Digital artist Beeple auctions NFT art collection for $3.5M

Non-fungible token marketplace Nifty Gateway hosted an auction that saw a single NFT artwork sell for $777,777 after a last-second bid doubled the price.

On Dec. 14, Nifty tweeted that the “savage” bid of $777,777 had been entered with only a single second left to go in the auction. The artwork was the last to be sold from “The Complete MF Collection” that was auctioned that day, with the token featuring each of the collection’s 20 individual digital artworks in a single NFT.

The artworks were inspired by technology, nature, and Star Wars, and created by pseudonymous artist “Beeple.”

NFT investors Tim Kang and “Metakovan” had entered into a fierce bidding war for the piece, steadily pushing the price up from $200,000 to $380,000 before Kang entered the last-second blowout bid.

In total, the 20 artworks were auctioned for more than $3.5 million, prompting the artist to tweet a video of his friends dousing him in champagne in celebration.

pic.twitter.com/3XHGfFcYmj

— beeple (@beeple) December 14, 2020

The winning bidder praised Beeple for the collection, emphasizing the artist’s “precise attention to detail across the physical and digital spectrum”:

“His consistent work ethic, creative understanding & divine timing landmarked history for art & crypto and I’m just blessed to participate. My winning bid was not for him and myself only [—] I hope we were able to take [a] stand for the future of creativity, open collaboration, and self-sovereignty through digital signature.”

The auction smashed the previous record set for the most-valuable artwork auctioned on Nifty Gateway by 1,300%, with Trevor Jones’ NFT “Picasso’s Bull” sold to Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile of the Museum of Crypto Art for $55,555.55 in August.

NFTs are also beginning to creep out of the digital domain and into the mainstream, with an interactive NFT created by former-pro baseball player turned token artist, Micah Johnson, being exhibited on an electronic billboard in Los Angeles this month.