"LONDON (Reuters) - In October 2020, Miami-based art collector Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile spent almost $67,000 on a 10-second video artwork that he could have watched for free online. Last week, he sold it for $6.6 million... The video by digital artist Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, was authenticated by blockchain, which serves as a digital signature to certify who owns it and that it is the original work. It’s a new type of digital asset - known as a non-fungible token (NFT) - that has exploded in popularity during the pandemic as enthusiasts and investors scramble to spend enormous sums of money on items that only exist online... Blockchain technology allows the items to be publicly authenticated as one-of-a-kind, unlike traditional online objects which can be endlessly reproduced... OpenSea, a marketplace for NFTs, said it has seen monthly sales volume grow to $86.3 million so far in February..." https://www.reuters.com/article/us-retail-trading-nfts-insight-idUKKCN2AT1HG
An NFT just sold for $69 million through a first-of-its-kind auction at Christie’s -- The price was a new high for an artwork that exists only digitally https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/beeple-first-5000-days/beeple-b-1981-1/112924 "Digital artwork sells for record $69 million at Christie's first NFT auction The first purely digital work sold by an established auction house brings blockchain into the world of fine art... Christie's auction house sold its first purely digital artwork Thursday for a record $69 million, the highest price paid for an NFT, or nonfungible token. The work, “Everydays: The First 5000 Days,” is by Mike Winkelmann, who goes by the name Beeple. The work is a collage of 5,000 drawings, one created and posted every day for the past 13 and a half years... The winning bidder owns the work in the form of a unique string of code, called a nonfungible token. The piece has no physical presence and will be 'delivered directly from Beeple to the buyer, accompanied by a unique NFT encrypted with the artist’s unforgeable signature and uniquely identified on the blockchain,' Christie's said..." https://www.nbcnews.com/business/bu...cord-60-million-christie-s-first-nft-n1260544
"Hackers Stole Thousands of Dollars Worth of NFTs from Collectors... Hackers took over multiple accounts on the digital art marketplace Nifty Gateway this weekend, stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. The company says that users not enabling two-factor authentication is to blame... One claimed that someone accessed his account, first sold all of their NFTs and then bought more than $10,000 worth of NFTs, and then transferred them to another account. Another said their account was hacked to buy $20,000 worth of NFTs and steal another $150,000 worth from their collection... A spokesperson for Nifty confirmed the spate of fraudulent activity, saying that the users who were affected didn't have two-factor authentication turned on..." https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7mw7b/nifty-gateway-hacked-nfts
"World's first digital NFT house sells for $500,000... The new owner paid digital artist Krista Kim 288 Ether -- a cryptocurrency that is equivalent to $514,557.79 -- for the virtual property. In exchange, the buyer will receive 3D files to upload to his or her "Metaverse." Metaverse is a virtual extension of our world, Kim told CNN Tuesday, where plots of virtual land are purchased and traded, and digital homes and business are built..." https://www.cnn.com/style/article/digital-nft-mars-house-scli-intl/index.html Some people have too much money.
"Edward Snowden's NFT Self-Portrait Sells for $5.4 Million in Charity Auction... Titled “Stay Free”, it’s a digital self-portrait made out of pages from a U.S. Court of Appeals decision that ruled the National Security Agency’s widespread surveillance of phone records violated the law, a practice Snowden brought to light in 2013 by leaking classified NSA secrets to journalists..." https://foundation.app/Snowden/stay-free-edward-snowden-2021-24437 https://gizmodo.com/edward-snowdens-nft-self-portrait-sells-for-5-4-millio-1846703456
"This New App Lets You Turn Anything and Everything Into an NFT if you have an iPhone, now you can turn practically anything into a unique, one-of-a-kind digital token. A new app is out that, by its own admission, lets you turn 'every idea' into an NFT. It’s called S!NG, and it is the first and only free iOS app designed to let you create as many NFTs as you want. Where previously you would have had to pay a crypto exchange to get your asset minted, S!NG does all the minting for you, free of charge... Founded by ex-Apple executive Geoff Osler, the company has sought to make its product really easy to use, too: it has a point-and-click function—so it’s basically as simple as taking a picture or making a recording on your phone to create them... https://gizmodo.com/this-new-app-lets-you-turn-anything-and-everything-into-1846743689 The SING app: https://savetosing.com/stories/
"Digital Horses Are the Talk of the Crypto World On Zed Run, a digital horse racing platform, several [horse races] take place every hour, seven days a week. Owners pay modest entry fees — usually between $2 and $15 — to run their steeds against others for prize money. The horses in these online races are NFTs, or “nonfungible tokens,” meaning they exist only as digital assets... People — most of them crypto enthusiasts — are rushing to snap up the digital horses...One player sold a stable full of digital racehorses for $252,000. Another got $125,000 for a single racehorse. So far, more than 11,000 digital horses have been sold on the platform... ...Each digital horse...can breed, has a bloodline, has a life of its own. It races, it has genes it passes on, and it lives on an algorithm so no two horses are the same. (...owners can breed their NFT horses in Zed Run’s “stud farm.”)... The races take place around the clock and are streamed..." https://dnyuz.com/2021/05/01/digital-horses-are-the-talk-of-the-crypto-world/ Website: https://zed.run/
Next up buy a NFT wife/husband. All the way to death or divorce. The NFT wife/husband might end owning half your assets though.
Dunno about NFT wives, but last month Elon Musk's girlfriend made $5.8 Million selling her NFT art at auction. https://art.art/blog/how-is-elon-musk-girlfriend-grimes-making-millions-selling-nft-art
Reality Check: While NFT "horses" have sold for $125,000, Medina Spirit, the winner of today's Kentucky Derby was purchased by his current owner for $35,000.
Isn't NFT for those that have to much money and don't know what to do with that money? I guess I'm to old to understand the concept of all this digital crap and don't see any worth in it. Is it such a big deal to own an NFT?
"NFT of soon-to-be-deleted 'Charlie bit my finger' YouTube video sells for over $760,000 The memorable and meme-able YouTube video "Charlie bit my finger," one of the most viewed videos in the website's history [900+ million views], was auctioned off as a non-fungible token, or NFT, on Sunday for a stunning $760,999 and is set to be deleted from YouTube..." https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/22/us/charlie-bit-my-finger-nft-trnd/index.html
Can an NFT Artist Sell Virtually the Same Work More Than Once? June 21, 2021 https://slate.com/technology/2021/06/nft-legal-questions-ali-sabet-quarantine-magic-in-motion.html
Tim Berners-Lee defends auctioning NFT of web's original source code as bids reach $2.2 million Does it go against the web's free and open principles? June 24, 2021 https://www.techspot.com/news/90183-tim-berners-lee-defends-auctioning-nft-web-original.html
"An NFT of the World Wide Web sells for $5.4 million. The source code to an early implementation of the web created by Tim Berners-Lee was sold as an NFT by Sotheby’s. Bidders had a week to name their highest price for the source code in an auction called “This Changed Everything”..." https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/06/30/business/economy-stock-market-news#world-wide-web-nft
'Side-eyeing Chloe' Clem to sell iconic meme as NFT https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58659667
