Most expensive NFT artwork (limited edition)
Quién
EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5,000 DAYS, Beeple (aka Mike Winkelmann)
Qué
63,346,250 US dollar(s)
Dónde
Estados Unidos ()
Cuándo

The most expensive digital artwork sold at auction is "EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS" by digital artist Beeple (aka Mike Winkelmann), which was sold by Christies for $69,346,250 on 11 March 2021.


Beeple is an American graphic designer famous for his prodigious artistic output. He posted his first piece online on 1 May 2007, and has uploaded at least one artwork every day since then. "EVERYDAYS" collects the first 5,000 days of his one-a-day art project as a gigantic digital collage, showing his development from simple pencil sketches to elaborate creations that incorporate 3D-modelling, photo manipulation and digital painting. The artwork is a jpg file with a resolution of 21,069 x 21,069 pixels and a file size of 319.168 Megabytes.

The record sale price was made possible by a technology called Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT). This applies the blockchain verification system developed for cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, to artworks. Cryptocurrencies are "fungible tokens" – meaning one bitcoin is worth no more or less than any other, and that they are all interchangeable. An NFT is a unique digital token, like a certificate that says, essentially, that the copy of an artwork owned by the possessor of the NFT is the "real" one. The ownership of this unique token is logged in a blockchain (the distributed-ledger technology used by cryptocurrencies) meaning that it can't be duplicated or stolen. This makes it possible for someone to own "the original" of a digital artwork, piece of music, or video clip.