Beeple: crypto artist gilded by NFT

“Everydays: T he First 5000 Days”, a digital art, sold for nearly 70 million dollars at Christie's, which caused a shock outside crypto world last week.

This painting is from the artist Beeple. Thirteen years ago, he insisted on publishing a painting every day, which included this performance art. By November 2020, the creation has lasted for 5,000 days. Beeple synthesized the previous works published every day by computer, and created "Everydays:The First 5000 Days".

In the second half of 2020, driven by DeFi, the NFT market in the blockchain field has attracted the attention of some digital art creators and collectors. Beeple put the works in the series "Everydays" on the NFT trading platform Nifty Gateway for sale, and many works sold at high prices.

There are more and more high-priced encrypted artworks in more than half a year, which also makes the NFT market hotter and hotter, creating more than 200 million dollars in monthly transactions. Some investors are worried about risks, and some people judge that "most NFT assets bought this year will return to zero. 」

• 14 years of creation condensed into NFT to set an auction record

Everydays:The First 5000 Days makes many people ridicule themselves for their lack of artistic accomplishment and artistic cells.

On the evening of March 11th, this work was sold at Christie's, an American art auction house, for US$ 69.34 million, equivalent to more than RMB 400 million.

Therefore, the creator Beeple became famous. He was an American artist, whose original name was Mike Winkelmann. Since May 2007, he insisted on creating a painting every day and uploading it to the Internet. Therefore, the performance art with his work was named "Everydays".

After 5000 days of creation, Beeple synthesized the past works into "Everydays:The First 5000 Days" by computer. 14 years' creation is concentrated in this work, which has become one of the reasons why some people think this work is valuable.

《Everydays：The First 5000 Days》

Beeple thinks "Versailles" that it is not very difficult. He said that sometimes it takes only one minute to create a work, which also includes the time to upload it to social media. "I put a sphere on it is also a work, and I think everyone can spare one minute every day to do what they want. 」

Beeple's digital works of art can be traced back to 2005. On January 7th of that year, he released his first work Uncle Jim. Today, this work has also been put on Christie's auction. He said, "If I had known that this painting would eventually be auctioned at Christie's, I would have spent more time painting it better. 」

Interestingly, Beeple is a "half-way monk" artist. He has not received special art training. He was born in computer science. However, he prefers web design to writing code and computer programs.

Beeple once described in a public interview that he started to design web pages when he was a student. At that time, he had a camera and would take some photos.

This hobby later took him to the road of digital art creation. He recalled that when doing web design, he would always read designer works from different parts of the world, and constantly learn new mapping applications to enrich his creative inspiration and skills. In the process of study and practice, Beeple gradually fell in love with computer painting.

After becoming a designer, Beeple earned income by taking some private jobs, and gradually accumulated popularity, so that he also worked as a designer for famous singers and film and television dramas. He was involved in the post-design of the Hollywood film Spider-Man.

A reporter photographed Beeple's studio, which was extremely simple, with only a desk, a computer and two small stereos about 7 inches high. The series of works "Everydays" were created one by one in such an environment.

During the interview, he moved the camera and told the visitors that he had a big house, but he didn't plan to hang any artworks. "We couldn't understand it either, mainly because I was too lazy. Beeple reveals the casual style of artists.

• The monthly transaction volume of NFT assets reached US$ 210 million

"Everydays:The First 5000 Days" has been auctioned on Christie's since February 25th this year, with the starting price of $100, and March 11th is the final auction deadline. It is reported that Sun Yuchen, founder of Tron (Wave Field), also participated in the auction, with the highest bid of 50 million US dollars. From the final result, some people like this work better than Sun Yuchen.

After this work set a record auction price, Noah Davis, a contemporary art expert, said that Christie's had never auctioned such a large and important new media art, and Beeple's works brought rare opportunities for collectors, and digital artists could use blockchain technology to empower their creations.

Beeple also thought in an interview that NFT may indeed be another asset class. For the younger generation, they may not want to invest in stocks, but want to invest their money in digital works of art, which can highlight their culture and ways of interacting with the world.

Beeple is becoming one of the hottest artists in the field of digital art, and this is not the first time he has put his works on the NFT market for auction.

In the second half of last year, NFT became popular among crypto art lovers. Beeple noticed this market, and put some of his "Everydays" series works on the Nifty Gateway platform for auction.

Nifty Gateway is a special platform for auctioning NFT artworks. On December 14th, 2020, another work of Beeple, THE COMPLETE MF COLLECTION, was sold on this platform for US$ 777,777. At that time, this work had already created the highest auction price for NFT works.

Soon after, another NFT work Crossroads by Beeple was resold for 6.6 million US dollars, breaking the previous record of 1.5 million US dollars for a single NFT work.

With the exposure of encrypted works of art due to the high auction price, people outside crypto world are also watching NFT, a new way of artistic creation and trade of works. In addition to works of art, the NBA business team also began to use the NFT method in blockchain technology to distribute limited peripherals.

Investors in crypto world are worried about the bubble of NFT. "Buying NFT loses faster than speculating in coins. Some people predict, "NFT assets that will be fired this year will be returned to zero next year. 」

According to NFT Market Overview data, in the past month, a total of 137,000 works were sold, with a transaction volume of US$ 210 million, which is far less than the daily transaction volume of Bitcoin. It can be seen that the NFT market is still small, and the price market has brought the effect of watching wealth. It is expanding the public's cognition through visible ways such as artworks and limited commodities.