Member-only story
A $69 Million JPG file — is NFT the dawn of a new crypto-bubble?
“Everydays — The First 5000 Days,” by an artist known as Beeple, set a record for a digital artwork in a sale at Christie’s. The price was a new high for an artwork that exists only digitally, beating auction records for physical paintings by museum-valorized greats like J.M.W. Turner, Georges Seurat and Francisco Goya. Bidding at the two-week Beeple sale, consisting of just one lot, began at $100.
Beeple’s collaged JPG was made, or “minted,” in February as a “nonfungible token,” or NFT which gives buyers proof of authenticity and ownership. Most pay with the Ethereum cryptocurrency. “Everydays” was the first purely digital NFT sold by Christie’s, and it was offered to accept payment in Ethereum, another first for the 255-year-old auction house.
You can see his reaction during the auction in Christie’s own website.
Now what is NFT and is this the future or just a fad? Well grab a cup of coffee, we’ll tell you about it. Our basic understanding is that everything has equal value between each other. For example, a 100-dollar note can be exchange with two 50-dollar notes. 1 gold bar can be exchanged with the same gold bar with the same size. These processes are fungible. An NFT is the opposite of that. The word ‘token’ indicates the unit of currency in the cryptocurrency. For example, an…
