A collage by American artist Beeple has become the most expensive digital image ever, with the blockchain-verified artwork fetching over $69 million at auction.
The artwork, titled Everydays: The First 5000 Days, was listed by Christie's on February 25 for only $100, becoming the first purely digital artwork backed by a non-fungible token (NFT) to be put under the hammer by a major auction house.
An NFT is a blockchain-based certificate of authenticity that can be assigned to virtual artworks to verify their origin and ownership.
As the artwork shot up to $69,346,250 on the final day, some 22 million people tuned in to follow the final minutes of the auction on Christie's website.
The widespread interest has been buoyed by a recent boom in crypto art, or what Wired is calling an "NFT gold rush" not unlike the Bitcoin bubble. "The beginning of the next chapter in art history"
The advent of NFTs has made it possible for original digital artworks, which can be very easily duplicated, to be sold, collected and traded for profit just like physical art.

"Artists have been using hardware and software to create artwork and distribute it on the internet for the last 20 plus years but there was never a real way to truly own and collect it," said Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann.
"With NFTs that has now changed. I believe we are witnessing the beginning of the next chapter in art history, digital art."
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