Mike Winkelmann, also known as Beeple, is a graphic designer from Charleston, South Carolina, best known for its digital works mainly short films and Commons VJ Loops. His creations were usually around the hundred dollar mark. But recently, his digital artwork named, “Everydays – The First 5000 Days”, not fetched hundreds, not even thousands but millions. How many? To be exact, $69,346,250 dollars.
The artwork features 5,000 individual images made one-per-day over a period of thirteen years.
The work is in the form of a Non-fungible Token (NFT). What it means is that it is authenticated by the blockchain network, certifying its originality and ownership.
The sale of the work for about $69 million puts Beeple in the top three most valuable artists. The auction was conducted by Christie’s and they had further revealed that the bids skyrocketed in the last two hours of the auction rising from $14 million to $69 million.
The artist has been well known for his digital art but his fame shot up in the last few months as ‘NFT mania’ took hold. He had embraced the NFT artwork for months, making several million dollars from the artwork. This comes as a relief for digital artists who initially struggled to find a sense of authenticity for digital files since they could be downloaded, uploaded and shared freely. NFTs seem to be a viable medium kind of purpose-built for the art world.