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I just fell down a rabbit hole about the most expensive NFTs ever sold, and I can't stop thinking about this. It turns out that years ago, something completely crazy happened in the digital world that almost no one mentions.
Pak's The Merge remains the most expensive NFT in history. It sold for $91.8 million in 2021, but here’s the strange part: it wasn’t purchased by a single person. Nearly 29,000 collectors bought different amounts, as if they were assembling a giant puzzle. Each piece cost $575, but when added together, it reached that absurd figure.
Then there's Beeple, who seems to be another major player in this space. His Everydays: The First 5000 Days sold for $69 million at Christie's a few years ago. The guy literally drew something new every day for 5,000 consecutive days and compiled it all into a collage. It went from being worth $100 to nearly $70 million.
But what surprises me most is Clock, also by Pak. This most expensive NFT in its category was a collaboration with Julian Assange (—yes, the one from WikiLeaks )—and it’s basically a stopwatch counting the days Assange was in prison. It updates automatically. A group of 10,000 supporters bought it for $52.7 million to support his legal defense. It’s art, activism, and technology all mixed together.
CryptoPunks are on another level. These 2017 avatars are some of the examples on the list of the most expensive NFTs ever sold. The #5822, que es uno de los 9 punks alienígenas, se fue por 23 millones. El #7523, another alien but with a medical mask, sold for $11.75 million. It’s like collecting pixels from years ago was the best investment anyone could have made.
Beeple also has Human One, a 16K kinetic sculpture that constantly changes. It sold for $29 million, and the artist can update it remotely. Basically, it’s art that evolves over time.
Honestly, the NFT market is completely wild. From the earliest projects to now, some of these digital assets have become million-dollar investments. Though, to be honest, 95% of NFTs are practically worthless. But those few that succeed... well, their numbers are mind-blowing.
I'm curious to see what happens in the coming years. Will there be an NFT more expensive than the $91.8 million of The Merge? Or was that the peak? Because if you look at the total volume of collections like Axie Infinity or BAYC, there are billions circulating, but spread across thousands of pieces. So technically, there could still be individual NFTs even more valuable that we haven't seen auctioned yet.