Digital art moves to the big league after collage sells for $69m

Start getting used to the phrase NFT (non-fungible token)

Mike Winkelmann's Everydays: The First 5000 Days sold for a record $69 million.

The next big thing or a flash in the virtual pan? Digital art announced its arrival into the major league at Christie's in New York last week when an NFT (non-fungible token) was sold for $69.3 million. 

An NFT is a unique file that lives on a blockchain and can be owned by an individual. Beeple's Everydays: The First 5000 Days is an NFT. 

A crypto known by the pseudonym Metakovan paid $69 million (plus fees) for the pleasure of owning the collage of images that Beeple has been posting on the internet every day since 2007. Meantime anyone with a taste for a breastfeeding Donald Trump or a cartoon monster can download it for free. 

Until October the most Mike Winkelmann, the digital artist known as Beeple, had ever sold a print for was $100. A staggering 22 million people tuned in to watch the final minutes of the auction. 

No less than 33 active bidders from 11 countries competed (91% of them were new to Christie's). Beeple is now the third most expensive living artist in the world. The artwork was minted exclusively making Christie’s the first major auction house to offer a purely digital work with a unique NFT and to accept cryptocurrency, It is all a bit crypto confusing.