Auction house Sotheby's Pak NFT sale yields nearly $17M

Luxury auction house Sotheby's has auctioned off a non-fungible token (NFT) for nearly $17 million. 

The NFT, titled "The Fungible," was created by Pak, an anonymous digital artist, and was auctioned in a two-day sale on NFT marketplace Nifty Gateway. In the two days, the sale garnered a total of $16,825,999. 

The collection included NFTs in the form of digital "cubes." The individual NFTs were: A Cube (1), Five Cubes (5), Ten Cubes (10), Twenty Cubes (20), Fifty Cubes (50), Hundred Cubes (100), Five Hundred Cubes (500), and Thousand Cubes (1,000).

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While the total amount made from the sale pales in comparison to the staggering $69.4 million that popular auction house Christie's made on its Beeple 5000-day collection sale, the collection still fetched numerous bids in the 48 hours it was listed.

The sale encountered some technical difficulties which Sotheby's says were resolved. Nifty Gateway experienced issues with processing credit card payments on April 13, but the sale was restarted shortly afterward. 

Pak, whose identity remains a mystery, has been active in the world of digital art for over twenty years. In addition to using technology to create artwork, they are also the founder and lead designer of the studio Undream. In addition to this, Pak also created Archillect, an AI that finds and displays visual media. 

"This was an incredible journey with you all. Thank you," they tweeted. "Now, we keep building."

About Author

Saniya More (pronounced: Saan-ya Mo-ray) is a quadrilingual journalist at The Block. She got her master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and did her undergraduate degree at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University. Her work has appeared in CBS News, Bangkok Post, Thai Enquirer, Globalists, Byline Times and other publications. When she’s not chasing a story, you will most likely find her biking, tweeting, taking photos or creating Spotify playlists for every occasion.