[imagesource: Andrew J. Whitaker/Post and Courier]

There are things I will never understand.

I’ve wrapped my head around Bitcoin (sort of), I understand some of the vagaries of cryptocurrencies and the blockchain (I repeat, some), and I can accept that there are people in this world who continue to watch Love Island South Africa.

The last of those is perhaps the most confusing of all.

Anyway, just when you think you’re beginning to master some of the tech terms out there, along come ‘nonfungible tokens’, one of which just sold for $69 million (around R1,03 billion).

The winning bid for the 319-gigabyte JPEG was entered after a two-week online auction, and the identity of the bidder has not been released.

I’m handing over to NPR:

A JPG file made by a digital artist known as Beeple [pictured above] sold Thursday for almost $70 million by Christie’s auction house. That price set a new record for the increasingly popular market for digital-only art — and makes Beeple’s piece the third most-expensive work sold by a living artist at auction, according to a statement by Christie’s.

The artwork, a digital collage called “Everydays — The First Five Thousand Days,” is what’s known as an NFT, or nonfungible token.

Riiiiight.

The sale of the digital artwork is recorded through blockchain technology, and cannot be replicated.

For more on what an NFT is, we go to Digiday:

[NFTs] act as a non-duplicable digital certificate of ownership for any assigned digital asset. Basically, it is a smart contract that is put together using bits of open source code, which anyone can find from platforms like GitHub, and used to secure that digital item. Once the code is written, it is then minted, or permanently published, into a token (most commonly a token called an ERC 721) on a blockchain, like Ethereum.

Some popular forms of NFTs include jpegs, gifs, videos and, of course, tweets. But really any digital asset that the creator wants to make unique can become an NFT, like articles or event tickets.

I want a really dumbed down explanation. Help, Variety:

In simplified terms, an NFT provides a method of authentication for piece of digital content, based on blockchain technology. It certifies and tracks the ownership of a unique digital asset.

Alright, that’s the best we can do.

Without further ado, here’s ‘Everydays — The First Five Thousand Days’ in all its glory:

Worth every damn penny.

The best way to view this digital artwork is via the Christie’s auction site, where you can zoom in closely on any of those patchworks.

I did the hard yards on the bottom left corner, and found this:

Back to Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, and his sheer joy after that sale was concluded:

“Artists have been using hardware and software to create artwork and distribute it on the internet for the last 20 plus years but there was never a real way to truly own and collect it. I believe we are witnessing the beginning of the next chapter in art history, digital art.”

The South Carolina graphic designer made “Everydays” by posting a new work of art online every day for 5000 days, a project he began in 2007. He then stitched those images together to complete the piece.

Here’s the final of those 5 000 works of art, from January 8, 2021:

DAY 5000 #everydays pic.twitter.com/VBW1HX0Dno

— beeple (@beeple) January 8, 2021

Interesting.

The best part of this whole thing is the video Christie’s shared, of Beeple and his family watching that figure soar through the millions.

Start from the 40-second mark:

Yes, you can certainly afford a trip to Disney World. Take the whole family, you have the cash.

Whilst another work by Beeple, ‘Crossroad’, did sell for $6,6 million last month, his works of art were still going for as little as $100 last year.

I’m happy for him.

I don’t really understand it, but more power to the Beeple.

[sources:npr&digiday&variety]