Christie's sells Beeple's Everydays for $69.3 million and forces traditional art institutions to acknowledge NFTs

MAR 11 2021 · 12:00

Video: Watch Beeple React to the Historic $69.3m Sale of His Digital Work at Christie's Date: 2021-03-11 · Type: ethereum · Tags: nft, beeple, christies, art-market, metakovan, singapore, 2021 Thirteen years of daily images, one transaction, the auction house's first digital-only lot Mike Winkelmann — Beeple — had made one digital artwork per day for thirteen years. The 5,000-image mosaic 'Everydays: The First 5000 Days' was offered by Christie's in their first NFT-only auction, running online from February 25 to March 11 2021. The buyer, operating under the pseudonym 'MetaKovan,' was later identified as Vignesh Sundaresan, a Singapore-based crypto entrepreneur and founder of Metapurse. Hammer price: $60.25 million. With buyer's premium: $69,346,250. Beeple's previous highest sale had been $66,666. The sale's cultural impact was disproportionate even to its price. Christie's — founded 1766 — had accepted the NFT as a legitimate medium for the art market's most storied sales channel. Every major newspaper ran the story. The word 'NFT' entered ordinary language within days. The transaction settled the debate, at least temporarily, over whether blockchain-based digital art could command prices comparable to blue-chip physical works. That settlement lasted until roughly late 2022, when the NFT market's price indices had fallen 80–90% from their peaks. The sale's legitimacy was complicated by Metapurse's Beeple holdings — Sundaresan had purchased substantial Beeple works before the Christie's auction, and Metapurse had issued the b.20 token partly backed by those holdings. Whether the Christie's sale was a pure market signal or partly a promotional event for the b.20 structure was a question critics raised and supporters deflected. The answer is probably 'both,' which is not unusual in the art market. What was unusual was the transparency: the blockchain showed every bidder, every counter-bid, and the final transaction in real time. Facts • Auction: February 25 – March 11 2021, Christie's online (first NFT-only Christie's lot) • Hammer price: $60.25M; total with buyer's premium: $69,346,250 • Buyer: 'MetaKovan' / Vignesh Sundaresan, Metapurse, Singapore • Beeple's previous highest sale: ~$66,666 (October 2020) • Auction conducted in ETH bids; settled in USD via Christie's standard rails • NFT market volume peaked late 2021; indices fell 80–90% by late 2022 Primary Documents • Christie's lot listing: Beeple 'Everydays: The First 5000 Days' — https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-6516051