‘HOLY F*CK’

Someone Just Paid $69.3 Million for This Digital Artwork, Breaking Auction House’s Record

The artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, is now the third most valuable artist alive.

An anonymous buyer successfully bid $69.3 million dollars on Thursday morning to win a piece of art that can only be viewed on a screen. The artist Beeple created one original digital image per day for 5,000 consecutive days and merged them into the collage titled Everydays—The First 5,000 Days. Some images were based on news events as they were happening. The piece, setting a record for Christie’s Auction House, is the first NFT digital artwork to be sold by a major auction house. NFTs are a blockchain technology that allows for the sale of digital art in its original format. The sale made Beeple, real name Mike Winkelmann, the third most valuable artist alive. Shortly after the sale, Winkelmann tweeted: “holy fuck.”