Thirteen years of creating digital art on a daily basis paid off for Mike “Beeple” Winkelmann as his artworks sold for a combined 3.55 million dollars. The artist sold 23 of his creations through different auction methods, while combining a digital copy of the artwork with a physical creation. The idea was to capture interest from both digital and physical art collectors.
Winkelmann used crypto art platform Nifty Gateway for his auctions. Twenty unique artworks were sold though and auction, while he also auctioned a bundle of all those creations. In addition there were three artworks with an unlimited amount of copies that sold for five minutes only, and there was one artwork with one hundred copies sold for one dollar.
The result was a crypto art drop that was remarkable in many ways. Not only did Beeple combine digital art on the blockchain with a physical collector’s item, he’s also considered a ‘mainstream artist’. His sociale media reach goes far beyond the regular landscape of the crypto art space. On top of that the auction generated an incredible amount of revenue, adding to the media interest in the auction and the crypto art space in general.
Beeple money rundown
The Complete MF Collection sold for more than 777 thousand dollars, while the average price of a single edition artwork was well above 100 thousand dollars. For five minutes people could pay 969 dollars for a copy of one of his artworks, which made Beeple 582 thousand dollars.
In addition Beeple sold a compilation of his 2020 Everydays creations for one dollars. One hundred copies of these sold out within seconds. However, Beeple earns a commission over every secondary sale, and the biggest resale so far has been 3950 dollars.
What is crypto art?
Crypto art or digital art has been around for many years. However, without the existence of blockchain technology it was impossible to verify authenticity and rarity. Now digital art is connected to a token on the Ethereum blockchain. That way buyers can see how many copies of a certain artwork there are, and whether the product is original.
The concept of seeing a digital image as art, is one thing. However, for many people it will be a challenge to consider digital images as valuable. Consider this: The Mona Lisa is worth many millions of dollars. If I would paint the Mona Lisa in an exact copy, it would be worth only 50 dollars. Because we all know where the original version is. Being able to verify the authenticity and rarity of a piece of art is crucial.
Some people don’t care about the Mona Lisa. It’s just a painting. They are happy to download an image for Google Images, print it on canvas and hang it in their living room. Others want the real deal. The same rules go up for digital crypto art.
