The Christie’s Beeple auction hammer has closed at $69,346,250. That makes the Beeple Everydays the third highest selling work of a living artist. And the highest selling artist of a digital art work ever.
It's an incredible result and a 13 year overnight success story for Beeple. The Everydays 5000 is every piece of art that Beeple produced everyday for a 13 year period. Taking on a per piece basis, 5,000 pieces is $13,800 per piece. Four months ago, $13,800 for a single NFT would have been unfathomable. Today we're seeing NFTs sell north of $1m on a daily basis.
What will happen to the Beeple Everydays?
Will it be fractionalized? Displayed in MoCa (virtual Museum of Crypto Art) or will it make its way enshrining itself in the physical world at the Smithsonian or MoMa?
And what does a sale at this level mean about the broader NFT market?
Will we see the likes of the B20 token appreciate in value and more fractionalized artworks come onto the market? What about a proliferation of specialized NFT focused funds? Are NFT curators the new fund managers?
These are the questions I am asking myself as we see this unprecedented sale.
I joined the Christie’s closing party on Clubhouse where Beeple was speaking to a room of 2,200 people.
He tearingly said:
Thank you to everybody who came out here. I'm blown away. Thank you to everybody who has shared my work, commented on it, liked it. It's honestly why Im in this position right now. I got very lucky. There was no guarantee that this work was going to connect with people. That is why I do feel super super lucky.
Whether it was luck, incredible timing or persistence that has paid off. Beeple will go down in history as the artist who showed the world the potential of NFTs.
What's also of interest and almost taken for granted, is that a $69m asset was trusted and sold on the Ethereum network. One asset, one NFT, $69m and sold in instant. The transaction, forever enshrined on the Ethereum blockchain, publicly accessible, immutable and viewable.
This shows the power and trust that is being placed in these decentralized networks to secure our money and assets. The logical prediction is that a sale of this size and nature will result in even more trust being placed on networks like Ethereum and Bitcoin to secure our most precious assets. Today its digital art. Tomorrow, our birth certificates, land tile deeds, and anything of value.
Congratulations to Beeple for his 13 year daily commitment to his craft, and congratulations to all the Ethereans who have worked tirelessly to make Ethereum the trusted network that it is today.
$70m for a NFT