NFT: Why Are They Worth Millions
The crypto community's readiness to capitalize on these assets has driven their prices over-the-top, with the most popular NFTs selling for hundreds of millions of dollars.
NFT stands for non-fungible token. Non-fungible, means that it cannot be replaced or exchanged for something of identical value. NFT is a technology that proves who the owner of a digital object is. This digital object could be a song, a picture, a video, a tweet, or even a piece of digital land in an online game or virtual world. A fungible is a coin, such as a one-pound coin, as this can be swapped for another pound coin.
Maintaining something is trickier for digital object, as they can be easily cliched. For example, if you find a picture online that you like, you can right-click it, save it in your computer, and use it as a background if you want. This is where NFTs come in.
If an NFT of any digital object is purchased from the seller who made it, a history of your purchase is kept in the blockchain. Blockchain is a massive database upheld by many people in their systems, and it is nearly impossible to modify. All the records of your purchases are present in the database forever. Everybody can see your transaction – and it proves that you are the only owner of the digital object.
Metaverse is another reason NFTs might be so expensive. In metaverse, people would be represented by avatars and own digital space, like the digital land sold in the other side virtual world.
Top 5 Expensive NFT’s Sold
- The Merge ($91.8 million)
The Merge is a dynamic digital art curated by a digital artist called Pak. It currently sits on top of the list of the most expensive NFT sold to date. It was sold on Dec. 6, 2021, for $91.8 million on the Nifty Gateway. It became a single artwork that was combined with a collection of ‘masses’ that users could purchase. These pieces could be stored to make a bigger mass and sell it on the secondary market. By the end of the sale, a total of $91.8 million was spent, making it the most expensive NFT sold to date.
2. The First 5000 Days ($69 million)
Another artwork was created by the digital artist, Michael Winkelmann, also known as Beeple, before The Merge was sold in December 2021. Everydays: The First 5000 Days held the record for the most expensive NFT sold for 10 straight months. The artwork was auctioned at Christie’s with an initial bid of roughly $100 made by traditional customers. It is an important artwork in the digital art community as it paved the way for mainstream audiences to explore non-fungible assets.
3. The Clock ($53 million)
The Clock NFT is a part of a larger NFT collection known as Censored, which features over 29,000 tokenized messages by buyers of the project. It acts as a clock and counts down the number of days that Assange, WikiLeaks founder, has been confined. It is the third most expensive NFT in the list. It was created to raise funds toward Assange’s defence and it was auctioned for $52.7 million in February of 2022 to AssangeDAO, a decentralized organization (DAO) with over 10.000 Assange supporters, established to crowdfund the sale.
4. Human One ($29 million)
Another artwork by Beeple, sold for almost $29 million, is a life-generative, dynamic figurine that has an astronaut wandering across changing environments and was bought by Ryan Zurrer. Beeple described the piece of art as ‘the first portrait of a human born in the metaverse.
5. CryptoPunk #5822 ($24 million)
The most expensive CryptoPunk character sold for $23.7m on February 12, 2022, was bought by the CEO of Chain, Deepak Thapliyal. The CryptoPunk NFT series has been the most expensive since they were launched, with a trading volume of over $9 billion.
