Ultra-valuable NFT sale: Nearly $70 million spent on top-priced digital artwork
Digital artist Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple, has made history with the sale of his artwork, "Everydays: The First 5000 Days," for a staggering $69.3 million. The sale, facilitated by the traditional auction house Christie's, set a record price for digital pieces on the Ethereum blockchain.
Born in North Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, in 1981, Winkelmann's parents were an electrical engineer and a worker at a retirement center. He graduated as a computer scientist in 2003 from Purdue University in Indiana.
Beeple's artwork often explores futuristic, technological, and social themes. His creative output includes VJ Loops, a series of short abstract digital art pieces, created between 2009 and 2019. These works, published under Creative Commons license, have been downloaded over 100 million times and have been used in thousands of live events worldwide.
The artwork, a collage composed of five thousand images created daily by Beeple between May 1, 2007, and January 7, 2021, is a retrospective that encapsulates society's obsession, use, and fear of technology, political and social tensions in the United States, and the desire and resentment of humans related to wealth. With dimensions of 21,069 x 21,069 pixels, it is equivalent to a physical canvas or fresco mural of approximately 100 square meters.
The identity of the buyer remains anonymous, but the artwork was purchased by Vignesh Sundaresan, also known as Metakovan. At the time of the auction, the monthly volume of NFT transactions reached a historic record of over $500 million.
Beeple's works gained public recognition in 2019 when his Everydays series became part of Louis Vuitton's spring/summer 2019 prêt-à-porter collection. Nine of Beeple's pieces were included in Louis Vuitton's collection, which was presented during Paris Fashion Week at the Louvre.
The sale of the artwork started with an initial value of just $100, demonstrating the remarkable growth and interest in the digital art market. This groundbreaking sale marks a significant milestone in the recognition and acceptance of digital art as a valuable and collectible medium.
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