Digital artwork sells for record $69 million at Christie’s first NFT auction
The first purely digital work sold by an established auction house brings blockchain into the world of fine art.
By Michela Moscufo
Christie’s auction house sold its first purely digital artwork Thursday for a record $69 million, the highest price paid for an NFT, or nonfungible token.
The work, “Everydays: The First 5000 Days,” is by Mike Winkelmann, who goes by the name Beeple. The work is a collage of 5,000 drawings, one created and posted every day for the past 13 and a half years.
Originally created with pen and paper and now mostly illustration software, the sketches run the gamut from an angular line drawing of his first baby to Hillary Clinton and well-known cartoon characters.
The winning bidder owns the work in the form of a unique string of code, called a nonfungible token. The piece has no physical presence and will be “delivered directly from Beeple to the buyer, accompanied by a unique NFT encrypted with the artist’s unforgeable signature and uniquely identified on the blockchain,” Christie’s said.