{"id":169,"date":"2021-03-30T20:23:12","date_gmt":"2021-03-31T00:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/?p=169"},"modified":"2021-03-31T03:16:30","modified_gmt":"2021-03-31T07:16:30","slug":"digital-only-nft-art-sells-at-christies-for-nearly-70-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/2021\/03\/30\/digital-only-nft-art-sells-at-christies-for-nearly-70-million\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital-only NFT art sells at Christie\u2019s for nearly $70 million"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h6 class=\"wp-block-heading\">By Adrian Ma<\/h6>\n\n\n\n<p>An American digital artist known as Beeple has made history after a piece of his online art sold more nearly $70 million USD in a Christie\u2019s auction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The piece, titled \u201cEverydays: The First 5,000 Days,\u201d is a digital collage comprising a series of images designed by Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann. It features colourful illustrations and references to pop-culture figures like Jeff Bezos and former U.S. President Donald Trump. But what makes this sale particularly important is <em>how<\/em> it was sold \u2014 as a non-fungible token (NFT).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video height=\"1080\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1920 \/ 1080;\" width=\"1920\" controls src=\"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/120\/2021\/03\/The-Most-Expensive-NFT-Ever-Sold-1.mp4\"><\/video><figcaption>Video by Rida Khan.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>What is an NFT? Well, it\u2019s essentially a form of cryptocurrency that acts as an entirely unique guarantee of authenticity and ownership. Beeple\u2019s digital art has no physical presence \u2014 there\u2019s no paint on a canvas or a print to hold and frame, it\u2019s a jpeg. The piece can easily be shared and reproduced and printed out by others. But the person who bought the NFT for Beeple\u2019s work now can lay claim to owning the original. To put it another way, anyone could purchase a print of Van Gogh\u2019s \u201cThe Starry Night,\u201d but there is only one original version of that iconic painting and it\u2019s currently being displayed at MoMa in New York City.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the first time the venerated Christie\u2019s auction house has offered a digital-only artwork for bidding with an NFT as a guarantee of its authenticity, according to the Associated Press. The massive sale also now positions Beeple as \u201camong the top three most valuable living artists,\u201d the auction house posted on Twitter.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">just setting up my twttr<\/p>&mdash; jack (@jack) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jack\/status\/20?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 21, 2006<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><figcaption>Ceo Jack Dorsey sold the first ever published tweet as an nft for $2.9 million.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Christie\u2019s did not release any information about the buyer, but interest in NFT assets has grown dramatically in the past year. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey recently put his first ever tweet up for online auction as an NFT and fetched $2.9 million USD (which he later donated to charity). Rock stars King of Leon have made <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nme.com\/news\/music\/kings-of-leon-have-generated-2million-from-nft-sales-of-their-new-album-2899349\">more than $2 million USD by selling NFTs<\/a> of their latest album <em>When You See Yourself, <\/em>with each token containing unique content such as different album artwork. And NFTs are expected to have a significant impact on the collectible sports card market, with virtual sports cards potentially generating hundreds of millions of dollars in the next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/120\/2021\/03\/Mad-Dog-Jones-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-175\" width=\"335\" height=\"223\" srcset=\"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/120\/2021\/03\/Mad-Dog-Jones-1.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/120\/2021\/03\/Mad-Dog-Jones-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/120\/2021\/03\/Mad-Dog-Jones-1-768x512.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 335px) 100vw, 335px\" \/><figcaption>Mad Dog Jones, an artist from Thunder Bay, ON made $4 million selling his digital artwork.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Adrian Ma An American digital artist known as Beeple has made history after a piece of his online art sold more nearly $70 million USD in a Christie\u2019s auction. The piece, titled \u201cEverydays: The First 5,000 Days,\u201d is a digital collage comprising a series of images designed by Beeple, whose real name is Mike [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":419,"featured_media":170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/419"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201-winter-2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}