Digital-only artwork by Beeple fetches nearly US$70 million at Christie’s
- US artist Mike Winkelmann’s Everydays – The First 5,000 Days is a Non-Fungible Token (NFT), an increasingly popular type of digital asset with no physical form
- The market for NFTs, which are authenticated by blockchain to certify originality and ownership, has exploded in recent months
A digital artwork sold for nearly US$70 million at Christie’s on Thursday, in the first ever sale by a major auction house of a piece of art that does not exist in physical form.
Everydays – The First 5,000 Days is a digital work by American artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple. The JPG file is a collage of 5,000 individual images, which were made one-per-day over more than 13 years.
The sale of the work for US$69,346,250 put Beeple in the top three most valuable living artists, Christie’s said in a tweet.
The work is in the form of a new type of digital asset – a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) – meaning it is authenticated by blockchain, which certifies its originality and ownership.
The market for NFTs has soared in recent months as enthusiasts and investors use spare savings to buy up items that exist online. Last month, a 10-second video clip featuring an image of a fallen Donald Trump, also by Beeple, sold for US$6.6 million on an NFT marketplace called Nifty Gateway.
