Aphex Twin Releases Surprise NFT

Renowned electronic musician Aphex Twin surprised fans by releasing an NFT on Saturday night on NFT platform Foundation. 

Entitled  “/afx\/weirdcore\,” the piece is a glitchy, animated rendering of the artist’s face—a motif that has also appeared on cover art across his discography.

Aphex Twin, whose real name is Richard D. James, shared the news in a tweet:

We will spend a portion of the money on planting trees and either donating to permaculture projects or setting them up ourselves, depending on how much we get .

— Aphex Twin (@AphexTwin) March 14, 2021

He also wrote that he plans to offset the ecological footprint of the NFT: “We will spend a portion of the money on planting trees and either donating to permaculture projects or setting them up ourselves, depending on how much we get.”

NFTs or non-fungible tokens are blockchain-based tokens that represent ownership of a collectible, and are being used for everything from digital sports cards to NBA highlight videos to albums to artworks. Last week, an NFT work by the artist Beeple sold for $60 million at auction through Christie's.

The auction is set to run until Sunday evening, and the high bid is already 30 ETH—over $57,000—and rapidly climbing.