Stay Free is an NFT from the one and only Edward Snowden. The NSA whistleblower created and auctioned off a piece called “Stay Free,” which depicted a cut-out of Snowden against a background of text. The whole piece is white with black text. The text itself was the US appeals court decision that the US Patriot Act did not allow for the mass collection and surveillance of American resident’s phone records.
Edward Snowden sold the NFT for $5.27 million at the NFT marketplace Foundation, a community-driven market. Proceeds from the NFT went to the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which is a non-profit that advocates free speech and public-interest journalism. It was sold to PleasrDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization designed to make investments.
Okay, for real now, this is it. This is the last CryptoPunk entry on the list. The CryptoPunk #7252 was sold for $5.3 million. Previously, it was purchased for $2.5 million when it was sold in early August 2021. It took just a few weeks for the previous owner to double their money and then some.
The price previously paid for the NFT was $2.5 million. The NFT depicts a zombie punk with a chinstrap beard, crazy orange hair, and an earring in one ear. The other ear cannot be seen as the zombie punk is looking off to the side. Will people end up paying more for this one in the future? For sure. Should they? Debatable.
The World Wide Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee shocked the world when he revealed his own interest in NFTs. He announced that he, himself would be selling an NFT that depicted the original source code of the web at Sotheby's auction. The source code sold for $5.43 million but many were against the sale.
Critics of the sale voiced that the sale of the code to a single person went against the decentralization of the web. Berners-Lee disagreed, saying “'totally aligned with the values of the web.' And in all actuality, it’s not really the source code but rather a bundle of art pieces and there is actually an error in the artwork, meaning that the code isn’t even accurate. The NFT has been titled “This Changes Everything."
CryptoPunk #5217 is the last CryptoPunk NFT on the list. Just kidding. No, it’s not. Sold for $5.44 million, the NFT features an ape wearing an orange beanie and a gold chain. It was sold back in July 2021. To date, only 169 NFTs have a gold chain and 419 of them feature a knitted cap.
The NFT will undoubtedly be sold again. Buyers are actively watching this piece hoping for a resale. Currently, this is just one of 24 ape punks available. Undoubtedly, there will be more eccentric billionaires lining up to buy this stuff, although we really can’t understand why.
Ocean Front, another NFT from Beeple was sold to Justin Sun for $6 million. While at least this one actually resembles real art, don’t forget the reason for all of this is for crypto billionaires to stroke their ego and show off their exorbitant amounts of money. However, this one did have a good cause behind it.
The profits of the auction went to the Open Earth Foundation. The non-profit organization’s mission is to track progress on the Paris Agreement to ensure the necessary changes are being made to fight climate change. So the money for this auction should be going to that – at least that’s what was promised.
The digital artist Beeple created CROSSROAD as an NFT, which features a figure resembling Donald Trump. The figure can be a figure laying with profanity and highly offensive things written all over his fully exposed body. The art piece was supposedly interchangeable depending on the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
Had Donald Trump won the election, he was meant to be seen donning a crown and walking through fire. The NFT was sold only four months after it was originally purchased, at roughly ten times its original cost. Nifty Gateway, a well-known commercial center for electronic collectibles, arranged for the $6.66 million deal between the NFT's original owner and an unknown buyer.
CryptoPunk #3100 was sold for an estimated $7.51 million. And while we wish we could say it is the last CryptoPunk art piece on the list, we’d be lying and we don’t want to do that to you. The image depicts an extraterrestrial punk with blue skin – looking to the right – wearing a blue and white headband.
The winner of this auctioned piece was presented anonymously. It was also not the first time it was sold. It has exchanged hands quite a few times actually, and people interested in these works are constantly keeping an eye on it, waiting for it to pop up again. Transactions have all been done through Ethereum or ETH.
Dylan Field, the CEO of design software and photo editing software company Figma, sold the third-most-expensive NFT in history. In March 2021, the CryptoPunk #7804 NFT sold for a cool 4,200 ETH, or rather $7.51 million. Figma Inc. offers designing, prototyping, and collaboration for developers, product managers, and marketers.
This CryptoPunk piece is just one of nine extraterrestrial CryptoPunks. This unique NFT features a cap, sunglasses, and a pipe. No other NFT from CryptoPunk has had a cap nor a pipe. Quite impressive what people will pay for some digital accessories on a digital art piece. Although maybe impressive isn’t quite the right word for it.
CryptoPunks are some of the most popular and expensive NFTs around with the CryptoPunk #7523 being the second-most-expensive of all time. These kinds of NFT resemble pixelated faces. They are comprised of a randomly generated set of 10,000 unique digital characters and are among the first NFTs to have been released on the Ethereum blockchain.
CrypotPunks were invented by Matt Lobby and John Watkinson from Larva Labs. CryptoPunks like #7523 have more unusual characteristics that make them more appealing to buyers, ending up selling for a lot more than usual. Being one of only nine unique pieces, #7523 sold for a whopping $11.8 million.
Everydays: The First 5,000 Days holds the record for being the most expensive NFT ever sold. The fine digital art piece, created by Mike Beeple Winkelmann, was sold for an estimated $69.3 million at Christie’s auction house. It was the very first time that a prestigious auction house had ever sold a computerized piece of artwork.
The NFT was a compilation of 5,000 of Beeple’s previous works of art, which showcased and demonstrated his growth as an artist over the years. The NFT was purchased by Vignesh Sundaresan, who purchased it anonymously – at the time – but ended up revealing his identity. The second-highest bidder was Justin Sun, who had bid $60.2 million.
