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Auction house Sotheby’s is putting up 104 CryptoPunk non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for sale on 23 February at its New York City auction set.

The auction, titled “Punk It!”, will be held following a live exhibition of the iconic NFTs, which is set to begin on 18 February and will conclude on 23 February.

In a statement issued on 8 February, Sotheby’s said that the collection will be sold as a single lot and is expected to fetch between USD 20 to 30 million. According to Sotheby’s “the sale marks the highest valued estimate for an NFT or digital art ever offered at auction”.

Sotheby’s CryptoPunk NFT auction

Bidders can use cryptocurrency

The 104 CryptoPunks were acquired by anonymous collector ‘0x650d’. Like other CryptoPunks, the 104 in the lot have varied attributes — mohawk haircuts, sunglasses, hats, and other accessories.

According to Sotheby’s the particular group up for auction also “showcases the diversity embedded in the original algorithm”.

The auction house said that the entire lot of 104 CryptoPunks come from a single wallet, one that represents over 1 percent of the entire CryptoPunks collection. This makes the lot unique as one of the largest collections held by a single wallet.

Bidders will be able to use cryptocurrency. Sotheby’s is extending the facility for the winning bidder to make payment in Ether, Bitcoin, and USD Coin besides fiat currencies.

“CryptoPunks are the original PFP series that created the template for other NFT projects that have followed, and which helped propel NFTs to the global stage as one of the most recognisable visual styles that have become synonymous with the digital art movement,” Michael Bouhanna, Sotheby’s Co-Head of Digital Art, said in the statement.

Panel discussion

Sotheby’s will be holding a live panel discussion before the auction. It will focus on the history of NFTs and CryptoPunks, keeping in view their immense popularity among celebrities such as Jay-Z and Jason Derulo who adopted them as their profile pictures.

Speakers who would appear on the panel are yet to be announced.

CryptoPunks get the Sotheby’s treatment. Our next #SothebysMetaverse sale ‘Punk It! 104 CryptoPunks. 1 Lot.’ will be a landmark LIVE Evening Auction on February 23. A truly historic sale for an undeniably historic NFT project. pic.twitter.com/LAu6j8Atu3

— Sotheby’s (@Sothebys) February 8, 2022

The exhibition will be held at Sotheby’s New York galleries. A virtual exhibit will also be held at Sotheby’s HQ in Decentraland.

The highest price a CryptoPunk has ever fetched at a Sotheby’s auction is USD 11.75 million, when CryptoPunk #7523 went under the gavel in June 2021.

What are CryptoPunks?

CryptoPunks are pixelated portraits of punk rock cartoonish faces created by Larva Labs in 2017. The entire collection has 10,000 NFTs, each different from the other due to their unique mix of attributes.

Both as a collection and as individual tokens, CryptoPunks are among the most famous NFTs of all time.

(Main and Featured images: Sotheby’s)

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As NFTs continue to take the world by storm, these 10 most expensive NFT artworks ever sold.

NFTs (non-fungible tokens) have become the "it" thing of the moment ever since artist Beeple sold a sold a piece for a whopping US$69.3 million in 2021. NFT artworks share some attributes with physical artworks in terms of creativity and aesthetics. However, the key difference is that being NFTs, they are simply a code — digital art that exists only on the internet.

Certain works go beyond a simple piece of visual art, such as REPLICATOR, by Canadian artist Mad Dog Jones, a piece that replicates itself and produces a new NFT every 28 days.

According to its seller — auction house Phillips — it is an “NFT experience comprising seven unique generations of artworks". The work sold for US$4.1 million in April 2021, making Mad Dog Jones the most expensive living Canadian artist.

And since, the prices of NFT sales of artworks have skyrocketed. A quick look at the sales figures reveals that all the highest-priced NFT artworks were bought in 2021, even though some were created around four years ago.

It seems that the market for expensive NFT art has just started to flourish, leaving room to expect much more in the coming years.

The 10 most expensive NFT artworks ever sold

The Merge: US$91.8 million

The Merge is a unique digital artwork in the world of NFTs because, instead of being a single piece of work, The Merge is what can be called fragmented art.

Created by the renowned artist who goes by the pseudonym Pak, The Merge was sold on NFT marketplace Nifty Gateway between 2 and 4 December 2021. It fetched a record sum of US$91.8 million — the most expensive NFT ever sold that as an artwork.

Instead of a single owner, The Merge is held by 28,983 collectors. This is because the artwork was sold in units known as ‘mass’. Thus, the collectors together bought a total of 266,445 masses by the time the sale ended on 4 December.

Each ‘mass’ cost US$575 when the sale began, and the price of the tokens went up by US$25 every six hours.   

Everydays – The First 5000 Days: US$69.3 million

Acclaimed digital artist Mike Winklemann, better known as Beeple, created a record when his single piece artwork titled Everydays – The First 5000 Days sold for US$69.3 million at a Christie’s auction on 11 March 2021. Therefore, it is the most expensive NFT sale recorded for an artwork by Beeple.

The artwork is so named because it is a collage of 5,000 individual images made one per day over more than thirteen years from 2007 to 2020.

It was the first purely digital NFT-based artwork offered by a major auction house. Following the sale, Christie’s said Beeple now ranked among the “top three most valuable living artists.”

Its buyer, MetaKovan, later revealed as crypto investor Vignesh Sundaresan, called it “a steal” while talking to The New York Times.

The costliest single-piece NFT artwork, Everydays – The First 5000 Days, is credited by many as the sale that started the NFT boom through 2021. It also catapulted Beeple and his works into an even bigger league, with collaborations with Nike and Katy Perry.

Human One: US$28.9 million

On 9 November 2021, Beeple had his second-most successful NFT artwork sale. At an auction hosted by Christie’s, the American artist’s creation, Human One, went under the hammer for US$28.9 million. The buyer was Swiss entrepreneur and venture capitalist Ryan Zurrer.

Human One is remarkably different from Everydays: The First 5,000 Days — the former is a hybrid digital and physical artwork, whereas the latter does not physically exist.

Beeple created a futuristic human-like sculpture, which was seven feet tall and appears to be perpetually walking across ever-changing landscapes. The 3D movement is presented through four video screens of 16K resolution, which come together to form a 4x4-feet box.

According to Christie’s, the kinetic video sculpture came with dual media servers and had a polished aluminium metal, mahogany wood frame.

Speaking to Christie’s head of digital sales Noah Davis, Beeple said, “We had a bunch of TVs on rollers in our studio and were rolling them around in different shapes and patterns. Then I was like: ‘We should roll them into a little box unit.’…We immediately realised that this configuration of screens was a powerful canvas — anything we put on it looked awesome.”

Human One was sold with a corresponding dynamic NFT, which was minted on 28 October 2021. The unique feature of the work is that Beeple will continue to have remote access and creative control over it. This means that the artist can change the creative elements, such as the landscape, as long as he is alive.

“The Physical Element is designed to continuously display the Artwork. Beeple will maintain remote access to the Physical Element to ensure proper functionality and/or enhance the displayed Artwork. Beeple warrants that the Physical Element does not contain any features designed to impair the continuous display of the Artwork,” Christie’s said in its description of Human One.

CryptoPunk #7523: US$11.75 million

CryptoPunks have long been one of the most sought-after tokens in the NFT space. One of the earliest NFT projects, CryptoPunks, was launched in 2017. A creation of Larva Labs, the acclaimed studio founded by Canadian developers Matt Hall and John Watkinson.

CryptoPunks is essentially a collection of 10,000 tokens called ‘punks’ by their creators and collectors. Often considered the OG NFT collection, each is a collectible character — much like a trading card. No two ‘punks’ are the same, which makes each CryptoPunk an exclusive item.

On 10 June 2021, CryptoPunk #7523 was sold for US$11.75 million at a Sotheby’s auction, making it the most expensive ‘punk’ of all the collections. #7523 is one of the nine in the Alien series of the collection.

The bluish-green-skinned character wears a knitted cap and earrings, too. It is also the only Alien character and one of the 175 in the collection with a medical mask.

According to Reuters, Sotheby’s revealed the token was bought by Israeli entrepreneur Shalom Meckenzie — the largest shareholder of digital sports company DraftKings.

CryptoPunk #3100: US$7.58 million

On the same day Beeple created history, a crypto art, known as CryptoPunk #3100, was sold for US$7.58 million. Like #7523, the #3100 is also one of the nine Alien ‘punks’. It has bluish-green skin and just one other feature — a white-and-blue headband. Only 406 out of 10,000 in the collection wear a headband and only 333 have just one attribute.

At the time of its sale, CryptoPunk #3100 was the highest-priced ‘punk’, beating the record set by #7804 a day before by just a whisker.

It has been in the news for some time because of its listed price. According to Larva Labs, it is currently up for sale for US$114.54. If realised, it would become the highest-priced NFT in history.

CryptoPunk #7804: US$7.57 million

The ‘punk’, which looks more like Sherlock Holmes with shades, is another of the nine Aliens among the 10,000. On 10 March 2021, it made news for fetching US$7.57 million for its seller, Figma CEO Dylan Field, who had dubbed it his “digital Mona Lisa.”

The pipe-smoking character wears small shades and is one of the 254 who wears their cap forward. Unlike #3100, the #7804 is not up for sale.

Right-click and Save As guy: US$7.09 million

Xcopy is the pseudonym of a London-based crypto artist whose works are one of the most in-demand across marketplaces. According to The Crypto Times, Xcopy, who is known for his dystopian- and death-themed works, has sold over 1,900 artworks.

The Right-click and Save As guy is the name of an NFT artwork created by the artist as a joke on those who think that NFTs are worthless because they can simply be right-clicked and downloaded.

The artwork shows a character wearing large shades and a hoodie. Its red-tinted lips are constantly moving, as if mumbling something.

Right-click and Save As guy was sold on the SuperRare marketplace for US$7.08 million in early December 2021. It was bought by the user known online as ‘Cozomo de Medici’, who has a vast storehouse of NFT digital collectibles.

Some speculate that ‘Cozomo de Medici’ is the alias of rapper Snoop Dogg. Even though the American celebrity admitted that he is the man behind the identity, it has not been independently verified.

Ringers #109: US$6.9 million

Ringers #109 is an artwork by Art Blocks, which is a project that creates loops around pegs using an algorithm. The artwork can be a 3D image, an interactive feature, or a static picture.

Ringers #109 is a static image of a series of loops around multiple pegs. The dominant colour is black on a white background. The balanced wrap orientation, the loop and the white background are three very rare attributes in Art Blocks’ creations. The rarest is, however, a red peg — the colour is present in just 0.3 percent of its tokens.

The NFT was sold for US$6.9 million in October 2021 — a record price for Art Blocks. It is not clear who bought the NFT but according to The Crypto Times, the seller was AKIRA, co-founder of NarcissusGLRY, who revealed the sale on Twitter.

According to AKIRA, the NFT was bought by them for US$550 in March 2021.

A Coin for the Ferryman: US$6.01 million

One of the earliest works by Xcopy, A Coin for the Ferryman was sold on SuperRare for US$6.01 million on 4 November 2021.

The artwork is a GIF, showing constantly changing expressions on a person’s face. It was minted by Xcopy on 20 April 2018.

At the time, it was bought by a user named @0xclipse for US$139. In 2019, it was transferred to a user named @electricmeat who eventually sold it on SuperRare to the current owner @jpeggy.

Ocean Front: US$6 million

Beeple’s Ocean Front is much more than one of the most expensive NFT artworks. It is a telling reminder to the world of the impending disaster that unchecked climate change is set to bring.

The artwork is part of Beeple’s “Everydays” series. It shows a series of trailers and containers stacked upon each other on a platform in the middle of an ocean. At the top of the dystopian man-made objects is a tree, underneath which mushrooms can be seen growing.

The artwork was bought on 23 March 2021 following intense bidding on Nifty Gateway by Justin Sun, the founder and CEO of the Tron Foundation, for US$6 million. Beeple himself announced the winner and the winning bid on Twitter.

Following the transaction, Sun tweeted that proceeds from the sale to Open Earth Foundation — an NGO working to tackle climate change.

(Main image: Pak / @muratpak / Twitter; (Featured image: SuperRare)

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The hype around NFTs took off in 2021 and doesn't show any signs of slowing in 2022. Here are some of the noteworthy celebrities that have dipped their hand into the NFT pool.

You can't escape it: Every day, someone is talking about NFTs, the Metaverse or why cryptocurrency is the future of money. And since the release of Bored Ape Yacht Club, CryptoPunks and other recognisable NFTs, the digital art world has grown tremendously.

Whether they're your co-worker, a family member or a global superstar like Leo Messi, it seems like everyone, everywhere is jumping onto the trend. Even K-pop supergroup BTS is rumoured to be launching their own. In Hong Kong and around the globe, here are some of the biggest celebrities who have climbed aboard the NFT hype train.

Celebrities who have entered the NFT world

Shawn Yue Man-lok

Hong Kong actor and singer Shawn Yue Man-lok entered into the NFT world through a collaboration with Christie’s. The former model has been building his personal collection and showcased them in an online auction in September 2021. The collection included highly sought-after NFT pieces from Bored Ape Yacht Club, Cryptopunks and Meebits. On the big day, Yue celebrated his 40th birthday as well as raised revenue to be donated to Make-a-Wish Hong Kong foundation.

Justin Bieber

If, like millions of others, you follow Justin Bieber on Instagram, you’ll probably have seen his collection of NFTs, especially of inBetweeners; Biebs has shown his love for the variety of colourful bear illustrations. The recently minted collection of 10,777 images created by artist Gianpiero, inBetweeners has also seen lots of love from other celebrities, including Tom Holland and Snoop Dogg. 

Steph Curry

Not only have NFTs caught the attention of artists, they have also attracted numerous athletes. Golden State Warriors star Steph Curry personally released a collection of 2,974 NFTs, each priced at US$333. Curry’s collection features digital replicas of his shoe-line, Genesis Curry Flows, showcasing the exact pairs he wore for his incredible on-court feats. With the collection already sold out, the virtual sneakers promise his fans to use and show them off across multiple metaverses and virtual games.

Gunna

Atlanta rapper Gunna is the latest in the rap scene to purchase his own unique BAYC NFT. Revealing his purchase and tattoo process on Instagram, Gunna posted a video of how he did it through the cryptocurrency MoonPay, for US$300,000. His love for the digital art piece goes deep enough that he named the green-sunglassed Bored Ape “Butta” — he even got it tattooed on his calf.

Lionel Messi

Metaverse? More like Messiverse. The man who many call “the best footballer in the word”, Lionel Messi launched his NFT collection in August 2021. The collection featured three digital art pieces: "Man from the Future", "Worth the Weight" and "The King Piece", all created by artist BossLogic and depicting historic moments from the footballer's career. His star fame was on display as the NFTs’ sales spiked to US $3.4 million on the first day of the launch.

Jimmy Fallon

Celebrity and Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon has been part of the NFT clan for a while. Fallon took to Twitter to share the latest addition to his collection, a simple Bored Ape, dressed in what appears to be a sailor’s outfit. The NFT was purchased for just over US$225,000.

Snoop Dogg

Snoop Dogg stepped into the NFT space with an introduction of his collection called “A Journey with the Dogg”. The collection is expected to include a path down the rapper’s experiences and greatest memories — think quotes and moments captured in pictures. It also features an original track titled “NFT”, and a Dogecoin-inspired cryptocurrency, “Snoop Dogge Coins”. The artist expressed his passion for the launch, saying “I’ve seen the game change over the years from analog to digital, and I’m always happier when the technology lets the fans connect with the artists. NFTs are an amazing innovation, and it is an honor to do my first drop with Crypto.com/NFT.”

Hero image courtesy of Sebastien Muylaert/Getty Images, featured image courtesy of @leomessi

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