New York (AFP)
The image of a pixelated digital figure with a blue face, stamped with the popular new certificate of authenticity "NFT", was sold on Thursday for $ 11.7 million in New York at Sotheby's, making it the second digital object the most expensive in history.
CryptoPunk number 7523 belongs to a series of creatures designed in 2017 by the young American company Larva Labs, whose importance was major in the development of "NFT".
Each image roughly represents a pixelated face, reminiscent of crossed characters in 80s video games, with a set of characteristics that make it unique.
Every Cryptopunk has been associated with a theoretically inviolable certificate of authenticity, the NFT, for non-fungible token or non-fungible token, a term which means that it is unique.
It is this NFT, based on so-called blockchain technology, which has caused the digital objects market to explode over the past six months, because many collectors are now reassured about the guarantee of ownership of a work.
The 7523 is the only character, among the 10,000 CryptoPunks created by Larva Labs, to wear a surgical mask, which made him a particularly prized item.
The CryptoPunk 7523 is now the second most expensive NFT in history behind the digital artwork "Everydays" by artist Beeple, which sold for $ 69.3 million in mid-March.
Two CryptoPunks had already been acquired, in mid-March, respectively for 7.58 and 7.57 million dollars, records at the time in this category.
Sotheby's has revealed that the buyer was entrepreneur Shalom McKenzie, the largest shareholder in online betting operator DraftKings, whose fortune is estimated at several hundred million dollars.
After a surge from January to April, average NFT prices and the number of sales slowed noticeably, with many heralding the explosion of a speculative bubble.
The amount of transactions over the past 30 days rose from $ 248 million in early June to $ 73 million on Thursday, according to data from NonFungible.com.
But some of the more established categories of NFTs have suffered little or nothing from this cold snap, especially CryptoPunks, as evidenced by Sotheby's sale on Thursday.
Besides the 7523, several copies have still sold for more than $ 100,000 each in recent days.
In total, CryptoPunks have generated $ 351 million in transactions since their launch, according to NonFungible.com.
Also on Thursday, the very first NFT, "Quantum" by New York artist Kevin McCoy, was acquired at Sotheby's for $ 1.47 million.
It was created in 2014 with the same technology as NFTs, but three years before the word was invented.
© 2021 AFP