Is 2021 the year of trends?
It might be! As we step into 2021, we have seen so many trends come up. Be it cryptocurrencies, NFTs, Wall Street Bets, or anything else.
Today, we will take a deep dive into the world of NFTs. What are NFTs? What are the most popular NFT platforms? and more importantly…
What have been the most expensive NFTs ever sold?
We did our research by scraping data from numerous websites using ParseHub, a free and powerful web scraper that can work with any website.
What is an NFT?
Think of a painting you made, and you want to auction it. Your painting is unique and the person you sell it to will have the ownership of that painting.
Similarly, NFT’s are non-fungible tokens that are unique and can be traded but not replaced or copied. Nowadays, most NFTs tend to be digital. This makes it particularly easy for creators to give their supporters something rare and unique.
Some NFTs, for example, are digital artworks, and people are now collecting these digital artworks, just like collectors have collected physical paintings for years. And some of these NFTs have gone for extraordinary prices.
In some ways, NFTs are like Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies, except, of course, they are non-fungible and non-divisible. The first NFTs were part of the Ethereum blockchain, which stores extra electronic information to distinguish their uniqueness.
Other blockchains now also facilitate NTFs. Because of the differing blockchain technology behind NFTs, not all NFT marketplaces buy and sell all types of NFT. Creators will often select an NFT marketplace based on whether that marketplace supports a specific NFC token standard.
NFT’s have turned out to be a big market in 2021. In the first half of the year, the sales volume has gone as high as $2.5 billion with different marketplaces surging a whopping sale of more than $100 million. Every month in 2021, we saw an increase in the unique buyers of NFTs as compared to 2020 which was relatively low.
Now, let’s talk about some marketplaces where you can buy and trade these NFTs
Top 5 NFT marketplaces
We scraped and analyzed data from different marketplaces and the total sales generated by each of them. We then came up with the top 5 selling NFT marketplaces.
1. OpenSea
OpenSea was founded in 2018 and has already sprung onto the digital scene with over 17,000 subscribers. They feature over 700 different projects, including trading card games, collectible games to digital art projects, and name systems like ENS (Ethereum Name Service).
2. Rarible
Alex Salnikov and Alexei Falin founded Rarible in 2020. A bonus feature of Rarible is that, in addition to being a marketplace, it also functions as a distributed network that facilitates trading without the use of a middleman.
3. SuperRare
SuperRare, launched in 2017, is a trading platform for NFTs that is built on the Ethereum blockchain and allows users to trace the art's whole history.
4. Foundation
Foundation, launched in 2020, is a digital marketplace for trading non-fungible tokens (NFTs). It's a community-driven platform that aims to assist artists in minting their work, showcasing it, and earning money.
5. Atomic Market
Atomic Market is a newer platform, having been established in early 2021. The Atomic Assets hub relies heavily on this platform. It gives consumers the advantage of being able to determine when they want to upload their assets as soon as they list them.
We’ve also gone ahead and scraped the data on all the NFTs sold across several platforms. Coming up is our list of the top 5 most expensive NFTs ever sold!
Top 5 most expensive NFTs ever sold
From highest to lowest, the top 5 most expensive NFTs ever sold are:
- Everydays: the First 5000 Days - $69.3 Million
- CryptoPunk #3100 - $7.58 million
- CryptoPunk #7804 - $7.57 million
- Crossroads - $6.6 million
- The first Tweet - $2.9 million
1. Everydays: the First 5000 Days
Value : $69.3 million
Artist : Beeple
“Everydays: the First 5000 Days” is the title of the piece. The fact that this sale took place at Christie's makes it even more interesting. The bidding started at $100, but it quickly increased, and it was eventually sold for $69.3 million!
2. CryptoPunk #3100
Value : $7.58 million
CryptoPunks is a brand-new type of NFT creation. These are the very first NFTs to hit the market, and after the NFT boom, many of them are now selling for millions! That's why CryptoPunk #3100, the second most expensive NFT ever sold, is also on our list.
3. CryptoPunk #7804
Value: $7.57 million
A computer-generated avatar of a teal-colored, pipe-smoking alien wearing a hat and sunglasses, was sold for 4,200 ethereum (approximately $7.5 million), breaking the record at the time for the highest amount paid for a CryptoPunk as the digital collectibles market continues to soar.
4. Crossroads
Value: $6.6 million
Crossroads is another of our most expensive NFTs. This is another Beeple piece, and it was sold just days before the enormous sale of Everydays. Furthermore, the artist was able to sell this piece on Nifty Gateway. Also, unlike Everydays, this is a single piece of artwork rather than a compilation. As a result, the appraisal of this piece makes it even more costly.
5. The first Tweet
Value: $2.9 million
Twitter's creator and CEO, Jack Dorsey, auctioned off his first tweet as a nonfungible token (NFT). It said "just setting up my twttr" when it was first posted on March 21, 2006. The tweet was purchased with Ether cryptocurrency and sold for $2.9 million at the end of the auction.
Closing Thoughts
These are are the top 5 most expensive NFTs sold in the market!
As mentioned before, this research was done by scraping data ParseHub, a free web scraping tool.
If you would like to conduct your own research like this, you can get started for free!
Read the other research pieces done using ParseHub:
