Digital artist Bipal is a “rich man” after selling non-fungible tokens at auction for about million 70 million, Christie’s postwriter and contemporary art expert Noah Davis told CNBC on Thursday.
Davis made the remarks in an interview on “Power Lunch” after Christie’s closed bid window early Thursday. Beeps’s NFT – a collage of images titled “Everydays: The First Day, 1,000 Days” – sold for 69,346,250, according to Christina.
In a tweet, the auction house said the sale price beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelman, is “among the top three most valuable live performers.” Christie’s was the first large auction house to sell a complete digital piece of art.
“Mike Winkelman is a rich man today,” Davis told CNBC. “He’s always been rich in spirit. … I’m really proud of him.”
Sales of NFTs with blockchain-based assets have skyrocketed recently, ranging from basketball highl highlights to millions of dollars worth of digital-only artwork.
NFT is stored in digital wallets and is unique by design. Proponents say the shortage is crucial to their value. Ownership of each NFT is recorded on a blockchain network, digital ledgers that also power cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
Winkleman sought to explain the rise of the NFT in an interview with CNBC last month.
“There’s a lot of different analogies to use here. One of them is the Mona Lisa. Anyone can take a picture of the Mona Lisa, but that doesn’t mean you own the Mona Lisa,” Winkle said, referring to the iconic. Portrait drawn by Leonardo da Vinci.
The “Squuck Alley” interview took place on February 25, the same day it opened for bidding on NFT Christies.
“It’s like another MP3 I like to use. You may have a copy of Michael Jackson’s ‘Romance’, but … you can’t assure people that you have master recordings of ‘Romance’,” Winkleman said. “You may still have copies of digital online digital art and everyone can see it, but blockchain, NFT, is one thing that proves that this person owns it.”
Christie’s Davis told CNBC. Explained that the buyer of Winkleman’s fabrication “gets the required number and a long string of letters.” “It’s a code that exists on the Etherium blockchain. It’s a block in the chain that will be placed in their Etherium Vetlet.”
“They’ll also get a giant JPEG. A giant, high-resolution JPEG. That’s a hundred megabytes.” Davis added.
Some people see the craze of NFTs as temporary, believing ownership of digital assets will eventually move away from desirability and drastically reduce their values.
At least because it relates to what the NFT considers to be art, Davis said the sale of Winkleman’s work is a milestone.
“I don’t think it’s the only one, and I think this aggregation is class recognition,” Davis said. “NFT is more than a clearly emerging, neonatal collection space.”
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