A work of digital art, tokenized on the Ethereum (ETH) network, was sold this Thursday, March 11, for almost $ 70 million by Christie’s auction house. Mike Winkelmann’s non-fungible token (NFT) or collectible, better known as “Beeple”, reached an unprecedented figure for this type of pieces, which makes its author one of the most valuable living artists in the world.

Christie’s confirmed the operation and detailed that the work called “ The First 5,000 Days ” was sold for $ 69,346,250. However, it was not specified whether the auction house received the funds in ethers , an alternative that was available to bidders.

The organizers indicated, through Twitter, that the details of the auction will be announced soon. It is also unknown if the buyer lives in the Ethereum ecosystem, cryptocurrencies or if he is a collector interested in NFTs.

The work of “Beeple” has been on display for auction since February 25 to today, March 11. It is a collage that condenses five thousand images designed every day between May 1, 2007 and January 7, 2021. The artist did not fail no day to complete his work over almost 14 years of work.

Each individual work was published day by day on the Internet. Each one is known separately as « everydays » or every day in Spanish, but when joined together they were baptized as « The First 5.000 Days »or the first 5,000 days.

Unique work on the Ethereum network

For Christie’s the piece is one of the most unique works in the history of digital art. Regarding the layout of the work and the sensations it transmits to art lovers, the company highlighted the following:

Organized in an imprecise chronological order, zooming in on the individual pieces reveals abstract, fantastic, grotesque and absurd images, along with current events and deeply personal moments.

The collage, according to the auction organizers, also reflects the obsession and fear of society for technology ; desire and resentment for wealth. In addition, the recent political turmoil in the United States also appears.

An element that shows the surprising amount reached by the piece is that the auction started at only 100 dollars. CriptoNoticias announced in February that the work has dimensions of 21,069 x 21,069 pixels (319,168,313 bytes), which would represent about 100 square meters.

The auction was organized at a time when the NFT market is in boiling. This newspaper reported on Monday, March 8, that the monthly volume for exchanges with non-fungible tokens reached a record high of 500 million dollars.

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