Mike Winkelmann at his WENEW office
Mike Winkelmann aka Beeple, came onto the scene with a splash in March of this year. His $69.3 Million sale of his “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days” sold through Christie’s auction house, created a global NFT frenzy. Although the frenzy has since subsided, many digital artists are continuing to sell digital and physical art through various platforms and major auction houses. In our last issue, we highlighted Christie’s auction of FEWOCiOUS’ art which includes a digital art piece, a physical art piece, and a personally delivered suitcase full of drawings. These types of offerings are becoming more desirable, as collectors want more than just the art, they seek a unique experience as well.
At NFT Art Source we guide our collectors into this new and exciting space. We believe by adding digital art as an asset class in one’s financial portfolio, more diversification is reached with a great store of value. Beeple also believes that NFTs hold the key to owning authentic digital assets. He and his partners from Pitchfork are launching WENEW a curated platform to auction off historic and iconic moments from sports, to politics, history, music, art, and fashion. Each collection will include highlights from the careers of athletes and artists which will be created in collaboration with the person or entity directly.
WENEW’s first NFT series will launch July 2-5 and will feature tennis champion Andy Murray’s match-winning point at Wimbledon 2013; a moment in time that turned him into a national hero, as he ended the 77 year long wait for a Brit to win the U.K.-based Grand Slam title. The items for sale include his emotional runner-up speech from 2012, his eventual winning speech from 2013, the trophy ceremony, and some of his highlight shots. The winning bidder of the 1/1 edition of “The Winning Moment” will receive 2 courtside tickets to the 2022 Wimbledon finals and a 30-minute tennis match with Andy himself. The NFTs will be priced from $49-$4,999, and some of them will come with actual memorabilia, a replica trophy, or a digital display. Most of the proceeds will go to Murray, while the photographers whose images were used as part of the offering will earn a share as well.
Digital display by WENEW
Winkelmann is looking ahead and wanting to add value to NFTs through experiences. He states: “It’s the emotional connections we have that gets to people…By taking moments that we already have given relevance to in culture, it’s another use case for NFTs that I think will show people the value of these things in a different way.”
Michael Figge, partner and CEO of WENEW adds: “We’re really about the quality of the story. We think our moments are so valuable that people are going to want to pass them on in their wills.” Beeple and Figge have also teamed up with Ryan Schreiber, founder of Pitchfork, as WENEW’s editor-in-chief who will help build stories around the icons they on-board, adding feature-length stories from journalists to accompany the NFTs. In addition, WENEW is being thoughtful about the environmental impact of NFTs and are producing their NFTs through off blockchain processes to help with scalability, speed, and sustainability.
WENEW is not the only new game to the NFT market, Binance is launching its NFT marketplace with an auction featuring works from Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali on July 1st;
Netflix’s “Tiger King” star Joe Exotic launched his first NFT auction from prison on Mintable;
FTX launched an NFT marketplace in conjunction with Major League Baseball earlier this month as we mentioned in a previous Newsletter; and Ant Group has added NFT art to be auctioned on Alipay on their enterprise blockchain AntChain.
NFTs are still being questioned and people continue to scratch their heads and wonder what is the point? We believe that NFTs are great stores of value, not only do they provide bragging rights, but they are easy to display on a screen, you can scroll through many different NFTs, you don’t need space to store them or need more walls to hang them on, and if you buy the right ones, they will appreciate in value. Furthermore, when you are ready to sell an NFT, there is a robust secondary market that exists on countless platforms connecting collectors globally. Transacting and transferring NFTs is quick and seamless, while the technology behind the non-fungible token, allows the buyer and seller to verify authenticity with ease and transparency. If you are interested in adding NFTs to your portfolio, please reach out to us as your digital art resource guide.
Stay Curious!
~NFT Art Source
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