On March 11, 2021, the auction house Christie’s sold a work by an American graphic designer, Michael Winkelmann, a.k.a. Beeple, for a colossal $69 million, making it the third most expensive work ever sold by a living artist.
The work, Everydays: The First 5000 Days, is a nonfungible token, or NFT. It’s a computer file that cannot be exchanged, copied, or destroyed, which gives the purchaser proof of authenticity. It lives online in a virtual space—an immaterial space—in a blockchain, a secure digital public ledger. The file is a mint copy, an original, like the Mona Lisa that hangs in the Louvre. It’s also a work of art. […]
Read full article on Nautilus website, first published on August 18, 2021.
Image: Everydays: The First 5000 Days, Beeple. Fair use (critical commentary).