Digital Artist Beeple Makes History With $69 Million NFT Sale
A digital collage by the artist Beeple sells for nearly $70 million at Christie's, setting a massive record for crypto art. The landmark transaction highlights the explosive growth of NFTs as a legitimate way to own digital creations.
A digital collage by the artist known as Beeple sells for almost $70 million at Christie's auction house, setting a new record for digital-only art. The piece, called "Everydays — The First Five Thousand Days," ranks as the third most-expensive work ever sold by a living artist at auction. This groundbreaking sale marks the first time the prestigious auction house handles a purely digital NFT artwork.
The artwork exists as a nonfungible token, or NFT, which uses blockchain technology to verify ownership and authenticity of a digital file. Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, creates the massive collage by posting a new piece of art online every single day for 5,000 days. He explains that while artists have used the internet to share work for decades, NFTs finally provide a real way for people to truly own and collect digital art.
This monumental sale highlights the rapidly expanding NFT market, which includes other high-profile transactions like the $600,000 sale of the Nyan Cat meme. Buyers typically use the cryptocurrency Ethereum to purchase these unique digital assets on online marketplaces like Foundation and Nifty Gateway. As traditional auction houses embrace this technology, NFTs continue to gain mainstream legitimacy and reshape the future of the art world.