Digital Artist Beeple Sells NFT for $69 Million at Christie’s Auction House

Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, sold his digital art work for the record-breaking amount at Christie's after an intense bidding war.

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As NFT’s, short for nonfungible token, continue to take the digital and investing world by storm, a digital artist just had one of his works sell for $69 million at Christie’s auction house, The Verge reports.

Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, sold his Everydays – The First 5000 Days digital work for the record-breaking amount after an intense bidding war. Even he seemed taken aback by the immense price tag. 

The piece is a collage of every single image Beeple has posted online, dating back to 2007. The New York Times describes his work as an “irreverent visual commentary on 21st century life.”

“He showed us this collage, and that was my eureka moment when I knew this was going to be extremely important,” a specialist in post-war and contemporary art at Christie’s, Noah Davis, told The Verge. “It was just so monumental and so indicative of what NFTs can do.”

Winkelmann’s work was the first NFT sold by Christie’s but it likely won’t be the last. He believes nonfungible tokens are the future of the art world. 

“I do view this as the next chapter of art history,” he said. “Now there is a way to collect digital art.”

To learn more about what NFTs are and why it might behoove you to invest in them now, check out Bobby Hundreds and ThankYouX explain the rise of cryptomedia here.

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