Not a day passes without news of some high-profile sale of NFT, an individual digital passport of an asset that records ownership. Over the past few months, there has been much hype surrounding digital assets: crypto art, memes, and even Jack Dorsey’s first tweet. In our today’s article, we have prepared a selection of the most expensive NFTs. Let’s get started!
How Much Do NFTs Usually Cost?
The NFT market is already large enough and continues to grow. Since any item can be tokenized, the cheapest tokens cost only a few tens of dollars. The lower entry threshold is limited by an item tokenization fee. Prices range from $77 to several hundred dollars.
There are also plenty of examples of really expensive tokens. For example, the girlfriend of Elona Musk, the Canadian singer Grimes, turned a collection of her paintings into an NFT, which she then sold for $5.8 million. The author of the gif ‘Nyan Cat’ Chris Torrance sold it for $590 thousand. One of the Dota 2 players bought himself a rare pink dog for $38 thousand.
The list of successful NTF sales is endless. Now we’re about to consider the top 10 most expensive NFTs ever sold. Various collections of digital works were not included in the selection — only single objects.
#10 Finite
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- Platform: Foundation
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- Price: 444.00 ETH ($757,788.12)
Pak is one of the most successful and mysterious anonymous crypto artists on the NFT market. He is known for his works, which push forward the boundaries of digital art. The Title collection, where the same art with rotating cubes had different titles and prices (from $1 to $1 million), is one of his most famous ones. The famous Sotheby’s auction chose co-operation with Pak as its first step into the NFT world.
#9 Hairy
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- Platform: Nifty Gateway
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- Price: $888,888.88
Steve Aoki is a renowned electronic musician who has worked with BTS, Linkin Park, Maluma, and others. In collaboration with 3D artist Antoni Tudisco, he created this ‘hairy’ NFT with a dancing blue-violet creature.
#8 Metarift
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- Platform: Makersplace
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- Price: ETH 449 ($904,413)
Among the sales leaders is another work by the mysterious crypto artist Pak. It became the most expensive art of the week from 15 to 21 March. Probably, this was influenced by the news about Pak’s cooperation with the Sotheby’s auction.
#7 Not Forgotten, But Gone
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- Platform: Nifty Gateway
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- Price: $1 million
Artist WhIsBe managed to sell a 16-second clip with a rotating skeleton of a gummy bear for $1 million. The artist’s portfolio includes gummy bears for every taste — with colors of zebra, snake, panda, and many others.
#6 Auction Winner Picks Name
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- Platform: Nifty Gateway
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- Price: $1.33 million
SSX3LAU is the creative duo of DJ 3LAU (Justin Blau) and artist Slime Sunday (Mike Parisella). They managed to sell their joint work ‘Auction Winner Picks Name’ at auction for $1,333,333.33. The winner of the auction received the full music video. The winner could also choose a title for the song in this and other versions of the work. The platform also sold 59 NFTs — shorter versions of the Auction Winner Picks Name for $9999 per art.
#5 Jack Dorsey’s First Tweet
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- Platform: Valuables
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- Price: $2.9 million
The very first tweet of the founder and CEO Jack Dorsey was sold for $2.9 million. Dorsey promised that the proceeds would go to the charity program called Africa Response. It helps residents of Africa during the pandemic. The buyer of the NFT tweet is Sina Estavi, CEO of the Malaysian startup Bridge Oracle.
#4 OCEAN FRONT
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- Platform: Nifty Gateway
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- Price: $6 million
The founder of the blockchain company Tron, Justin Sun, wanted to buy Everydays: The First 5000 Days made by Beeple (Mike Winkelmann), but at the last moment, it was bought by the founder of the Metapurse NFT fund under the pseudonym Metakovan. At the Nifty Gateway auction, Sun was more fortunate. He bought Beeple’s OCEAN FRONT for $6 million.
#3 CROSSROAD
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- Platform: Valuables
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- Price: $6.6 million
In February, Miami-based collector Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile sold a 10-second video ‘CROSSROADS’ made by Beeple for $6.6 million. In October 2020, he bought the work for almost $67,000. The work has strong political overtones.
#2 CryptoPunk 7804 and CryptoPunk 3100
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- Platform: Larva Labs
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- Price: $7.57 million (#7804) and $7.58 million (#3100) or 4200 ETH
CryptoPunks is a project by Matt Hall and John Watkinson of Larva Labs mobile software development studio. In 2017, they created a set of 10,000 NFT arts of algorithmically generated 24×24 pixel images. These were the first NFTs made on the blockchain. At first, they were distributed free of charge, but now punks can only be bought at auctions. Now the most expensive of them are CryptoPunk #7804 ($7.57 million) and CryptoPunk #3100 ($7.58 million). We included only the most expensive ones in our top 10 list.
#1 Everydays: the First 5000 Days
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- Platform: Christie’s
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- Price: $69.3 million
Everydays: the First 5000 Days is a mosaic of 5000 images, which has been created by Beeple since 2007. Metakovan bought this art at Christie’s for $69.3 million. How was mentioned before, at the last moment he managed to buy it quicker than Justin Sun. This is the most expensive NFT object at the moment.
Conclusion
The art world is full of middlemen who take a part of the profit in exchange for distribution or marketing. Whether it’s an art auction house or a record label, NFTs provide a unique opportunity to completely change the system and make it more equitable not only for creators but also for consumers and fans. This is why NFTs have gained recognition in such a short period of time.
What do you guys think about the future of NFT? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!
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