W B The digital art market is as crazy as the real art market. Get ready to meet its million-dollar pieces.
#10 CROSSROADS
Crossroads is a 10-second video created by Beeple, Winkelmann’s pseudonym, an artist whose NFTs are quite well-known and fetch several million dollars. So, stay tuned because you’ll see him again in this top. The artwork shows Donald Trump’s body on the street with slurs written all over him as passersby walk by. The token was sold for 6.6 million dollars.
#9 RINGERS 109
Ringers 109 is the creation of Art Blocks, an Ethereum project that creates NFTs of loops around pegs using an algorithm. Ringers 109 is a static image in which the dominant color is black on a white background. According to connoisseurs, the most interesting attribute is the presence of the red circle, an element found in just 0.3% of the pieces created by Art Blocks. Perhaps therein lies its price: 6.93 million dollars.
#8 RIGHT-CLICK AND SAVE AS GUY
This NFT shows a character wearing large sunglasses and a hood. His lips move as if he’s mumbling something. The author is XCOPY, a London-based crypto-artist whose creations are known to be dystopian and death-themed. He’s managed to sell over 1,900 works. Right-click and Save As Guy refers to all those people who don’t believe in NFTs because they can be downloaded simply by right-clicking. However, this piece was acquired at auction by Cozomo de Medici, who turned out to be none other than singer Snoop Dogg. The price he paid was 7.09 million dollars. It isn’t the first time that the singer shells out so much money for a work of XCOPY; he had previously bought the NFT Some Asshole for 4 million dollars. It seems that XCOPY is the new Picasso.
#7 CRYPTOPUNK 7804
CryptoPunks are a series of 10,000 NFTs algorithmically generated by the Larva Labs studio, so no two CryptoPunks are the same. They were originally released for free and could be given to anyone with an Ethereum wallet. Almost all CryptoPunks were human except 88 zombies, 24 monkeys, and 9 aliens who acquired the most value. One of these is the alien CryptoPunk 7804, which in March 2021 managed to sell for 7.6 million dollars. Its happy seller called it his “digital Mona Lisa”. Out of the 10,000 CryptoPunks, it’s one of 378 that come with a pipe and one of 254 that have a cap forward. Do you think that justifies its price?
#6 CRYPTOPUNK 3100
Let’s continue with another alien CryptoPunk. Its only attribute is wearing a white-and-blue headband. It rose to fame when it was bid for 2 million dollars in 2021, ultimately selling for 7.67 million dollars. What justifies its price? It’s unclear; this is one of 333 Cryptopunks that have a single attribute and one of 406 that have a headband.
#5 CRYPTOPUNK 4156
CryptoPunk 4156 is one of the 10,000 NFTs created by Larva Labs and is the only one out of the 24 ape NFTs that made it to this top. It’s one of the 333 NFTs with only one attribute, which in its case is a bandana on the head, a feature it shares with other 431 CryptoPunks. In 2021, it was sold for no less than 10.35 million dollars. Is it worth it? For many specialists, the answer is no; they point out that the NFT market is quite unregulated, and maintaining the absolute anonymity of its participants, serves to protect the money obtained from illegal sources.
#4 CRYPTOPUNK 7523
In June 2021, London’s auction house Sotheby’s sold this Cryptopunk for 11.75 million dollars. Also known as Covid Alien, this character is one of 9 Aliens in the NFT CryptoPunks collection and is the most expensive to date. Featuring a knitted cap, earring and mask, it’s one of 2,459 with an earring and one of 175 with a mask.
#3 HUMAN ONE
This is another work by Beeple, but unlike Crossroads, Human One is a physical and digital hybrid. It’s a real sculpture connected to an NFT that’s constantly projected. It consists of four screens showing the 3D figure of a life-size astronaut walking across different environments. The artwork was sold at a Christie’s auction in November 2021 for 28.9 million dollars; Beeple has promised to update it from time to time as he has remote access and preserves creative control over the sculpture.
#2 EVERYDAYS:THE FIRST 5000 DAYS
In 2007, Beeple started a project to produce a piece of art every day for the next five thousand days. With all of them, he formed a huge collage that turned out to be the world’s second most expensive NFT. In early 2021, Christie’s auction house began bidding the work for 100 dollars, but cryptocurrency enthusiasts soon pushed the price up. Within an hour, it reached one million dollars; however, the final sale fetched a price of 69.3 million dollars and placed Beeple as one of the three most expensive living artists in the world. Everydays:The First 5000 Days was bought by MetaKovan, the founder of an NFT investment fund, who wants everyone to download it because he believes in free information.
And, now, crypto-investor, get your ethereums ready because you’re about to meet the most expensive NFT of all!
#1 THE MERGE
This NFT consists of a white ball called mass and is an example of fractional art. It was created by an anonymous artist named Pak and went on sale for 91.8 million dollars on December 6, 2021. Strangely enough, although it’s a work of art, it was divided into 250,000 parts that were acquired by 26,000 collectors. This work drives collectors to buy more parts. When they acquire an additional part and put it in their wallet, it joins the one they already had and the mass becomes visibly larger; the more they buy, the larger it’ll look. Besides, when one fraction is bought, all the others rise in price because there are fewer of them on the market, which drives collectors to invest more. Only a cryptocurrency billionaire will be able to put all the pieces together.
Do you think it’s a good investment to buy an NFT? Tell me in the comments. For now, comment and share this post, which is free and costs no cryptocurrencies. See you in the next post.
