Sotheby’s Pak auction raises $ 16.8 million as NFT’s artistic boom continues

In an NFT auction that had no dramas until its last minute, two works by anonymous digital artist Pak were sold on Wednesday for $ 2.8 million at the Nifty Gateway online marketplace. The works were part of a multifaceted sale in association with the the Sotheby’s auction house, which grossed $ 16.8 million in total.

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are commonly described as smart contracts and are based on blockchain technology to serve as digital form of authentication. A digital work can be replicated an infinite number of times; an NFT attached to one means there is an official version and everything else is a copy.

So far, the NFTs have been attached to a tweet that sold for $ 2.9 million, clips of NBA-licensed Lebron James that sold for $ 208,000 and a 96-year-old painting that sold for about $ 40,000. Most famously, a digital mosaic by artist Beeple sold for $ 69.3 million at Christie’s last month. In this comparison, Pak’s sale delivered largely little, but it still represents a dazzling valuation for works of art that didn’t exist just two weeks ago.

Other sales work includes an open edition of a cube image, called Cub. On the first day, a one-cube NFT cost $ 500, a five-cube NFT cost $ 2,500, and so on, up to a 1,000-cube NFT for $ 500,000. About 19,740 cubes from the various eight levels were sold during the 15-minute sales period on the first day, yielding $ 9.87 million.

On the second day, the price of a single cube doubled, to $ 1,000; 3,268 sold at all eight levels, yielding $ 3.3 million at the same time. On the third day it rose to $ 1,500, with 593 sold. In all, 3,080 sole buyers spent about $ 14 million on 23,598 cubes.

Critics have been comparing NFTs with the famous 17th century Dutch mania. In fact, in recent weeks, prices and sales volumes have fallen in several NFT markets. In an interview with Bloomberg, even the buyer of Beeple’s artwork called the industry a “huge risk.”

Although the sale of Pak by some measures disappointed — no crazy records were set, and the highest price for a Pak work of art was only 21% of what was still sold for another 6.6 million. Beeple in February—, the large volume of participants in the open edition, along with the results of a million dollars more for digital art, goes a long way to show that the demand for NFT has not decreased .

The Pak auction

Pak’s bonanza at Nifty Gateway lasted from April 12-14. In one twist, four of the works on offer were not technically for sale, but were structured to encourage the highest possible spending on alternative Pak artwork. Think of them as digital versions of the “free gift from the cosmetics industry with a $ 50 purchase.”

For example, a unique work called The cube (not to be confused with open editing Cub) must be “given” to the collector who has purchased more dice at the end of the three-day sale. In the same way, a work called Complexity was created in an edition of 100; one was also given away to each of the 100 individuals who had bought the most dice.

The job Balance, which is in a four-edition, was also structured as a gift, along with more Byzantine criteria: one of the edition was given to a person who solved a puzzle; one went to a collector who had spent more on any Pak work on the secondary market (i.e., not as part of the April 12-14 sale); one will be awarded to someone who posted the hashtag #PakWasHere to “the largest audience on social media”; and it would be said to someone who publicly guesses the total amount that would accrue the three-day sale.

The final NFT “reserved” for sale, The builder, was created in a 30th edition and was distributed “to artists, builders and creators who have paved the way for Pak and other NFT artists” as determined by Pak, a kind of “free if you can afford” gift. for NFT users.

Autonomous auction

Two NFTs were sold as unique works. Because Nifty Gateway usually has a “marker” of bidders below any work of art, viewers could see which collectors were willing to pay and at what intervals they were willing to pay for it. In a Clubhouse chat hosted by Sotheby’s during the final minutes of the sale, one participant stated that the extended tender was an act of “performance art”.

The most expensive work, The change, represents a geometric shape in the aesthetics of Pak’s signature: a high-definition black-and-white work reminiscent of space photography. The text informs us that the work is so called, because “it is developed to change shape at a specific time in the future, known as Pak.”

Bids started at $ 50, quickly went from $ 100 to $ 10,000 to $ 100,000 and soon reached $ 1,444,444, which became the winning bid. For the remaining two days of the auction, no one intervened.

It is called the second independent work The Pixel, and consists of a single gray pixel. The explanation provided by the website is that “it is a testimonial that signs the most basic unit of a digital image in a traditional global auction house. It’s a small brand to bring digital native art to a potential future story. “

The offers were very different for The Pixel. It also started at $ 50 and moved to $ 5,555 and went up to $ 25,000. He made his way the first day to $ 1,111,333, where he languished the second day.