Crypto Executive Justin Sun Buys Digital NFT Artwork for $69 Million
A digital artwork by Beeple sells for a staggering $69 million at Christie's, with cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun revealed as the buyer. The historic sale pushes the NFT market into the same price range as traditional blue-chip masterpieces.
A digital artwork created by artist Beeple sells for a staggering $69 million at Christie's in New York, completely shattering all previous records for the medium. The piece, titled "Everydays: The First 5,000 Days," is a massive mosaic containing images that the artist has created every day since 2013. Attached to a non-fungible token (NFT) on the blockchain, this purely digital work without any physical components now sits firmly in the price range of traditional blue-chip masterpieces.
Justin Sun, the founder of the cryptocurrency platform Tron, emerges as the mystery buyer behind the monumental $60.25 million hammer price. Sun is widely known as an aggressive marketer who frequently makes headlines by spending massive sums of money, such as his $4.57 million bid for a lunch with Warren Buffett in 2019. Christie's specialists note that the intense bidding war attracts mostly crypto-savvy individuals who are deeply embedded in the digital asset space.
The online auction generates unprecedented drama that mirrors the excitement of a hotly contested eBay lot rather than a traditional high-end art sale. Bidding opens at just $100 in late February and explodes to $1 million within the first eight minutes as about 20 eager participants drive up the price. The frantic final minutes of the online sale draw direct comparisons to the legendary 2017 Christie's auction of a Leonardo da Vinci painting that ultimately reaches $450 million.