A digital work of crypto art goes up for auction at Christie’s for the first time and the batter’s hammer stops at over $ 60 million: a record figure that makes its author the third most valued living artist in the world after Jeff Koons and David Hockney. The still anonymous buyer then ended up paying $ 69.3 million including auction fees for The Last 5000 Days, a monumental JPG file of Beeple, (real name Mike Winkelmann), a 39-year-old illustrator from Wisconsin who has built millions of followers on social media thanks to commercial projects for pop stars like Justin Bieber and brands like Louis Vuitton and Nike.
Digital art
The work in question is entirely digital: a collage of 5,000 images created and posted from 2007 to 2021 that incorporates surreal scenes and drawings by politicians like Donald Trump and Mao Tse Tung alongside cartoon characters from Mickey Mouse to Pokémon.
The sale marks the height of the growing frenzy for Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs), a form of digital work registered on the blockchain with a token that verifies the rightful owner and authenticity of the creation. For Christie’s it was the first auction of a work without a physical component and the first time in its 255-year history that bets have been accepted in the crypto currency Ethereum. Nft is the phenomenon of the moment on the internet and in the real world as well: like NFT Jack Dorsey, co-founder and current CEO of Twitter, has just sold his first tweet for over 2.5 million dollars.
What are Nft
But what are NFTs? How do they work? Why are they worth so much money? Meanwhile, the name: the acronym Nft stands for Non-fungible token, that is “tokens”, goods, unique and non-replaceable things (“non-fungible”, in English). The token is not the file itself (i.e. Dorsey’s tweet or Beeple’s work, or a video or image), but a sort of certificate that guarantees its uniqueness, certifies who created it and establishes who owns it. To be able to do this, the token must obviously be unchangeable (which is why it is defined as unique and not replaceable) and to be able to be it is protected by an encoding similar to that of the blockchains used for cryptocurrencies. In short, it is difficult to hack. So if you’ve spent millions buying a video of singer Grimes (which happened at the beginning of March) you can be pretty sure no one is going to “steal” it and say it’s hers instead of yours.
This clarification is important because if the tokens are unique and irreplaceable, the works associated with them are not at all: Dorsey’s tweet bought for millions of dollars is the same tweet from 15 years ago that anyone can still read on Twitter, share, comment. , also print and always carry with you. The same can be said for any video sold as NFT that circulates on the Internet, for any meme, song or jingle: they belong to those who buy them, but in some way they are also from anyone who can read them, watch them, listen to them online.
Unique works, but infinitely replicable
The point is right here, and it is one of the basic principles of computer science: they are files, and like any file they can be copied, reproduced, shared by one person with another and, thanks to the Internet, with the whole world. In short: who bought The first 5000 Days, did not spend nearly $ 70 million on the image itself, but on the accompanying token, which contains the artist’s signature, the name of the rightful owner and also guarantees the authenticity of the creation. In short, it’s a bit like buying a very expensive autograph.
Here comes the second question, the one which is perhaps more difficult to answer: why? Why spend over half a million dollars for a gif of a kitten surrounded by a rainbow, pay 20 thousand for a few seconds of a video of a famous youtuber or even 3600 for the icon of a ghost dressed by Gucci? Here the answer is not there. Better: it exists, but it is subjective and depends on the definition of the word “art”. Are only the Mona Lisa by Da Vinci and La Pietà by Michelangelo art or are the banana stuck to the wall and the golden toilet bowl by Maurizio Cattelan also art? And if these last two objects are too (especially the banana, which can be any banana), then why can’t a meme that has been circulating on the Internet for 10 years be?
Why can’t any digital asset be? Why can’t this same article be, too? The reason here is quickly explained: starting from the assumption that buying an NFT is a bit like buying an autograph, then we understand that in the case of crypto-art it is not so much the work that drives up the price, but the author. And since the author of this article is neither Jack Dorsey nor Mike Winkelmann (let alone Grimes), even though this article can certainly be put up for sale online, it certainly won’t generate the same profit.
Another work by Beeple
Doubts about the bubble and attempts not to make it a bubble
Dreams of glory aside, it remains to be seen if Nft glory is true: are they yet another Internet “bubble” or are they something that is destined to last and take hold even more? Judging by the forces in the field, the latter is more likely, at least in the medium term: that a prestigious auction house like Christie’s, with over 250 years of history behind it, wanted to be involved is certainly a sign in this direction.
What’s more: there is also a great economic boost (the collector who bought another Winkelmann work for about 70 thousand dollars resold it a few months later at 100 times as much) and there is also an attempt to bring this art digital in the real world, also to make it understood by the general public. Winkelmann also anticipated the intention to collaborate with the buyer of The first 5000 Days to display the work somewhere, perhaps on Times Square billboards or on the facade of a modern art museum.
With the advantage, compared to Cattelan’s banana, that no one will be able to remove it from the wall and eat it.