My Favourite Artist Just Made $3.5m in 48 Hours in a Blockchain Digital Art Auction

In an online auction of blockchain backed digital art, Mike Winkelmann AKA Beeple, has earnt $3,554,112 in 48 hours. And he deserves every single dollar.

I bloody love this guy.

So why is this so exciting?

$3.5 million dollars!? I mean for one, that’s a lot of money. But really, the ownership of digital items up to this point has never really been foolproof. You can purchase digital items on apps and in games but they cease to exist outside of their platforms. A digital piece of art can be copied and distributed pretty damn easily – with no background or information available on the ‘owner’.

Blockchain technology has changed the digital art market. Through blockchain you can buy, sell and trade digital items, but importantly – you can prove ownership and provenance.

This is where this weekends events are unique. Mike Winkelmann put up the collection on NiftyGateway in three different ways:

• 100 of his entire digital collection of 2020 for $1. (Totalling $100)
• 3 pieces of art in an open-round – However many can sell in 5 minutes at $969 per piece. (Totalling $582,369)
• 21 exclusive one-offs sold in an auction. (With a whopping total of $2,971,643.77)

Whoa. Who the heck is this guy?

I first found Beeple in 2010 when I was searching online for freely downloadable VJ loops (I used to run the visuals and lighting at local nightclub events). This awesome artist, Mike Winkelmann would release his loops under a creative commons license meaning you could use and alter them to your heart’s content.

He even gave out his original files freely so that kids like me could edit, learn and create.

Since then he’s worked with heavy hitters like Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, Eminem and deadmau5 with their concert visuals, Flying Lotus and heck, even Louis Vuitton.

His art is colourful, dystopian, sometimes crude, sometimes political and oftentimes batshit insane.

A piece of Art. Every. Single. Day.

It was here, in 2010, I discovered that he had been making a piece of art every single day for 3 entire years. This blew my mind. 3 whole years? Without missing a single day?!

And he’s still going. These ‘Everydays’ are now in their 14th year – At the day of posting this that’s 4976 pieces of art. (Here’s a link to the delightful video he posted at the 10-year mark.)

“Doing something start to finish each day not only helps you get over the fear of starting a project, but also the fear of finishing one,” he said in and interview with The Atlantic.

For years I had a code on my phone that would automatically make my phone background his most recent Instagram post. Each day I would wake up to a new pop of inspiration. One day I woke up in shock to a picture of a new born baby – he had become a father.

Fast forward to now, I realise I’ve been consuming this guys art literally everyday for over a decade. Every phone, computer, screen background is Beeple, and has been since 2010.

In the lead up to this weekend, Mike spoke about the digital art medium gaining more respect through events like this.

“I look at Banksy with graffiti or KAWS with vinyl collectables and we take for granted now that they sell paintings for $10-15 million dollars, or whatever. But 20 years ago, that was not the case. Graffiti? That’s vandalism. Vinyl collectables? Oh, those are just toys. It wasn’t looked at as a real artform and so I honestly feel like this really could be the start of people looking at digital art as something that is much more of a respected, “real” artform. I dunno, we’ll see,”

Mike said in his IGTV.

Mike you’re incredible, congratulations on this weekend. This is such a super exciting thing for the world of digital art.

You deserve a break man, but I also look forward to tomorrow.

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UPDATE: Beeple sells NFT art for $69 million in Christie’s auction on 11th March 2021. Hooboy!

“The First 5000 Days is the first purely digital NFT-based artwork sold at a major auction house, the most expensive NFT ever sold, and the third most valuable artwork sold by a living artist.” – Forbes