Top most expensive NFT: the path to millions through creativity

Introduction

NFT - how many interesting things are hidden in these 3 letters. This technology literally blew up the crypto industry with its appearance, because for the first time people had the opportunity to own and exchange unique digital assets. NFT not only brought the concept of ownership to the digital sphere, but also caused a lot of discussions. For some people collecting pictures seems interesting, for others completely unnecessary, but one fact is impossible to argue with - NFTs can be damn expensive!

In 2024, the most expensive NFTs are represented by a variety of works - animated works, music, digital copies of games, avatars, virtual real estate and even hmmm... a picture of a stick? Yes, yes, and they're invested in by world-renowned companies and hundreds of thousands of private investors. In the past year, NFT's moment-to-moment trading volume grew by 43000%, reaching $26-billion in turnover. At the moment, the turnover has slightly decreased, but still remains at a high level.

Among the NFTs that have gained worldwide popularity are works of art that attract attention not only for their artistic and cultural value, but also for their impressive prices. We have collected a list of the most expensive NFT at the moment, and we are ready to share it with you! Moreover, we will try to break down why exactly these tokens have become so valuable.

It is also worth to realize that NFTs are divided into collections and single copies, but both of them will fight for the title of the most expensive piece! Well, let's get started.

CryptoPunk

Speaking of expensive collections - CryptoPunks is a unique set of 10,000 randomly generated digital characters and is one of the first examples of non-interchangeable tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. This project was created by Matt Hall and John Watkinson of Larva Labs studio in the US. And now it is the most expensive NFT collection in history! As of March 2024, the price for the entire collection reaches an incredible $1.5 billion dollars!

And while CryptoPunks were originally conceived as simple avatars and were available for free, some characters with unique details began to sell for fabulous sums of money. In March 2021, Dylan Field, CEO of Figma, purchased CryptoPunk #7804 for 4,200 ETH, which is currently equivalent to $13 million USD. So much for the Twitter avatar....

Clock

"Clock" is a unique piece of artwork created by Pak and Julian Assange, and is essentially a clock counting down the days the WikiLeaks founder spent in prison.

The purpose of creating this NFT was to raise funds for Assange's legal defense. The token was eventually purchased by AssangeDAO, a group of over 29,000 people who pooled their resources to buy and support Assange. The token was valued at over 15,000 ETH or translated into dollars, 53 million!

This piece shows that even 4 words on a black background can be sold, the important thing is that there is a good idea behind those words.

"Everydays: The First 5000 Days"

Everydays: The First 5000 Days is a digital work by American graphic designer Mike Winkelman, better known as Beeple. This NFT sold for $69.3 million in February 2021 and was purchased by an NFT investor under the pseudonym Metakovan at Christie's auction.

Beeple began his unique project in May 2007, painting a small painting each day. When he reached the 5,000 works mark, the artist created NFT, which became an important moment in the history of digital art. To this day, he continues to create paintings daily and share them with fans through his Instagram account.

It's worth noting that Everydays: The First 5000 Days has garnered a huge media hype that has brought undeniable attention to the NFT industry. Who knows, maybe without Beeple, the industry wouldn't be as popular as it is....

HUMAN ONE

Human One is another example of Beeple's genius. Who else could sell a digital sculpture for $29,000,000?

Human One is a futuristic study depicting the figure of an astronaut walking endlessly forward against a backdrop of ever-changing scenery. The work is displayed on four screens with a total resolution of 16k, which are included in the set. It would seem nothing unusual, but the artist's high-profile name did the trick and in 2023 the work was bought by cryptocurrency billionaire Ryan Zurrer.

Catastrophe Girl

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the most expensive meme in history!

The meme girl who became famous after one very iconic photo named Zoe Roth could not even think that her sly smile on the background of a burning house would bring her 473,000 dollars! It was for this amount of money that this meme was sold. As we can see, there is room for humor in the world of the NFT.

Bored Ape Yacht Club

Bored Ape Yacht Club is a new-school NFT collection of 10,000 unique monkeys. The monkeys come in different rarity levels that depend on what the monkey is doing, what it is wearing, and what background it is standing against. The collection itself was launched on Ethereum. Like many such collections, it took inspiration from older projects like CryptoPunks.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection was created by Yuga Labs. Since its inception, Bored Ape Yacht Club has created several NFT enhancements and an exclusive owners club that only NFT owners are allowed to join. This club is what BAYC is all about, because when you buy a monkey, you get to spend unlimited time on the club's yachts!

This NFT collection captivated the market and regular updates and new products kept it viable. Interest has never waned, which is partly why they are so expensive.

Oh yeah, almost forgot... the price tag for the entire monkey collection tops $500,000,000!

Replicator

Canadian Mika Doubek has created an "evolutionary" NFT "Replicator", selling it for $4.1 million. What makes it special is that the token is in the form of a printer placed in a night office.

This composition includes seven unique generations of artwork. The first one will produce one new image each month for six months. With each subsequent generation, the number of generations decreases. Eventually, the buyer will receive up to 220 more NFTs that can be resold.

Obviously, the most expensive NFTs are not always static images, but more than that. For example, as in this case, a project that lives on its own.

Stay Free

In April 2023, former NSA and CIA intelligence agent, Edward Snowden, released his own NFT through the Foundation platform. This piece includes scanned pages of the text of a U.S. court judgment on the illegal actions of the National Security Agency (NSA). These pages vividly depict a portrait of Snowden himself. Proceeds from the sale of the token go to support the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and the NFT sold for $5,500,000!

A stick for dogs

You will be surprised, but in front of you is the most expensive stick ever sold! Yes, the $1,200 price tag seems ridiculous against previous NFTs, but after all, it's just a stick!

The work is also known as "The Irreplaceable Twig Your Dog Can't Fetch." Its creator says a stick from a sidewalk in the West Village, NYC, has an unbeatable scent that makes it irresistible to dogs. This is a case where the phrase "For every product, there's a buyer" seems more than appropriate.

'The Merge'

And in conclusion - the most grandiose, and the most unusual project in the history of NFT!

"The Merge" became the most expensive NFT ever sold, bringing the author under the nickname Pak a record $91.8 million. You may argue that CryptoPunk is more expensive, but let us remind you that punk is a collection, and The Merge is a whole, albeit made up of many pieces.

The Merge is an ever-changing work made up of many units of so-called "mass".

For two days, units of "mass" were available for sale on the Nifty Gateway platform. At the beginning of trading, the minimum price per unit was $299, and every six hours the price increased by $25. Within 48 hours, crypto investors could purchase an unlimited number of "mass" units. However, after that, the sale was abruptly halted and the number of "mass" units became limited. In total, about 28,000 cryptoinvestors participated in the auction.

After that, the process of tokenization of the purchased units of "mass" in the wallet of each buyer began. This resulted in all 28 thousand investors becoming part of one of the largest NFT projects ever created. Each token turned out to be a different size, and the owner of the largest token became the owner of "Alpha Mass". However, this was only the beginning of the collection's transformation.

According to the artist's idea, all tokens received by users were to be resold on the secondary market, which means that the owner of "Alpha Massa" could change. Eventually, all the units of "mass" of "The Merge" project could merge into one single token, becoming one single work of art. Currently, this process is still not complete, and some of "The Merge" NFT can still be found on the market, although the number of offers for sale has significantly decreased as collectors seek to keep a piece of this grand project to themselves.

Summary from the Cryptology.Key team

Well, here we are at the end of the list of the most expensive NFTs in history! As we can see, this field is filled with very different works, each of which is captivating in its own way. Of course, these are not all the works worth mentioning, but we have tried to bring as much variety as possible for you. You may even have a desire to create your own NFT project. Well, for such people it will be extremely useful to read one more of our articles, dedicated directly to the creation of NFT from conception to full realization: https://cryptology.school/en/blog/iak-stvoriti-nft-i-zarobliati-na-cyomu