Grimes is the latest artist to enter the NFT gold rush, selling about $ 6 million worth of digital artwork after putting it up for auction yesterday.
A series of 10 pieces – some unique, others with thousands of copies – went on sale at the Nifty Gateway on February 28. The best-selling piece was a unique video called “Death of the Old” that involves flying cherubs, a cross, a sword and a bright light that is defined as an original Grimes song. The winning bidder was left with almost $ 389,000.
The bulk of sales came from two pieces with thousands of copies available, which sold for $ 7,500 each. The works, entitled “Terra” and “Marte”, are short videos presenting their titular planet with a giant cherubim holding a gun, also with original music. Nearly 700 copies were sold for a total of $ 5.18 million before sales closed.
If you are totally baffled by what is happening here, welcome to the party. After slowly growing in popularity in the past few months, NFTs have exploded in the past week or so as hot new technology. The technology – which means “non-fungible token” – allows buyers to acquire ownership of a digital asset, usually an image, animation or video, in the form of a unique digital token living on a blockchain.
NFTs allow buyers to support artists, but they also give buyers some things in return. Buyers may not be able to hang these digital pieces on the wall, but they may have the right to brag about buying a famous work like Nyan Cat or something from a popular artist like Grimes. NFTs are also a speculative asset, and many markets have emerged that offer the ability to resell them – theoretically for much more, as long as the hype surrounding NFTs continues.
Grimes is not the only artist who has been successful in the NFTs. Digital artist Beeple sold $ 3.5 million worth of art through the Nifty Gateway last year. The artist behind Nyan Cat won about $ 600,000. And electronic musician 3LAU reportedly earned more than $ 11 million from sales of albums and digital products this weekend alone.
Nifty Gateway said an undisclosed percentage of Grimes’ sales would go to Carbon180, a nonprofit organization focused on removing carbon from the atmosphere. Donations can aim to solve one of the main problems that NFTs share with other blockchain technologies – they are extremely inefficient in the use of electricity.
Each of the works is part of the “WarNymph” collection by Grimes, made in collaboration with his brother Mac Boucher. Grimes debuted War Nymph in 2019 and initially used “digital personality” and “alternative psyche” to promote his album Miss anthropocene. The War Nymph’s appearance changed over time, becoming the vaguely demonic winged baby seen in these NFTs last January, just before she confirmed her pregnancy.
Correction of March 1, 11:15 pm ET: Yesterday was February 28, not November 28, as this article clearly distorted.