The auction took place on the Nifty Gateway, an NFT art platform wholly owned by Gemini, the crypto exchange started by the Winklevoss brothers.
Canadian singer and Elon Musk‘s girlfriend Claire Elise Boucher (known under the pseudonym Grimes) made almost $6 million selling digital artworks at the auction yesterday. In under 20 minutes, Grimes managed to sell unique and editioned items of her digital WarNymph art collection as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Grimes produced her digital WarNymph art collection in collaboration with her brother Mac Boucher. The collection consisted of 10 pieces. Some of them were the only copies of a kind, others were available as large editions. In particular, two works, short video pieces”Earth” and “Mars” that feature their titular planet, sold about 300 copies each at a fixed price of $7,500. Buyers could purchase as many copies of the works as they wanted. Once the sale closed, the number of purchases would be the final amount of editions on the market.
The highest-selling piece was a one-of-a-kind video “Death of the Old”. It sold for $389,000 after four buyers engaged in a bidding war.
In total, Grimes sold nearly 700 copies of her digital art collection. The auction took place on the Nifty Gateway — an NFT art platform wholly owned by Gemini, the crypto exchange started by the Winklevoss brothers. Notably, Grimes is not the only artist to team up with Nifty Gateway and create a collection of the limited edition. For example, the digital artist Beeple sold $3.5 million worth of art through Nifty Gateway last year. The platform also featured artists like Cey Adams, Kenny Scharf, Jon Burgerman, and Trevor Jones.
What Is Special about NFTs?
NFTs are cryptographic tokens that can be used to symbolize assets that are not very common. They represent in-game assets like items, cards, or pieces of art. NFTs allow buyers to purchase ownership of a digital good, usually an image, animation, or video, in the form of a unique digital token living on a blockchain. They cannot be directly exchanged with one another because of their unique nature. Instead, they can be put on sale on special marketplaces for a cryptocurrency of choice.
NFTs not only allow buyers to support artists but also serve as a way for artists to monetize their work. With NFT collections now fetching enormous sums, there is undeniably ample growing space for digital artists to utilize online tools and create provenance ledgers. The NFT industry has grown from a market cap of $30 million in 2017 to over $300 million by 2020. This marks a massive 1000% increase in just 3 years. Over the upcoming years, several traditional brands will likely begin to invest and operate in NFTs to expand their reach and maximize profits.
Daria is an economic student interested in the development of modern technologies. She is eager to know as much as possible about cryptos as she believes they can change our view on finance and the world in general.
