FX.co ★ $69 million for a token. NFT breaks record and gains popularity

The work of the contemporary American artist Beeple has gone under the hammer of the auction house Christie's. A bright representative of digital art has long been creating whimsical paintings with the help of pixels. But never before have the prices of his works soared to tens of millions of dollars. The largest transaction took place in December 2020. Then, Beeple sold a series of its digital paintings for $3.5 million.

The artist has been working on "Everydays: The First 5000 Days," which was sold at Christie's auction and became a worldwide sensation, since 2007. The digital picture is a collage of 5 thousand images that Beeple created every day. This work of the American, of course, deserves the title of record holder. A file with a non-interchangeable NFT token attached to it brought the artist $69 million. Thus, Beeple automatically entered the top three most expensive artists living in the world.

The most interesting thing is that due to this transaction, a record was set for the NFT virtual asset. Previously, the most expensive digital work with a token attached to it also belonged to the "pen" of Beeple. The video, which is only 10 seconds long, was sold at the end of last month for $6.6 million.

The name of the last buyer is kept secret. What is known is that the buyer got the painting 2.5 times more expensive than its original cost (this is how much the price has increased literally in the last 20 minutes of the auction). The lucky owner of the file paid for the purchase with Ethereum assets, and the auction commission will be paid in US currency. His right to own a unique digital art object will now be confirmed by the NFT token, which is linked to the picture. A virtual asset is known to be unique. It is presented in a single copy and cannot be exchanged or replaced with another token without the permission of the owner.

The examples of investors who are willing to invest not small amounts in NFT are growing more and more every day. Moreover, they are attracted not only by art objects. For example, in November last year, a collectible card of the striker of the Paris Saint-Germain football club Kylian Mbappe was sold for $65 thousand. The buyer admitted that he later plans to earn twice as much on its resale. A month later, another interesting deal took place, the subject of which was also NFT: for $223 thousand, a virtual Formula 1 track was purchased.

The press, which closely monitors any events related to this asset, greatly increases the degree of interest in the token. For example, the most recent case that has received the attention of journalists happened yesterday. Their target was the story of a token tied to a digital card depicting basketball player Zion Williamson from the New Orleans Pelicans. The owner was offered $1 million for it, but he refused, even though he bought it in January 10 times cheaper.

Recent real estate market news also confirms the growing popularity of tokens by leaps and bounds. Recently, a user of the Mintable marketplace put up for sale half of a house in St. Louis (USA), to which a non-interchangeable token is attached. By the way, this is not the first case of a "union" between the NFT and a real estate object (some commercial companies already offer to purchase real estate on the basis of a fully compatible shared tokenized ownership right). It is planned that the house in St. Louis, which is now rented out and generates a monthly income of $1,200, will later be sold at auction. Now, this NFT is estimated at $74.23 thousand (approximately 42 Ethereum).

As we can see, the market for non-interchangeable tokens is developing at a very intensive pace. Experts estimate that in the last month alone, the NFT trading volume amounted to $340 million. The amount is a record, because it exceeds the same figure for the whole of 2020. According to analysts, this is far from the limit, interest in this currency asset will continue to grow. Moreover, experts predict that in the current year, the market capitalization of non-interchangeable tokens may jump by 3-4 times (also in comparison with last year).