Digital Painting Debuts at Christie's Auction, Soars 10,000 Times in Just 10 Minutes

Starting at $100, Final Sale Reaches $13 Million
Christie’s: "The Art World’s Entry into the NFT Market Will Accelerate"

An image of one of the digital paintings from the collection "Everydays: The First 5000 Days," which was sold for 13 million dollars at Christie's auction house in the United States. [Image source=Christie's official website]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Suhwan] A digital painting that started auctioning at $100 at Christie's auction house in the United States was finally sold at a price more than 10,000 times higher. This has also drawn attention to the 'NFT' (Non-Fungible Token) technology used in the painting.

According to Yahoo Finance on the 10th (local time), the digital painting collection "Everydays: The First 5000 Days," auctioned at Christie's, one of the leading auction houses in the U.S., was sold for a final price of $13 million (14.8 billion KRW), more than 10,000 times the starting price of $100. This marked a huge success in Christie's first digital painting auction.

A Christie's official said, "Since digital paintings had never been auctioned before, it was difficult to determine an appraisal price," adding, "So we set the starting price at $100, but within 10 minutes of the auction starting, the price exceeded $1 million, leaving all the staff astonished." He continued, "What’s even more surprising is that except for three bidders, all others were first-time bidders at Christie's," adding, "We believe this digital painting auction has created a new customer base."

Due to the success of this digital painting auction, the NFT technology applied here is also gaining attention. NFT is a digital asset using blockchain technology like Bitcoin, which assigns a unique identification value to each digital product such as paintings, tweets, videos, and images. This allows individuals to have 'ownership' of digital products with unique numbers.

In particular, NFT grants ownership to digital assets, giving them scarcity. Although digital assets can be copied and shared by anyone, 'ownership' cannot be copied. For example, even if you take a photo of the Mona Lisa painting and keep it, you cannot claim ownership of the original through that photo.

A digital video depicting former U.S. President Donald Trump naked was sold for 6.6 million dollars (7.5 billion won) on the 25th of last month. The above image is a still taken from the video [Image source=Twitter]

Due to this characteristic of scarcity, NFT assets have recently been actively traded in various fields. The National Basketball Association (NBA) started selling NFT videos compiling highlight scenes of famous basketball players, and the rock band "Kings of Leon" became the first music band to release a new album in NFT form. Also, on the 25th of last month, a 10-second digital video depicting a naked former President Donald Trump with passersby walking beside a statue was sold for $6.6 million (7.5 billion KRW).

Noah Davis, a contemporary art analyst at Christie's, said, "The value of scarcity granted by NFTs is a special property that cannot be copied itself," adding, "As cases of NFT paintings being sold at high prices increase recently, it is expected that the art world’s entry into the NFT field will accelerate."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.