Quick answer: on March 11, 2021, Christie’s sold “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days,” a digital collage by artist Mike Winkelmann (known as Beeple), for $69.3 million. It was the first purely digital, NFT-backed artwork ever sold by a major auction house, and it remains the sale most people point to as the moment NFTs became impossible for the traditional art world to ignore.
Who Beeple actually is
Mike Winkelmann had been creating and posting a new digital artwork online every single day since May 1, 2007, a personal discipline he called “Everydays.” By the time of the Christie’s sale, he had done this for roughly 13.5 consecutive years without missing a day. “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days” is a single composite image combining all 5,000 of those individual pieces into one large collage, sold as one NFT representing the entire body of work.
Before this sale, Winkelmann was well known within digital art and design circles, having done commercial work for major music and technology brands, but he was largely unknown to the traditional fine art market that Christie’s represents.
How the auction unfolded
Christie’s opened bidding on February 25, 2021, at just $100. Over the following two weeks, bids climbed steadily, passing $1 million within days and reaching roughly $9 million the day before the auction closed. The real drama happened in the final minutes: bids jumped in $10 million and even $15 million increments as the sale neared its close, a pace that reportedly strained Christie’s own bidding platform.
Why this sale mattered beyond the price tag
A few things made this specific auction significant in a way that went past the dollar figure:
- It was the first time a major traditional auction house (Christie’s had operated since 1766) sold a purely digital work authenticated by an NFT rather than a physical object.
- It was also the first time Christie’s accepted cryptocurrency as payment for an artwork.
- The sale made Winkelmann the third-most expensive living artist at auction by that point, a ranking previously dominated entirely by artists working in physical mediums.
- It gave institutional legitimacy to NFTs as a category, prompting other major auction houses and traditional galleries to seriously evaluate digital art and NFTs for the first time.
What happened after
The sale kicked off a wave of interest from both the traditional art world and new collectors entering through crypto, and 2021 became the peak year of the first major NFT boom, with trading volume across marketplaces climbing sharply in the months that followed. Beeple has continued creating and selling work since, including further high-value sales, though none has matched the cultural impact of the original Christie’s auction, largely because that specific “first of its kind” distinction can only happen once.
The lesson for anyone studying NFT history
The Beeple sale is frequently misunderstood as proof that “NFT art is worth millions.” A more accurate read: an artist with over a decade of consistent, high-quality output, an existing audience, and genuine skill happened to be the one who broke through at exactly the moment institutional interest in NFTs peaked. The NFT format was the delivery mechanism; the underlying demand was for Winkelmann’s actual body of work. That distinction matters for anyone evaluating whether a new NFT project or artist has real staying power versus riding a moment.
For another look at how a collection built lasting value differently, see our CryptoPunks case study.