London The London auction house Christie’s stated that it auctioned a digital collage of an American author with the stage name Beeple for almost $ 70 million (1.53 billion crowns). According to the AP agency, this is an unprecedented sale of a digital work of art, which raised more money than many of the physical creations of many well-known authors. The creator used a special digital certificate to “sign” his work.
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Everydays: The First 5,000 Days sold for $ 69.4 million in an online auction, ranking the author among the top three paid living artists, Christie’s said on Twitter.
He also said that this is the first time that a large auction house has offered for sale a purely digital work with a so-called unmistakable token as a guarantee of its originality. A novelty was also the method of payment, which was made through a cryptocurrency.
“Artists have been using hardware and software to create and distribute artwork on the Internet for the past 20 years or more, but there has never been a real way to actually own and collect it,” said Beeple, real name Mike Winkelmann, in a statement issued by Christie’s. “With unmistakable tokens, that has now changed. I believe we are witnessing the beginning of another chapter in the history of art, digital art. “
Non-interchangeable tokens are electronic identifiers that, with the help of blockchain technology, confirm that a digital collector’s item is authentic. Thus, the tokens that have flooded the collecting world in recent years have apparently solved the central problem of digital collections: how to exercise the right to something that can be easily and countless times copied.
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Christie’s also stated that the work was sold at the highest price in any online auction to date, setting a record with respect to the highest bid made online. The auction, which was watched on the auction house’s website by 22 million people, was attended by collectors from 11 countries.
The mania caused by the unmistakable tokens did not only grip the auction houses, warns the AP. The rock band Kings of Leon is offering a version of their latest album with a digital certificate with a few extra songs added. The Blockchain company bought the work of British artist Banksy, burned it and then sold it in digital form with an unmistakable token. The American National Basketball Association (NBA) sells token-equipped virtual player cards.
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