Mike Winkelmann, the digital artist known as Beeple, sold an NFT of his work for $69M, through a first-of-its-kind auction at Christie's
what?! This story just keeps getting better and better 😂 https://www.coindesk.com/... Christopher Inks / @txwestcapital : I understand the market but still can't help but feel like the spending of such an exorbitant amount of money on something that doesn't “exist” physically may be the ultimate example of excess. https://twitter.com/... Sven Henrich / @northmantrader : The Fed buys anything these days. https://twitter.com/... Geoffrey Miller / @primalpoly : You may or may not like this particular art work. But Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) secured on blockchains could do more to help millions of artists make a decent living than the ‘contemporary art gallery’ system ever did. https://twitter.com/... Jauz / @jauzofficial : If NFT's are a fad or don't have real intrinsic value, then please explain how the worlds #1 fine art auction house just curated the sale of almost $70 million worth of digital art as an NFT from our generations Picasso. I'll be waiting https://twitter.com/... Ben Carlson / @awealthofcs : My biggest takeaway from the NFT boom: Rich ppl have a sh*tload of money and they are going to invest it in anything they can get their hands on Wealth inequality might be the most important investment factor of this century https://twitter.com/... Monica / @notwaldorf : This to me is NOT a victory for artists. When you get picked up by Christie's, you're already the 1%. You've won the art market game. The fact this is an NFT is just another way the art industrial complex is marketing scarcity. These aren't the artists NFTs are “supposed” to help https://twitter.com/... Duncan Jones / @manmademoon : The digi-vultures are gonna feast well on that corpse. https://twitter.com/... Tom / @tomschuiz : 13 years of hard work $69,000,000 for an NFT People will now call him an overnight success. Congrats @beeple🎉 https://twitter.com/... Tony Dokoupil / @tonydokoupil : Virtual artist reacts to people paying $70,000,000 real dollars for his digital work. https://twitter.com/... Alex Adelman / @alexadelman : TFW you work for 13+ years on something and make $69M https://twitter.com/... Katy Tur / @katyturnbc : I'd say so. https://twitter.com/... Parker / @pt : I would like to know who actually owns the IP here. Was this art actually sold? Does the buyer get the uncompressed originals? Can they license this IP to others? Was it an exclusive license, or is this just a $69M (nice) license to copy 1 of N? https://twitter.com/... Laura Shin / @laurashin : What I suspected — the bidders on Everydays: The First 5,000 Days were people with magic internet money, not typical art collectors. (See screenshot below) https://www.bloomberg.com/... Mike Butcher / @mikebutcher : BRB, just off to Google “NFTs and money laundering” https://www.cnbc.com/... Meg Graham / @megancgraham : I was gonna make a joke about how brands are gonna get in on NFTs then saw Taco Bell is already selling taco GIFs on Rarible so https://www.cnbc.com/... Mark Johnson / @philosophygeek : Trying to decide whether it's crazier that this is considered great art or that you could own a few Dalis for $69m. https://twitter.com/... Joe Greer / @ioegreer : i've got some jpg files yo https://www.nytimes.com/... @icebergy_ : Ha I just right clicked and saved that $69M Beeple https://twitter.com/... Kanyi Maqubela / @km : Watershed moment. https://twitter.com/... Sriram Krishnan / @sriramk : A little sample of how amazing his story is via @3LAU https://twitter.com/... Tom Warren / @tomwarren : $69 million on a JPEG nice https://twitter.com/... @doorhinge9 : NFT stands for Never Fucking Tell me what an NFT is I don't care @chillmage : every day I wake up and find a new way to realize I'm in the wrong business https://twitter.com/... Hayato Huseman / @hayatohuseman : nice fungible token https://twitter.com/... Dom / @dban_ : NFT's really escalated quickly, bloody hell https://twitter.com/... Neeraj K. Agrawal / @neerajka : the new owner of the $69,346,250 beeple nft, admiring his prize https://twitter.com/... @apompliano : A few weeks ago I told @beeple that his NFT was going to go for over $50 million at the Christie's auction. He laughed at me. Beeple's NFT just sold for $60.25 million. Now I'm laughing because I'm so happy for my friend. Congrats @beeple! Artem Russakovskii / @artemr : I love that artists are getting paid, but this is damn nonsense. https://twitter.com/... Joe Pompliano / @joepompliano : This piece of digital art just sold for $60.25 million. It was at $25M with 1 minute left in the auction. I'm starting to think 2021 might somehow be crazier than 2020. Congrats @beeple 👏 https://twitter.com/... @pierskicks : Beeple Christie's auction already in the Top 10 auction sales for a living artist ever. PAMP IT. https://twitter.com/...
The VergeJacob Kastrenakes
Context & Ripple Effects
Beeple had already built a business selling digital art through NFT marketplaces, as a profile of his earlier NFT sales documented. Christie's now brings that work into its auction format, making the sale a bridge between crypto-native marketplaces and a traditional art intermediary.
Follow-up coverage identified NFT investor MetaKovan as the buyer, tying the record price to a dedicated crypto-asset fund rather than an unnamed conventional collector.
First-order effects
Christie's gains a high-profile proof point for NFT auctions, while Beeple's work receives a price benchmark far beyond his earlier marketplace sales.
MetaKovan's purchase makes a crypto-focused investment fund the immediate owner of a prominent digital-art asset.
Second-order effects
NFT artists and marketplaces gain a new route to collectors through auction houses, increasing competition to control scarce, headline-making digital works.
The sale intensifies the public dispute over whether blockchain-based ownership can support art-market scarcity, a debate already attached to the auction in the related coverage.
Third-order effects
If major auction houses continue to package NFTs as scarce art objects, digital-art pricing will depend increasingly on established intermediaries alongside crypto-native marketplaces.
NFT ownership is becoming an experiment in exclusivity economics: the durable question is whether a token’s provenance and auction channel can sustain collector demand.
The trend: NFTs are moving from marketplace-native digital collectibles toward auction-mediated assets where scarcity, provenance, and buyer signaling set value.
.@beeple 's ‘The First 5000 Days’, the 1st purely digital NFT based artwork offered by a major auction house has sold for $69,346,250, positioning him among the top three most valuable living artists. Major Thanks to @beeple + @makersplaceco. More details to be released shortly
Wow. @beeple. $69m for a purely digital work. No matter how you feel about NFT's, don't look away from this. It's okay to not get why someone would pay that, and it's okay to be bummed about the climate impact. But don't be willfully ignorant about what's happening.
The meme economy will become real. - Meme creators will make NFTs - Timestamps give proof-of-first - Memegen partially goes on-chain - Memetic spread is more traceable - Memers become millionaires - Risky art becomes uncensorable & monetizable - Art moves outside regime control
I reached out to beeple back in 2018 to ask him if I would make enough money doing this shit , he told me I probably wouldn't make enough money as a doctor but it was possible 😂😂😂 https://twitter.com/...
If only there was a way to add transparency to finance... Is anybody even auditing these #NFT smart contracts? There's a lot of fuckery going on. https://twitter.com/...
People are paying $69 million for a website that says they “own” something that everyone can download, and Republicans think we need to eliminate the estate tax https://www.nytimes.com/...
I understand the market but still can't help but feel like the spending of such an exorbitant amount of money on something that doesn't “exist” physically may be the ultimate example of excess. https://twitter.com/...
You may or may not like this particular art work. But Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) secured on blockchains could do more to help millions of artists make a decent living than the ‘contemporary art gallery’ system ever did. https://twitter.com/...
If NFT's are a fad or don't have real intrinsic value, then please explain how the worlds #1 fine art auction house just curated the sale of almost $70 million worth of digital art as an NFT from our generations Picasso. I'll be waiting https://twitter.com/...
If you're trying to understand what's going on in the digital art space through the lens of rationality you're guaranteeing yourself frustration. Art has never been rational. Never will be. https://twitter.com/...
My biggest takeaway from the NFT boom: Rich ppl have a sh*tload of money and they are going to invest it in anything they can get their hands on Wealth inequality might be the most important investment factor of this century https://twitter.com/...
This to me is NOT a victory for artists. When you get picked up by Christie's, you're already the 1%. You've won the art market game. The fact this is an NFT is just another way the art industrial complex is marketing scarcity. These aren't the artists NFTs are “supposed” to help…
I would like to know who actually owns the IP here. Was this art actually sold? Does the buyer get the uncompressed originals? Can they license this IP to others? Was it an exclusive license, or is this just a $69M (nice) license to copy 1 of N? https://twitter.com/...
What I suspected — the bidders on Everydays: The First 5,000 Days were people with magic internet money, not typical art collectors. (See screenshot below) https://www.bloomberg.com/...
I was gonna make a joke about how brands are gonna get in on NFTs then saw Taco Bell is already selling taco GIFs on Rarible so https://www.cnbc.com/...
A few weeks ago I told @beeple that his NFT was going to go for over $50 million at the Christie's auction. He laughed at me. Beeple's NFT just sold for $60.25 million. Now I'm laughing because I'm so happy for my friend. Congrats @beeple!
This piece of digital art just sold for $60.25 million. It was at $25M with 1 minute left in the auction. I'm starting to think 2021 might somehow be crazier than 2020. Congrats @beeple 👏 https://twitter.com/...