NFT artists are making millions with the craze for their digital artwork soaring. NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, provide a blockchain-backed proof of ownership on an item that the token is attached to. So, instead of holding money, these blockchain tokens hold art, music, or other digital goods. Yesterday, world-famous auction house Christie's sold a piece of NFT artwork for an incredible $69 million.
The artwork under the spotlight, 'Everydays: The First 5,000 Days' by Mike Winkelmann (AKA Beeple), was put up for auction in Feb, and setup as the first auction to accept cryptocurrency bids, particularly ETH. By 5th March bids had reached $3.5 million, and the auction closed with a winning bid of $69,346,250 yesterday. This makes Winkelmann "among the top three most valuable living artists," according to a Christie's Tweet.
'Everydays: The First 5,000 Days' is a work worthy of proper description. Back in May 2007, Beeple posted a piece of unique digital art online, he continued in this endeavour day-in day-out for over 5,000 days, as per the title (about 13 and a half years). 'Everydays' is a collage of these images. Moreover, Beeple is a well known person in the digital art world with 1.9 million Instagram followers and various collaborations with the likes of Nike and Louis Vuitton under his belt.
Yahoo News points out it isn't just the visual arts that are embracing digital sales via NFTs. Hoping to join the ranks of NFT successes like Beeple and the Nyan Cat creator, are the Kings of Leon who intend to be the first major recording artists to release an album as an NFT. Of course in the case of this music, there will be multiple NFT 'coins', and in this case they will infer further rights like limited-edition vinyl, front row seats to future concerts, and album artworks.
Another NFT in the news recently was the auctioning of Twitter CEO and founder Jack Dorsey's first Tweet, reproduced above. This auction ends on 21st March and is currently bid up to $2.5 million. Auction proceeds are going to charity.
