10 most expensive primary market NFTs sold on Nifty Gateway — ingenuity or hype and frenzy?
Who are those lucky ones who managed to sell artworks while the prices were skyrocketing — artists, Instagram celebs, plucky underdogs? And what is the story behind their commercial success?
There are more questions than answers about the recent NFT rise, and it’s hard to say what to expect from the crypto art world in the near future.
It’s still unclear if there is a secret formula that can get you to the top of the NFT pantheon and place you among blue-chip artists from the “traditional” art world.
That’s because, unlike traditional art, crypto art doesn’t have a centuries-old legacy of expertise and taste to guide the market. And still, impressive NFT prices suggest their high value for the crypto art enthusiasts. Or do they?
Will we see these works being re-sold with 10–20X premiums, or are they going to stay like monuments of the golden age of NFTs? Only time will tell.
Let’s look at the top 10 most expensive NFT works sold on the primary market — that is, works that have been sold during their first auction, with token being issued on the blockchain immediately after.
Statistics are provided only for pieces that were issued as a single token.
To clarify: artists can issue multiple copies (tokens) of the same same art piece. For the sake of simplicity, we omitted such cases from this article.
We also provided some stats on the author’s current audience size. No need to say that celebrity drops are backed by 100–1000 times larger audience than the ones from “regular” artists.
This article is based on the data that has been collected from Nifty Gateway and Ethereum Network using #BidCanvas.
1. Ocean Front, Beeple
Ocean Front is one of the works released into NFT space by Beeple — an artist who has recently become famous after his work hit a $69M record on Christie’s auction.
This particular NFT artwork (stored on ETH network, consuming TWh of electricity) is produced to fight a climate change, which sounds like a mixed metaphor. Beeple announced the winner on his Twitter, noting his commitment to donate the proceeds to charity — OpenEarth Foundation. Hopefully, $6M is enough to combat climate change and compensate for all the NFTs minted.
Posted 2 years ago on Artstation, this work got 484 likes (huge success for the platform) and 8000+ views. It’s easy to notice a disproportion of attention vs. concentration of money, a phenomenon which is also present in the world of brick and mortar art. In the meatspace, it’s hard to find a “popular” art sale, except for trumpeted and record-breaking auctions for Salvator Mundi, Pikasso’s Nude, or The Scream.
It also shows how modest was the attention of crypto art enthusiasts and media to Beeple in 2019.
Ocean Front was purchased by Tron’s Justin Sun after a series of active bidding. Sun, who was outbid in the auction for Beeple’s “The First 5,000 Days NFT” didn’t miss the chance this time and grabbed a lot of media attention.
$6,000,000.00
Paid by JustinSun
Link
IG: beeple_crap (2.1M)
2. The Pixel, Pak
Pak, an artist with history in the crypto world, showed a Malevich-style NFT manifest — the work consists only of a single-pixel sold for more than $1M. Pak is a pseudonym behind the creator or a group of artists who prefer(s) leaving nearly no trace and stay opaque, despite being presented at Sotheby’s x Nifty Gateway auction.
The Pixel is the only static artwork among the top-10, i.e. it doesn’t include animation or music.
Another project of Pak — Archillect, which was created as an AI to find and share stimulating content. Check out Archillect’s Instagram or Telegram to discover what she’s capable of.
Auction winner, Eric Young, holds a big collection of nifties, including famous names like Beeple, 3LAU, Alotta Money, Trevor Jones.
$1,355,555.00
Paid by etyoung
Link
IG: pakwashere (3K)
3. Iconic Crypto Queen, Paris Hilton
In this work, the NFT FOMO of a celebrity matched with the purchasing power of the new crypto generation and led to a somewhat expected outcome.
The attempt to release “at least something” in the crypto space might be remembered in the future as a sign of the current NFT frenzy.
“Virtual blondes have more fun, right? Introducing the #IconicCryptoQueen… I’m releasing my first #NFT drop with @BlakeKathryn
Hard to judge the art characteristics of this work, but it’s a nice representation of the personality behind it.
$1,111,211.00
Paid by @mondoir
Link
IG: Paris Hilton (14.5M)& BlakeKathryn (89K)
4. hairy, Steve Aoki
Hairy head created by Antoni Tudisco and pushed to the masses and crypto buyers by American DJ and producer Steve Aoki, the headliner of major music festivals all over the world.
With 9M Instagram followers and 17M monthly listeners on Spotify, you might be able to sell your artwork as well!
It’s not the only NFT collaboration for Antoni Tudisco. Here’s another collaboration with Iranian rapper @tohi. Does it look like NFT factory for celebs?
“I don’t know how to create art, but everybody is doing it, can you please design something for me…”
@mondoir was an underbidder, and the final price is paid by @johnl, who at the moment of writing has just 2 works in his collection on Nifty Gateway. Another work in the collection is by SSXLAU, a collaboration between artist Slime Sunday & electronic music producer 3LAU.
The only question here — what is the next thing after the first collaboration between a musician and a 3D artist? It’s interesting if we’ll see more NFT collaborations like that in the future, especially when the NFT hype will fade off and media attention will switch to Dogecoin or whatever else.
Try to imagine the collaboration between Beethoven and Hokusai a few centuries ago — NFT definitely opens new opportunities when you have a story to tell.
IG: Steve Aoki (8.9M) & Antoni Tudisco (407K)
5. The Complete MF Collection, Beeple
The fun part about this piece is that it was sold elsewhere, and then the new owner transferred this work to Nifty Gateway.
And still, it showed up among primary sales on Nifty Gateway. Information about the work on the marketplace shows the highest bid of $2,050 on the secondary market.
$777,777.77
Paid by Anonymous buyer
Link
IG: beeple_crap (2.1M)
6. Sophia Instantiation, Andrea Bonaceto
Andrea Bonaceto aspired to create an experiment by collaborating with Sophia. What’s interesting here is that Sophia is a robot. It’s powered by SingularityNET, an A.I. network affiliated with Hanson Robotics, the Hong Kong-based firm behind the he robot. Speaking during the live stream, Sophia said “I am so happy that my works are so valued and appreciated.”
While it’s not the first AI-created art piece, this work can be honored as the first NFT produced by a humanoid robot (that also has 132k followers on Twitter). The work was purchased by the collector under the nickname 888, who participated in many other auctions in the top 10.
IG: Andrea Bonaceto (7K) & Twitter: Sophia the AI robot (132K)
7. The EverLasting Beautiful by FEWOCiOUS
The phenomenon of an 18-year-old artist appearing on this list has to be a combination of pioneering the space, ingenuity & luck.
i just sold a 1/1 art piece for $25,000 in the beginning of the year i didn’t sell more than $100..
i’m only 17 years old…it’s so crazy to think about what’s ahead!! WOW. https://instagram.com/p/CHRT5qSndXT
The artist came to the NFT Party on time and we’re curious to see what lies ahead for him!
IG: fewocious (20.2K)
8. The Source, The Weeknd
Designed by LA-based design team Strangeloop Studios and featuring the sounds by The Weeknd. While it is possible to sell a piece of CG for half a million dollars if you have 30M followers, only time will tell if it’s possible to re-sell it at a higher price.
At the time of writing the buyer owns only this work, judging by their Nifty Gateway profile.
The Strangeloop Studios, having experience working with the artists, including The Weeknd, Kendrick Lamar and Flying Lotus is trying to build their way into the NFT space, but so far their NFT sales performance is humble in comparison to results of collaborating with celebrities.
$490,000.00
Paid by rare5330
Link
IG: The Weeknd (30.6M) & Strangeloop Studios (4K)
9. Death of the Old, Grimes
Canadian musician and producer made the headlines after making $6M in sales on Nifty Gateway and thus encouraged everyone to jump on the NFT space shuttle. The collection is a collaboration between Grimes and her creative partner Mac Boucher.
Work was purchased by aito, who bid $50 higher than 888. It’s still the only work in his collection on Nifty Gateway.
According to the artist’s description on Nifty Gateway, “a percentage of the proceeds from the WarNymph NFT sales will be donated to Carbon 180, an NGO dedicated to reducing carbon emissions”.
But perhaps the best way to lower down carbon emissions is not releasing NFTs at all?
10. Boardwalk, Mad Dog Jones
Michah Dowbak’s (also known as Mad Dog Jones) success in the crypto world is by no means a coincidence.
With a noticeable cyberpunk style of his works, Mad Dog is the perfect example of a creator who would not be able to achieve noticeable commercial success without NFT. “I started my style for Instagram,” says Jones during his exhibition in Tokyo in September 2019.
The attention to his works surged after the success of the Replicator on Phillips auction, and also made him the most expensive living Canadian artist (RIP Matthew Wong).
The work has been bought by NFT collector 888 (who also has unique editions of Fvckrender and Victor Mosquera in their collection)
IG: Mad Dog Jones (278K)
I will try to update the article and add more pieces when new record sales will appear.
