Cult Digital Artist Beeple Raises Record $3.5 Million in NFT Auction

Mike Winkelmann, the legendary digital artist best known as Beeple, has raised a record-breaking $3.5 million for his latest NFT collection called “Everydays.” 

Winkelmann auctioned off his “Everydays” 2020 collection via Nifty Gateway this weekend. It’s the second NFT auction he’s run this year, following another release in late October.

The sale was highly-anticipated — Winkelmann is one of the most celebrated artists in the digital art world. 

The auction opened on Friday and included 21 single edition pieces. Three pieces were sold as open editions in a five-minute auction. There was also a series of 100 pieces priced at $1.  

The most valuable pieces, though, were the one-of-a-kind items. One piece, titled “tom hanks beating the shit out of coronavirus,” fetched $107,000. Another called “Mario 2020” went for $115,000. 

The final sale was for the entire collection. One bidder going by the name illestrater placed a $777,777.77 bid in the final second of the auction to secure the collection.

Nifty Gateway confirmed the close of the auction via Twitter last night.

AND THAT'S ALL SHE WROTE!!! The auction ends on a ridiculous last second bid of $777,777. This brings total PRIMARY MARKET sales from @beeple's collection to over $3,500,000+

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE LEGEND BEEPLE and thank you to the entire community!!! https://t.co/pp4fm0j6iJ

— Nifty Gateway (@niftygateway) December 13, 2020

Winkelmann also celebrated on Twitter as the auction closed. 

Beeple is one of the world’s most-renowned digital artists. His art has been featured in campaigns by Louis Vuitton, Apple, and Nike, and he’s also worked with superstars like Justin Bieber and Katy Perry. 

Winkelmann has been working on his “Everydays” project for over 13 years.

“These pictures are all done from start to finish every day,” his website explains. “The purpose of this project is to help me get better at different things. By posting the results online, I’m ‘less’ likely to throw down a big pile of ass-shit even though most of the time I still do because I suck ass.”

This weekend’s auction was for the 2020 collection. 

Recently, he’s begun selling his work as NFTs — non-fungible tokens that live on the blockchain. NFTs are unique to their owner, and they’re often sold as one-of-a-kind pieces. They run on Ethereum. 

The $3.5 million price tag makes “Everydays” the most valuable collection in NFT history.

Several other crypto artworks have fetched hefty sums in the past. In 2018, a piece called Forever Rose became the most valuable digital art item in the world, selling for $1 million at an auction. Trevor Jones, an NFT artist based in Scotland, sold his popular pieces “Picasso’s Bull” and “Genesis” for $55,555.55 and $111,377, respectively, earlier this year. 

A number of crypto enthusiasts have described this weekend’s “Everydays” drop as a historic event for the digital art space.