One of the most viewed videos online will soon be leaving YouTube. The owners managed to sell the video for $760 999, or £538 000, by auctioning it as an NFT. Despite the seemingly large amount of money, there are many other NFTs that have been sold for even higher prices. Here you can find out which NFTs have been the most expensive, and what the concept means.
You might wonder, what is NFT? Trading with NFTs can appear confusing if you haven’t heard about it before, but with the continuous expansion of the internet and our digital era, the concept is becoming more widespread every year. NFT is short for non-fungible tokens and can be described as most often being a digital object that represents media, like some kind of artwork, music, or collectible.
Fire watching worth half a million USD
At the end of April, a photograph of a young girl standing in front of a house on fire and smiling towards the camera was sold as an NFT for $500 000. The photo has become a meme on the internet, called “Disaster girl”, because of the somewhat mischievous smirk on the little girl’s face while there’s a massive fire going on nearby.
The fire was a controlled burn in their neighbourhood, started on purpose to get rid of the building, but without that context, the picture soon became viral because of its uniqueness. Ms. Roth, the girl in the photo, is now 21 years old and decided to sell the original copy.
Almost 900 million views
Most recently, a short video which was uploaded on YouTube in 2007, was sold for 761 000 USD. The video has the title “Charlie Bit My Finger” and has become an internet sensation. In the clip, the two English brothers Harry and Charlie are filmed by their family at home.
Charlie, who was just a baby at the time, can be seen biting his brother’s finger. Harry, being a toddler at the time, exclaims “Oww!” and says: “Charlie bit my finger!”, a phrase that has been quoted and referenced countless times over the years since then – both on the internet and in conversations in real life. The video clip has nearly 900 million views but is now meant to be taken off YouTube after an auction that ended on the 23rd of May.
Trading with NFTs
Buying and selling non-fungible tokens has become a growing trend on the internet when it comes to different pieces of digital art and collectibles. Even if an investor buys an NFT, the copyright itself remains with its original owner. Therefore, it’s a little unusual that the family that filmed the young brothers has said they will remove the video from YouTube.
Trading with NFTs normally means that an investor gets what could be called a certificate of authenticity for their copy, while the trade marks and copyright all remain with the original creator. This is similar to how physical artworks. An original painting can be sold, but the copyright and reproduction rights remain with the painter. Before we list the most expensive NFTs being sold, let’s look at how the concept works. A non-fungible token could be a photograph or a video, as we have seen in the examples with Disaster Girl and Charlie Bit My Finger. It could also be something like music or an audio clip, a unique trading card or a video game character.
The meaning of non-fungible
Non-fungible means that the token is completely unique. For a trading card to be an NFT, it needs to be the only card of its kind in the world. The odd thing with NFT is that it’s often digital, and therefore the purchase of an original still means there are likely many more copies on the internet. For example, YouTube is full of remixes of Charlie Bit My Finger, and the Disaster Girl photo has been edited to fit in hundreds of different scenes and shared on the internet. So, what’s really the point of trading with NFTs?
Just like another trading, like on the stock market or forex trading, there’s a chance that the value of an NFT will increase over the years. Apart from letting investors support artists of digital artwork, they can also benefit from an increase in price and in the end make a profit from their investment.
Marketplaces for trading with NFTs
As the popularity of NFT trading has become bigger, several marketplaces have appeared on the internet. The trading platforms offer collections of digital tokens that can be bought using cryptocurrency. If you want to try out NFT trading, you can use one of the marketplaces by going on their website or downloading an app. You also need a digital wallet that supports NFTs.
After purchase, you will receive the NFT in your wallet and the trade will be logged on the blockchain. The blockchain is a database that contains information in blocks chained together in chronological order, keeping a permanent record of transactions.
The most expensive NFTs – so far
It seems like NFT trading will continue to grow, especially with the digitalisation that is becoming a natural part of all aspects of our lives. On Google, the search for “NFTs” has skyrocketed in 2021. At the same time, an increasing number of record-breaking expensive digital art sales have occurred. Let’s finally look at the most expensive NFTs – so far! Soon, we will surely see even higher prices as the demand for unique NFTs keep rising.
- The digital artist Beeple made a collage called “Everyday: The first 5000 days” which sold for $69 million in March 2021. This is so far the most expensive NFT sale to be made ever.
- Some rare CryptoPunks, pixel art images with characters on them, have sold for up to $7.5 million. Out of 10 000 “punks”, only 9 are aliens, meaning they are very rare and sell for a large amount of money.
- Crossroads, another artwork from the artist Beeple, sold for $6.6 million only days before the sale of Everydays.
- The first tweet on Twitter sold for $2.9 million, posted by the CEO and founder Jack Dorsey in 2006.
- Nine plots of virtual land in the blockchain game Axie Infinity were sold for $1.5 million in February 2021.
- A video clip of a rotating gummy bear skeleton – yes, you read that correctly – sold for $1 million, created by the artist WhIsBe.
