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Since ancient history, people have attached emotional and aesthetic value to physical goods, such as statues, paintings, or even collectible baseball or football cards. Collectors have been willing to cash out substantial amounts to fill their collection and gain ownership over a desired piece.
Nevertheless, artists of various kinds have struggled to move the creation and sale of their work to the digital medium for a long time, as digital artworks can easily be copied, shared, and stolen. But with blockchain technology this is rapidly changing, as anyone can upload their artwork to the blockchain and mint a non-fungible token (NFT), which certifies the ownership of a certain piece of digital media.
This allows artists, musicians, and other creators to make money selling digital goods that would otherwise be cheap or free. The recent developments on the non-fungible token (NFT) markets demonstrate just how fast-growing the demand for this type of digital art is. While not a long ago a NFT sale with a price tag of a few thousand dollars was big news, nowadays the prices of such digital goods can soar to millions of dollars. In the end of February two record-breaking NFT sales took place one after another.
10 years ago, Chris Torres createdĀ an animated flying cat with a Pop-Tart body leaving a rainbow trail, which went viral all across the internet. A few weeks ago inĀ February, Torres decided to forever preserve the legendary Nyan Cat animation by uploading it to the blockchain.
He then put the minted NFT up for sale on Foundation, a marketplace for blockchain art and the end price shocked him. In the final hour of the auction, a bidding war pushed the price of the Nyan Cat NFT to astonishing 300 ETH, worth around $580,000 at the time of sale.
The owner of the famous flying rainbow cat is for now still anonymous proprietor of the ā0x7Eb28B2f14A59789ec4c782A5DD957F9C8F33f6bā Ethereum wallet address. The day after the record-setting sale, Torres commented: āI feel like Iāve opened the floodgates.ā And it turns out he was right, as just three days later, an NFT deal worth over 10 times more struck the NFT markets.
According to an announcement by the NFT marketplace Nifty Gateway one of Beepleās animation has been resold for a record-breaking $6.6M in Ether on the secondary market. The historical animation, which was a part of Beepleās first Nifty Gateway digital art drop, is called "Crossroads" and it depicts what appears to be a monumental graffiti-covered Donald Trump lyingĀ face down in the grass, while people casually walk by in the foreground. In this case too, the buyer wished to remain anonymous, Nifty Gateway spokesperson noted.
CROSSROAD
ā Nifty Gateway (@niftygateway) February 25, 2021
By @beeple
The #1/1 from beeple's first NG drop has just resold on the secondary market for $6.6 million.
History has just been made.
Congrats to beeple and of course to @pablorfraile for the sale. pic.twitter.com/mTYG4VABSw
The sale was conducted on Nifty Gateway, one of the largest NFT markets. Since 2019 the digital art auction site and broker is owned by the Winklevoss brothersā cryptocurrency exchange Gemini. Niftyās competitors include Larva Labs, Open Sea Since, Foundation and many more emerging marketplaces. Nifty Gateways co-founder Griffin Cock commented on the historical sale:
āBeeple is quickly becoming, or arguably already is, the most important crypto artist in the world. NFTs are the future, and this is just a glimpse of that ā¦ there is no ceiling on what a piece of art can be worth. Soon the most valuable NFTs will be worth more than any physical artwork.ā
Ever since the limited-edition CryptoKitties hype in 2017, the market for one-of-a-kind digital artworks has been growing. And as the NFT artwork movement gains traction buyers with very deep pockets, who are prepared to pay increasingly high prices for the desired piece, are starting to flock in. NFT buyers are usually collectors or fans who like to show off with what they have bought on their social media accounts or displays set on visible places in their homes. As NFTs usually only represent a form of a ācertificate of authenticityā and do not include the copyrights or trademarks associated with the digital artwork, some are jokingly saying that they are buying just the ābragging rightsā.
Nevertheless, the NFT markets are in full swing. According to Nonfungible.com, an NFT marketplaces tracker, more than 222,000 people participated in more than $250 million worth of NFT deals in 2020. Compared to 2019, the NFT volume has quadrupled in 2020. With a recorded volume of almost $180 million in the past month alone, the trend seems to be going on in 2021 too.Ā
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