Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Top 10 Most Expensive NFTs

Here Are the Top 10 Most Expensive NFTs Sold to Date, From Beeple’s Record Setter to Edward Snowden’s Court Transcription
NFTs
Here Are the Top 10 Most Expensive NFTs Sold to Date, From Beeple’s Record Setter to Edward Snowden’s Court Transcription
By Sarah Cascone





NFTs

Here Are the Top 10 Most Expensive NFTs Sold to Date, From Beeple’s Record Setter to Edward Snowden’s Court Transcription

Will these sky-high prices survive the current crypto meltdown?

Sarah Cascone, 

Beeple, Human One. Photo courtesy of Christie's New York.
Beeple, Human One. Photo courtesy of Christie's New York.

Cryptocurrency may be in a tailspin that’s leaving some NFT collectors fearful of the longterm prospects for their new investments. We may gain some clarity at the NFT.NYC conference, touching down in New York this week (June 20–23).

To reflect on the market, we’ve compared the top 10 biggest NFT sales to date with our assessments of the market last December, June, and March.

It comes as no surprise that Beeple’s Everydays – The First 5000 Days is still the measuring stick by which all other NFTs are ranked. The artwork, a compendium of the artist’s over-13-year daily drawing project, opened for bidding at just $100 before skyrocketing to $69 million, becoming the third-most expensive work by a living artist ever sold at auction.

The sale at Christie’s New York opened the floodgates to the NFT market and everything that followed, including our new number two biggest NFT sale, Pak’s Clock.

The piece, which represents the number of days Julian Assange has been in prison, was part of the “Censored” NFT collection sold to pay the Wikileaks founder’s legal fees as he fights extradition to the U.S. from London (the U.K., however, just granted the extradition). The winning bidder, a 10,000-person collective called AssangeDAO, shelled out $52 million.

'Censored," an NFT collection by Pak and Julian Assange. Courtesy of Pak.

“Censored,” an NFT collection by Pak and Julian Assange. Courtesy of Pak.

By some reckoning, Pak could also take the top spot outright. The anonymous artist also sold a single work, The Merge, on Nifty Gateway in 266,445 shares. The nearly 30,000 buyers collectively paid $91.8 million—but it seems unlikely a single owner will ever be able to reunite the work’s parts into a whole.

But aside from Pak’s high-profile entry to the list, the rest of the top 10 has remained relatively static over the first half of the year, with only one other new entry. (Compare that to the turnover between our March and June lists in 2021, when eight of the initial top 10 lost their slots.)

Mad Dog Jones, REPLICATOR (2021). Courtesy of Phillips.

Mad Dog Jones, REPLICATOR (2021). Courtesy of Phillips.

Falling off the list this time is an early XCOPY work by Mad Dog Jones, Some Asshole, rumored to belong to the rapper Snoop Dawg, as well as his Replicator, which went for $4.1 million in April 2021 at Phillips, making him Canada’s most expensive living artist.

Our top 10 exclusively features one-of-one works, excluding NFTs from popular series like the 10,000-piece CryptoPunks collection. If factored in, there are no fewer than eight that exceed the $5.4 million achieved by number 10 on our list, led by Cryptopunk #5822, which sold for a record $23.7 million in February.

Two other collections have also achieved sales on par with our top 10: Ringers #109 from Dmitri Cherniak’s 1,000-piece Ringers collection at Art Blocks, which sold for $7.1 million in October, and Tpunk #3443, bought by noted NFT collector and Tron founder Justin Sun for $10.5 million from the 10,000-piece Tpunks collection in August. (That one should probably come with an asterisk though, as the project is the first NFT project on the Tron blockchain.)

Here’s our updated list, based on the conversion value of Ether at the time of the sale.

 

10. Edward Snowden, Stay Free (Edward Snowden)
$5.4 million, April 2021, Foundation

Edward Snowden, Stay Free (Edward Snowden). Courtesy of the artist.

Edward Snowden, Stay Free (Edward Snowden). Courtesy of the artist.

 

9. freeross, Ross Ulbricht Genesis Collection
$5.9 million, SuperRare, December 2021

Ross Ulbricht, Perspective from freeross's Ross Ulbricht Genesis Collection.

Ross Ulbricht, Perspective from freeross’s Ross Ulbricht Genesis Collection.

 

8. XCOPY, A Coin for the Ferryman
$6 million, SuperRare, November 2021

XCOPY, A Coin for the Ferryman.

XCOPY, A Coin for the Ferryman.

 

7. Beeple, Ocean Front
$6 million, Nifty Gateway, March 2021

Beeple, Ocean Front. Courtesy of the artist.

Beeple, Ocean Front. Courtesy of the artist.

 

6. XCOPY, All Time High in the City
$6.14 million, January 2022, SuperRare

XCOPY, <em>All Time High in the City</em>.

XCOPY, All Time High in the City.

 

5. Beeple, Crossroads
$6.6 million, February 2021, Nifty Gateway

Beeple, Crossroads (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

Beeple, Crossroads (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

 

4. XCOPY, Right-click and Save As guy
$7 million, December 2021, SuperRare

XCOPY, Right-click and Save As guy.

XCOPY, Right-click and Save As guy.

 

3. Beeple, HUMAN ONE
$29.8 million, November 2021, Christie’s

Beeple, HUMAN ONE (2021), sold for $29 million (estimate $15 million) at Christie's November 2021 "21st century art" evening sale in New York. Courtesy Christie's.

Beeple, HUMAN ONE (2021). Courtesy Christie’s.

 

2. Pak, Clock,
$52 million, Manifold

Pak, <em>Clock</em>.

Pak, Clock.

 

1. Beeple, Everydays—The First 5000 Days
$69 million, March 2021, Christie’s

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Monday, June 20, 2022

Amapiano

 

73ed94ee-f881-4ea1-8e1f-44f98483021c.png
June 20, 2022

The Genre-Bending World of Amapiano, South Africa’s Township House Music

You can’t not dance when amapiano comes on.

BY SELEMA MASEKELAJUNE 15, 2022
Sports presenter and musician Selema Masekela is obsessed with amapiano, a genre of South African genre of house music.
Sports presenter and musician Selema Masekela is obsessed with amapiano, a genre of South African genre of house music. PORTRAIT: DASHAUNAE MARISA; PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: AÏDA AMER/ATLAS OBSCURA

Secret Obsessions is Atlas Obscura’s new column in which we ask wondrous people to take us down a rabbit hole. As told to Atlas Obscura Editorial Fellow Sarah Durn.

OH, THIS IS A VIBE.

It was like the whole crowd was moving in unison. The dancing was joyful, expressive, with a bit of bravado, like the dancers were telling the story of the music with their bodies, their faces. And the music, it felt both distinct and familiar, like this incredible fusion of traditional South African township music, but over extremely technical and super-melodic electronic beats. From the grit and essence of the townships comes this beautiful, endless melodic space for electronic music. This was the form’s newest iteration, this was amapiano. And it was fire.

Mouth-watering smells of street food wafted through the throngs of dancing bodies. It was December 30, 2019, and I was at the Joburg AFROPUNK festival with some friends, some of whom had never been to South Africa before. The music at the festival sits at the intersection of all South African music, from more traditional music to punk rock to electronic to even American artists. And it all happens in downtown Johannesburg—10,000 South Africans all dancing and vibing in one place.

In 2005, AFROPUNK held its first festival in Brooklyn. It has since grown into a worldwide phenomenon: Paris, London, Atlanta, Johannesburg, and more cities around the world.
In 2005, AFROPUNK held its first festival in Brooklyn. It has since grown into a worldwide phenomenon: Paris, London, Atlanta, Johannesburg, and more cities around the world. STEPHANIE KEITH/GETTY IMAGES
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The first time I went to AFROPUNK, a global pop-up festival featuring art, fashion, music, and film by Black artists, was in Brooklyn. I was blown away. I remember how distinctly freeing it was to be in an environment that featured Black music and Black culture, but not in a sort of monolithic manner. The media often places Black music into very specific boxes: There’s R&B, hip-hop, rap. But the great thing about AFROPUNK is that it’s all the things in between, all the different layers between the boxes people think Black culture exists in. It allows for the entirety and wide array of our various and unique interests as human beings in the midst of our Blackness.

So here I was at Joburg AFROPUNK watching these kids dancing; I mean, you can’t listen to amapiano and not move. But after the set ended, the festival just rolls right on into the next artist. I had no idea who or what I had just heard. I didn’t know what it was called or if there were other artists out there doing a similar thing.

AFROPUNK—seen here in its 2017 iteration in Johannesburg—is a global music, art, film, and fashion festival featuring Black artists.
AFROPUNK—seen here in its 2017 iteration in Johannesburg—is a global music, art, film, and fashion festival featuring Black artists. © RED BULL MEDIA HOUSE

After the festival, I looked up the DJ on Spotify and started poking around at similar artists on Spotify. That’s when I started to realize that this wasn’t a one-off. This wasn’t just an off-shoot of kwaito, a South African house music genre from the 1990s. All these songs all had this distinct rhythm with these instrumental tracks that ride the beat. Any lyrics are sung in traditional South African languages. And the artists layer beats on beats on beats but somehow, in the end, it all just fits.

Months after AFROPUNK in Joburg, I asked my younger South African cousin, who’s really into the music scene there. “Yo! I’ve been listening to this. What is this?”

“Oh yeah. No, no, man, that’s the new thing. That’s the next thing. It was born from kwaito. It’s amapiano.”

It had a name, I was hooked. I looked up “amapiano” on Spotify and found hundreds of playlists. That’s still how I find different artists or songs. There’s a song called “Bella Ciao”—that’s my present obsession. There’s this other Kvng Vinci song that takes the theme from Squid Game and makes it the hook of this song called “Squid Game Amapiano.” It’s fire! Then there’s this other artist that I love right now called Musa Keys. I follow him on Instagram and seeing the way kids are just losing it at his shows, the way he performs, the dances that he does, it’s just super cool.

Just two months ago, someone sent me a DM and was like, “Yo, you have to listen to this song. It’s got your name in it!” That’s actually how I discovered Musa Keys, through his song “Selema (Po Po).” I was like, “Woah! My name is the hook of this song.” And it’s a huge song on the continent and in South Africa. There was like a “Selema” dance challenge at one point. And my name isn’t common. The only people I know with my name, other than my grandfather who passed away, is my cousin. I don’t really know if the song is about me, but I also don’t know who else it might be about.

In 2012, Selema Masekela and his childhood friend Sunny Levine released their first album as the band Alekesam.
In 2012, Selema Masekela and his childhood friend Sunny Levine released their first album as the band Alekesam. COURTESY JACKIE KRONICK

It’s just so inspiring to witness this movement. I have an immense amount of pride knowing that that’s where I come from. I didn’t get to grow up in South Africa, but my dad named me specifically so that I could have a South African name that I could be proud of. And to hear it all echo back to me in a song feels like an acknowledgment that this place, its people and culture, will always be a part of who I am and what I’m about.

Selema Masekela is an Emmy-nominated producer, television host, sports commentator, and half of the surf R&B band Alekesam. His passion for surf culture led him to become co-founder of South African surfwear brand Mami Wata, which launched stateside in fall 2021. Under the Mami Wata brand, Selema co-published the Amazon bestseller, Afrosurf, a stunning book celebrating African surf culture.

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