Christies has sold an artwork that only exists on a blockchain - the digital ledger that stores cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin - for just shy of $70m.
'Everydays - The First 5000 Days', by American artist Mike Winkelmann - known as Beeple - sold at auction for $69,346,250 earlier today.
The sale of the collage of 5,000 individual images, which were made one-per-day over more than 13 years, has put Beeple in the top three most valuable living artists, Christie’s said in a Tweet.
And it appears even the artist himself was a little surprised. On hearing the news, Beeple expressed his shock in rather NSFW way on Twitter.
Digital artworks stored on blockchain are called NFTs – or non-fungible tokens. Earlier this month musical artist Grimes, the partner of Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk, sold $6m worth of digital art in NFT form.
However, that has been dwarfed by today's sale.
In a tweet, Christies said: "The First 5000 Days', the 1st purely digital NFT based artwork offered by a major auction house has sold for $69,346,250, positioning him among the top three most valuable living artists. Major Thanks to Beeple. More details to be released shortly."
