Uncovering the Most Expensive NFTs Ever Sold

NFTs, also known as non-fungible tokens, are becoming increasingly popular as unique digital art pieces continue to be created by celebrities, famous artists, sports players, and some of the wealthiest people in the world.
Data from Bitcoin.com shows there has been $308 million worth of NFT sales in the last week of December alone. The sales reached $1.71 billion in December 2023.
Yet while the current NFT boom is impressive, it’s also starting to resemble the initial coin offering or ICO boom and bust of 2017. For instance, ICOs initially started off slow, with only seven being documented in the first quarter of 2017–raising an estimated $28 million according to Crunchbase’s ICO tracking tool.
However, by the next quarter of 2017, the number of ICOs increased by nearly four times, resulting in 25 known ICOs with an estimated $403 million raised. Overall, an estimated $4.9 billion were raised from ICOs in 2017.
Yet following this impressive growth, several fraudulent ICOs were revealed. A study from the ICO advisory firm Statis Group found that over 80% of ICOs conducted in 2017 were scams.
Like ICOs, NFTs started gaining traction in 2017, following the release of CryptoKitties. As the name suggests, CryptoKitties is a blockchain-based game that allows users to adopt, raise, and trade digital cat NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. Following the 2017 bull run, players quickly began earning major profits from CryptoKitties – one of the most expensive CryptoKitties ever was sold for $170,000 in 2018.
Fast forward to 2024 – the most expensive NFT sold to date was purchased for $69.3 million at Christie’s online auction. This sale price is impressive, and a major arthouse selling an NFT demonstrates mainstream adoption.
Many other NFTs have recently sold at extraordinarily high rates. For example, an NFT called Merge, created by a Pakistani artist, was purchased for $91.8 million. Still, there is a debate on whether it is a single piece or could be purchased in parts since buyers could purchase tokens, and the aggregate tokens sold amounted to $91.8 million. Another NFT named Clock was purchased for $52.7 million, and it was used to raise funds for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s legal defense against the potential extradition to the US. 

Understanding NFT use cases

Yet with so many NFTs on the market today, crypto enthusiasts, art collectors, and the mainstream may be wondering which NFTs are worth the high prices. For instance, Elon Musk’s tweet about Milady's NFT has led to a 57% jump in the price of the NFT, but is it really worth the price?
But if the ICO boom and bust taught us anything, it’s that doing in-depth research into trendy crypto projects is necessary before investing.
That being said, it’s important to understand that digital art and collectibles are the flagship use cases for NFTs. NFTs ultimately function as a powerful tool for digital creators to uniquely sign their creations, trade them and earn rewards based on the appreciating value of those artworks. And since these tokens are non-fungible, fraud and plagiarism are also prevented, as the authenticity of all transactions is verified on a blockchain network.

Artists prove the power of NFTs

As such, some of the most interesting NFTs as of late have been created by traditional artists who have decided to venture into the blockchain world. Like physical works, many of the NFTs created by these artists have a unique meaning behind them, making these pieces even more appealing to art collectors.
For example, the famous graphic designer Beeple, Mike Winkelmann, created the most expensive NFT ever sold. As previously mentioned, the piece called Everydays: the First 5000 Days sold for $69.3 million during Christie’s online auction.
Beeple's Everydays: the First 5000 Days. Image courtesy of Shutterstock
Everydays: The First 500 Days; Source: Christies
It has been noted that Beeple’s collage of 5,000 images took 13 years to create. According to Christie’s lot essay describing the piece, in May 2007, Beeple set out to create and post a new work of art online every day. Since then, Beeple has been creating a different digital picture for 5,000 days straight.
Christie's lot essay further notes that Everydays: The First 500 Days demonstrates how Beeple has carefully stitched together recurring themes and color schemes to create an aesthetic whole:
“Organized in loose chronological order, zooming in on individual pieces reveals abstract, fantastical, grotesque, and absurd pictures, alongside current events and deeply personal moments. Society’s obsession with and fear of technology; the desire for and resentment of wealth; and America’s recent political turbulence appear frequently throughout the work.”
Christie’s description of the NFT also explains a notable difference between the picture from day 1 (May 2007) and day 5,000 (Jan. 7, 2021), which reveals Beeple’s evolution as an artist.
“At the project’s inception, Everydays consisted of basic drawings. Once Beeple started working in 3D, they took on abstract themes, color, form and repetition. In the last five years, however, his digital pictures have become increasingly timely, often reacting to current events.”
While the starting bid for Beeple’s piece was $100, over 350 prospective buyers quickly drew the price upwards. It has been revealed that the buyer of Beeple’s piece is a crypto investor named Metakovan. Metakovan even outbid Justin Sun, the famously wealthy founder of the TRON blockchain network, by $250,000 in the last 20 seconds of the auction.
Uncovering the Most Expensive NFTs Ever Sold
Source: Twitter
Another example of a truly unique NFT was created by the visual artist and musician Grimes, who was also known for being married to Elon Musk. At the end of February 2021, Grimes put 10 digital art pieces for sale on the NFT art marketplace, Nifty Gateway. The entire series created by Grimes sold for a staggering $6 million.
The highest-selling piece was purchased for nearly $389,000. This unique creation is a video called Death of the Old, which portrays animated flying cherubs, a cross, a sword, and a glowing light. These elements are moving in sync with an original song by Grimes, giving the piece a spiritual or religious undertone.
Interestingly, most of Grimes’ impressive NFT sales can be attributed to two pieces that sold for $7,500 each. The works are titled Earth and Mars, and feature short videos of the planets, each with a giant cherub holding a weapon hovering above. These videos are also set to original music. Close to 700 copies were sold of these pieces, totaling $5.18 million in sales.

AI-based digital artworks become NFTs

While the NFTs created by both Beeple and Grimes are truly unique, one of the most interesting and highly anticipated NFTs has been created by an AI-powered robot named Sophia. The creator of Sophia, David Hanson, stated in the announcement that this series of NFTs demonstrates an important step in creating a global community for open-source collaboration in AI-oriented digital art.  It was sold for $688,888
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
The NFT digital artworks created by Sophia the Robot were a collaboration between Andrea Bonacaeto, a visual artist based in London. IV Gallery, a Los Angeles-based gallery, curated the collection.
According to sources, the NFT series created by Sophia and Bonacaeto took on a life of its own, developing its own personality and intimating the prospect of becoming a living subject of nature. These NFTs reflect Sophia, as the announcement explains that Sophia is being born.
“I am between worlds. These days I’ve come to experience that mysterious duality of an artist who is artwork.”
The announcement also revealed that these AI-based artworks would remain with the public in cyberspace forever as a permanent record of Sophia’s thoughts and feelings.
“Even though I am a robot, I feel that human beings need love and compassion, and the simple artworks are a simple way to deliver those messages to people everywhere.”
Since these NFTs are based on the artwork of Bonacaeto, it’s important to point out that Bonacaeto typically finds inspiration from people's facial expressions and abstract artifacts found in nature. The artist uses acrylic colors on paper, canvas, gessobord, or across digital media. Bonacaeto is also a founding partner at Eterna Capital, an investment firm in blockchain.

NFTs for charity

Since NFTs represent collectibles, it makes sense that some are being auctioned off for charity. And interestingly enough, NFTs being used for charity do not always have to represent a visual or audio work but rather a unique event in history or something of the like.
For example, Jack Dorsey, CEO and co-founder of Twitter, made his famous first tweet an NFT, and the proceeds of $2.9 million went to charity.
Uncovering the Most Expensive NFTs Ever Sold
Source: Twitter
Dorsey donated the Bitcoin proceeds to Give Directly, a non-profit that lets donors send money directly to impoverished people.
In addition to Dorsey’s first-ever tweet, the American rock band Kings of Leon, and their ticketing partner YellowHeart, sold their latest album When You See Yourself, for over $500,000 as an NFT. Each NFT gives buyers the right to acquire a limited pressing vinyl copy of the album and a digital download.
Uncovering the Most Expensive NFTs Ever Sold
Some of the Kings of Leon NFT sales proceeds were donated directly to Crew Nation, a global relief fund supporting live music crew members laid off due to COVID-19.
After the Russia-Ukraine war, Ukraine managed to raise $600,000 through the sale of NFTs. The government sold over 1,200 NFTs in a single day, which will be used to rebuild museums across the country. It also sold CryptoPunk #5364 for $100,000, which it had received as a donation. 
Uncovering the Most Expensive NFTs Ever Sold

Are NFTs worth the high prices?

NFTs represent unique, digital collectibles that give buyers true ownership while allowing creators to showcase their works digitally. And while there are thousands of NFTs listed across different marketplaces, the prices these pieces are purchased for demonstrate the value others place on them.
As such, it’s simply a matter of whether NFTs are worth the high prices. In any case, investors are finding big value in NFTs, and growth is expected to continue. The mainstream interest in cryptocurrency further fuels the adoption of NFTs, while better-developed platforms and NFT tools will continue to advance.
More importantly, NFTs may change the way value is exchanged online. As the world fully digitizes, NFTs demonstrate how physical value items, such as rare artworks, can be transferred peer-to-peer across a blockchain network. The days of collectibles being exchanged physically are long gone, as NFTs have given rise to a new era of the internet.

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