Most Expensive NFTs and Why They Cost So Much

Non-fungible tokens, commonly known as NFTs, have experienced high popularity over the last few years. The crypto community’s eagerness to invest in these assets has driven their prices to touch the sky, with the most popular NFTs selling for tens of millions of dollars. However, many NFTs put up for sale on NFT apps or marketplaces are sold at low prices, but there are a few that make a good deal in millions.

If you’re wondering who would spend millions of dollars on NFTs, well, everyone is investing in NFTs, from collectors to individuals who are searching for ways to earn higher profits. These investments are impacting the role of crypto NFT apps on the creator economy and empowering millions of creators to earn millions from their pieces of work.

This, in turn, is escalating NFT apps development, and organizations who wish to enter the Web 3 World are looking out for the best NFT marketplace development companies to assist them in delivering personalized hyper experiences to users.

Why are NFTs Valuable?

Most people ask how much an NFT is or why do NFTs cost so much.?Well, an NFT's value comes from its uniqueness and is defined by the market supply and demand. It’s usually easier to evaluate an NFT when it's created as a rendition of a physical asset. NFTs only exist on-chain in the digital world. Every NFT has a different rarity, and each collection has a different supply. In layman's terms, the value of an NFT depends on its creators, its value in play-to-earn games, or community and market segment.

There are various successful cases of NFT projects, but there are even more projects that did not experience any notable growth. Make sure to “Do Your Own Research” before investing in NFTs, and don’t use the money you can’t afford to lose. Most people new to the NFT buzz have many questions, like how much does it cost to make an NFT? On average, the cost of minting a standard NFT can fall between $1 to $1000 and is different from marketing an NFT. You can find popular NFT wallets too, that might charge you for opening an account. However, most NFT wallets are free to download, and you can start your NFT journey instantly.

Top 5 Most Expensive NFTs

We compared NFTs sold on various marketplaces and auction platforms to put down a list of the most expensive Cryptocurrency NFTs ever sold to date. Below is the list of the top five most valuable NFTs sorted by US dollar price at the time of sale.

1. LarvaLabs’ “CryptoPunk #9998”: $529.7 Million

LarvaLabs’ CryptoPunk includes 10,000 unique Punks in the famous collection and was created before the ERC-721 standard. However, this CryptoPunk#9998 sale is considered ‘Invalid’ as the owner purchased the punk from themself using the loan and repaid the loan in a single transaction. However, it is the most expensive NFT ever sold. The NFT project experienced something akin to ‘wash trading’ that occurred on the Ethereum blockchain. A white-haired, green-eyed pixelated character known as a CryptoPunk 9998 sold for more than half a billion US dollars ($529.7 mn).

However, the sale was considered a ‘wash sale’ as the Ethereum blockchain shows the money from the NFT trade ended up right back where it started. The transactions took place in October 2021, and LarvaLabs took responsibility for removing such notifications in the future because while the bid is technically valid, no one can bid as the ETH is offered and removed in a single transaction.

2. Pak’s “The Merge”: $91.8 Million

The Merge, the second most expensive NFT ever sold, is a successful NFT project created by an anonymous artist, Pak. The NFT project was sold to a collective 28,983 buyers for USD 91.8 million in December 2021. This NFT was designed to allow participants to buy small parts of Pak’s piece, starting at $575 per piece. Every six hours, the price of each piece increased by USD 25, encouraging early purchases. In total, over 300,000 individual units of this NFT were sold, adding up to $91.8 million.

It holds the highest sale value by a living artist for a single network in a public sale. The Merge is a dynamic on-chain NFT with a unique token mechanism called ‘Merge’. The images of this NFT collection are circles of different sizes representing different masses. Each account can only have one NFT in this collection, so if you own an NFT and purchase another one, two NFTs will merge into one, and the circle grows in size with masses added together.

3. Beeple’s “Everydays: The First 5000 Days”: $69.3 Million

The next is one of the best-looking NFT, created by digital artist Mike “Beeple” Winkelmann is known as Everydays: The First 5000 Days was sold for  $69.3 million at Christie’s first-ever digital art auction in March 2021, marking the first time an auction house sold a purely digital NFT. Beeple has posted an image online every day since 2007, and “Everydays: The first 5000 days” is an intricate collage of over 5000 images shared over the last 13 years. The image represents the progression of technology and his art through time. It also depicts society’s obsession with and fear of technology.

4. Pak’s “Clock”: $52.7 Million

Not every NFT sale goes straight to the artist, and many NFTs are sold for charitable purposes like Pak’s “Clock”. This fourth highest-selling NFT was sold for  $52.7 million or 16, 953 ETH in February 2022. The creators of this NFT are Pak and Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, and NFT countdowns the number of days Assange has been imprisoned. The NFT was bought by over 10,000 AssangeDAO contributors.

The artists not only created ‘Clock’ but also allowed anyone to create their own NFTs. They can tokenize a censored message for any price they want or for free. The message will turn into an image showing the letters struck through to be considered censored. The proceeds for this NFTs series will go to pro-freedom organizations that Pak and Assange choose.

5. Beeple’s “Human One”: $28.9 Million

Individual artists like Beeple’s digital arts are gaining popularity, and surprisingly, Human One, the famous NFT project, was his first physical artwork that was auctioned at Christie’s for $28.9 million in November 2021. The futuristic dystopian “Human One” is one of the most valuable NFTs that includes moving 3D sculptures with four digital screens that display an endless video of an astronaut's journey through places at different times of the day. 

The hybrid artwork showcase Beeple’s artistic ambitions beyond the digital realm. The NFT itself comes in a physical box, which many find confusing, but the cryptographically signed file itself still exists, and that’s what makes it unique and the most valuable NFT. 

Wrapping Up!

Hope you liked the list of most expensive NFTs shared above. Investing in collectibles is nothing brand new, but certainly, apps for NFT minting are gaining popularity, and NFT sales are continuously creating new records. In the future, as NFTs mature, it is expected that we can potentially bear witness to crypto art for actually being sold over 100 million. But, as for how high the bar for NFT prices can only be judged with time as more people continue to mint them. 

If you want to get your app reviewed, you can reach out to us. 

Written By

Vikram Content Manager

Vikram is an experienced wunderkind, who embraced technology at a very early age, and today he is at the helm of it. Mobile apps are something that excites him the most, and now he is up to give this vertical the best shot. He routinely catches up with the new apps and comes up with the top apps that can excite you to the core.

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