The sale of Pak’s digital works through NFTs has reached US$ 16.8 million. The Sotheby’s auction comes a month after the sale of American digital artist Beeple’s “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” for US$ 69.3 million at Christie’s, Sotherby’s rival.
NFTs means non-fungible tokens, which correspond to certificates of authenticity that allow the purchaser of a digital art object (drawing, animation, video, photo, music) to be sure that he is the owner.
Sotheby’s auction distributes unlimited quantities of cubes
For its unique event, Sotheby’s chose an entirely different format than Christie’s. Rather that betting on scarcity, it released unlimited quantities of Pak-created “cubes” via the specialized Nifty Gateway platform.
Around 23,598 of these animations of a spinning parallelepiped found a buyer in the three days of the auction, for a total of US$ 14 million.
The artist’s idea was to question the realms of value and rareness, not limiting the number of works sold. About 3,080 collectors bought at least one cube, according to Sotheby’s.
Auction had sale of exclusive pieces
In addition to these cubes, Pak also sold two unique pieces. One represents a single pixel and was bought for US$ 1.36 million by digital collector Eric Young. The other, a geometric shape that rotates on itself, sold for US$ 1.44 million.
Whoever bought the most cubes will receive an additional unique work entitled “The Cube”, a kind of bonus, different from the other cubes.
The sale of NFs results in more than US$ 10 million in transactions every day on digital platforms such as Nifty Gateway or OpenSea.
According to the specialized website NonFungible.com, digital works worth US$ 2 billion changed owners in this market only by the first quarter of 2021.
NFTs have been seen as the future of the art and collectibles market. By conferring authenticity to a digital artwork, these tools enable a host of new possibilities in the art market.
