT collectibles, such as limited edition album art, creates demand. This is only the beginning.

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