March 11, 2021
Beeple NFT sells for $69 million at Christie's
Christie's closed the sale of Beeple's "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" on March 11, 2021 for $69.3 million — the highest-priced NFTNon-fungible token — a blockchain record proving ownership of a unique digital asset. by a living artist at the time.
What it was for
The ERC-721 token bundled 5,000 daily digital images into one on-chain collectible bought with ether. Mainstream art houses, celebrities, and startups rushed into NFTs — minting PFP projects, music rights, and gaming assets until the 2022 crash cooled speculation.
People
- Beeple (Mike Winkelmann) — creator
Why it's here
Beeple's Christie's sale put NFTs on front pages worldwide.
Why it mattered
It proved digital art could command eight-figure prices with blockchainA distributed ledger where records are chained cryptographically — designed for tamper-resistant shared state. provenance.
What it solved
Digital creators lacked scarcity and resale royalties in a copy-paste internet.
Media
ImageMike WinkelmannWinkelmann, Mike., CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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