Christie’s Auction House Sells NFT Crypto Art ‘Block 21’ for Over $130K

[Charles-Tim]

Christie’s auction house has announced the sale of a digital portrait of the Bitcoin code for more than $130,000. It marks the first time a non-fungible token (NFT) was auctioned at a major auction house, and the price exceeded expectations.

According to the auction house, an unknown buyer purchased "Block 21," comprised of a physical piece of art and an NFT representing Satoshi Nakamoto for $131,250 at Christie's on Oct. 7 as part of its “Post-War and Contemporary Day Auction.” Bidding started at $22,000.

The artwork, created by Ben Gentilli with the Robert Alice project, is one of 40 creations in a series, and holds exactly 322,048 digits of Satoshi’s original Bitcoin (BTC) code. The series, titled "Portraits of a Mind", shows the cryptocurrency's 12.3 million digits of original code individually engraved and painted on 40 different circular panels stretching more than 50 meters in length.


Portraits of a Mind, Block 21. Image: Robert Alice/Ben Gentilli

A portrait of Satoshi Nakamoto, in 40 parts
The artist behind this painstaking process, Ben Gentilli of the Robert Alice project, has called this collective piece Portraits of a Mind. Described as a digital fingerprint carved out of paint, each of the 40 individual pieces contains a chunk of the original code. Taken together, they represent a global portrait of Satoshi Nakamoto—Bitcoin’s anonymous founder, who first released the cryptocurrency’s original code in January 2009.
“Bitcoin’s original codebase is like a historical document, and I wanted to celebrate it and preserve it in the same way as a document like the Magna Carta,” Gentilli told Decrypt. “But I also wanted to try and answer the question of how one might make a portrait of Satoshi Nakamoto, when there is no image of him.”

Portraits of a Mind, he argues, depicts Satoshi through his work. “For me, this work is a portrait of Satoshi, decentralized around the world, in the same way that Bitcoin itself is,” he explained.

“I wanted to try and answer the question of how one might make a portrait of Satoshi Nakamoto, when there is no image of him.”
Ben Gentilli

The works themselves are canvas discs, 50.59in in diameter, layered with suspended pigment, and graphite and aluminum paint, with each digit individually engraved. Dotted here and there are gold digits—a metaphor for mining—arranged in a constellation-like pattern of decentralization.


The series consists of 40 discs. Image: Robert Alice/Ben Gentilli


The artwork depicts the complete codebase of Bitcoin. Image: Robert Alice/Ben Gentilli


Portraits of a Mind artist Ben Gentilli, of Robert Alice. Image: Robert Alice/Ben Gentilli

https://decrypt.co/42581/a-massive-bitcoin-artwork-is-being-auctioned-at-christies?amp=1
https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-art-piece-sells-for-130k-at-christie-s-auction-house/amp

[casperBGD]

man, you just had put an entire article from other webpage in here, without any comments or so?
what do you think about it, was it worth 105k? it is one from 40 parts, and it will be connected to one NFT for each part, all parts should be decentralized, as BTC is, interesting motive, but i would not give that amount of money for a NFT and artwork

[Tytanowy Janusz]

The artwork looks impressive. This confirms the thesis, to be rich all you need is a little bit of smartness and work. Very clever.

man, you just had put an entire article from other webpage in here, without any comments or so?
what do you think about it, was it worth 105k? it is one from 40 parts, and it will be connected to one NFT for each part, all parts should be decentralized, as BTC is, interesting motive, but i would not give that amount of money for a NFT and artwork

Same. I would not pay 105k for one NFT part ... maybe because i don't have such money

[ryzaadit]

Same. I would not pay 105k for one NFT part ... maybe because i don't have such money

Well, you have the answer of that's ~XD when the price was really high and you cannot afford it the target customer is not you ~XD

Sometimes we can't really expect to much on the ART, the price was really insane when the art it self was pretty shit. That's just because the creator of the art, because of him makes what's ever he created have some value.

Always, the benefits some popular person.

[Zeehaxan]

Although i like the fact that people are ready to spend big money on such things but they should also analyse the worth or value first because if the price will be inflated or bloated at the very start there are high chances of bubble burst later resulting in big loss to investors.

[pixie85]

The concept is very interesting and I like the way it's depicted but the price is much too high for me.

I don't think it's worth that much but art is worth as much as someone wants to pay for it so if someone feels like it's 130 thousand USD than it's the artist's big win.

Artists are like magicians who want to convince people they did real magic and make them pay to see it.

[Oshosondy]

The concept is very interesting and I like the way it's depicted but the price is much too high for me.

I don't think it's worth that much but art is worth as much as someone wants to pay for it so if someone feels like it's 130 thousand USD than it's the artist's big win.

As for me, the artwork is not yet expensive, it happens like that to many art works, there are many artworks that are so much expensive than this one, with time the artwork will be increasing price. I like artworks for one thing, the person that buys it will want to sell it with higher price, artworks are appreciating assets.

[Tytanowy Janusz]

Sometimes we can't really expect to much on the ART, the price was really insane when the art it self was pretty shit. That's just because the creator of the art, because of him makes what's ever he created have some value.

Always, the benefits some popular person.

The thing with highly priced art is that at some point it becomes just an escape from inflation or just a good investment for whales. Most of the people buying art for 10 mln $+ are not even art fans. They are just investors' that are looking for good investment. Just take a look at this chart:


https://www.artprice.com/artprice-reports/the-contemporary-art-market-report-2018/artists-prices

And you know that you can make x4 in 12 years. That's more than average stock trader. Whales investing that much money are simply diversifying portfolio. x in gold, x in diamonds, x in bitcoin, x in stocks, x in art.

Fun thing in investing in unique art is that there is only 1 peace. There is no market prcie like with bitcoin. There is only 1 "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" by Van Goth and you can auction it at any price you want. If you will not sell it in your lifetime at this price, four sure your son will.

[Pito001]

Crypto kitties hype live again

[benthach]

very good to see this kind of thing, it's just keep amaze me

[sana54210]

These type of stuff always happens at first and it becomes a novelty but things that follow are not that lucky. Remember crypokitties? At one point it was so popular that it clogged ethereums blockchain and they had to fix it, but right now? It is a non-factor for ethereum and there are valuable kitties going for few dollars at most, and they were the same kitties that went for like 20-30 dollars at one point, so we are talking about almost a 90% drop from the hype period.

Obviously this NFT thing will get famous for a while and it will get attention however at one point people will be bored that there are more and more stuff and nothing is unique anymore and they will call it quits and start selling a lot which will make things a lot cheaper than what they are now.

[Oshosondy]

These type of stuff always happens at first and it becomes a novelty but things that follow are not that lucky. Remember crypokitties? At one point it was so popular that it clogged ethereums blockchain and they had to fix it, but right now? It is a non-factor for ethereum and there are valuable kitties going for few dollars at most, and they were the same kitties that went for like 20-30 dollars at one point, so we are talking about almost a 90% drop from the hype period.

Obviously this NFT thing will get famous for a while and it will get attention however at one point people will be bored that there are more and more stuff and nothing is unique anymore and they will call it quits and start selling a lot which will make things a lot cheaper than what they are now.

It depends, artworks like this can even becoming increasing in price, it depends on the future. This has been the most expensive artwork in the history of cryptocurrencies, corect me if I am wrong. If so, that alone is able to make the artwork the most expensive for centuries. Let us know that artworks can becoming increasingly more expensive every time. With the level of bitcoin adoption, very possible the artwork will get more attention by people bidding more for it, then becoming more expensive.

[kryptqnick]

The concept is very interesting and I like the way it's depicted but the price is much too high for me.

I don't think it's worth that much but art is worth as much as someone wants to pay for it so if someone feels like it's 130 thousand USD than it's the artist's big win.

Artists are like magicians who want to convince people they did real magic and make them pay to see it.

I agree that the price is high for most people. In my country, a few flats in the capital in a good neighborhood with that money. However, art often costs lots of money, even though it doesn't have much utility. And if there are people willing to freely pay it, it means the price is  fair. I'm glad that there's such high-level Bitcoin art around, it's good publicity for Bitcoin. And the very fact that something like this sold for $130k means that there are rich people who are very interested in Bitcoin and know their rich friends will appreciate this artwork. It's a way of world recognition of Bitcoin, so I'm happy.

[buwaytress]

I do remember this from a week or two ago so we finally have the price. 12 Bitcoins more or less then.

Suppose it was only a matter of time before we hit these kinds of numbers for elitist art. I mean, I don't mean that in a bad way at all but all the early Bitcoiners and Bitcoin art guys couldn't really sniff at 5-figures but we have this now on Christie for 6 figures. Well done, I guess.