Beeple #16

Biography:

Michael Winkelmann — better known by his professional name, Beeple — is an American digital artist who creates a variety of art pieces including illustrations, short films and VJ loops as well as virtual reality and augmented reality works.

Beeple made history as one of the biggest visionaries in the nonfungible token (NFT) space, selling multiple artworks in the form of NFTs for tens of millions of dollars. Beeple’s NFT collage “Everydays: the First 5000 Days” sold for a record-breaking $69.3 million on auction at Christie’s in March 2021, reportedly making it the third most expensive artwork sold by a living artist at auction.

Beeple is also known for making concert visuals for Justin Bieber, One Direction, Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, Eminem, Zedd, Deadmau5 and many more. He is 40 years old and reportedly has a net worth of between $70 million and $90 million.

Beeple’s 2021:

2021 was a huge year for Beeple, as the digital artist finally finished and sold his massive “Everydays” piece through the Christie’s auction house after working on it for nearly 14 years. The artist started working on the artwork back in 2007, creating a piece of art every day and eventually collecting a total of 5,000 unique images. Beeple’s works often depicted dystopian futures and included familiar figures from popular culture or politics to play around everyday events.

Following the mindblowing success of “Everydays,” Beeple continued to work on NFT productions, creating a kinetic video sculpture with a corresponding dynamic NFT. Named “Human One,” the piece sold at a Christie’s auction for $29 million.

Since NFTs, like many other pieces of art, are resellable, some of Beeple’s artworks from 2020 saw even greater success in 2021 amid the intensifying global NFT craze. One of his works, “Crossroad” — which was originally sold for $66,666 in 2020 — was resold for $6.6 million in February 2021.

Some of Beeple’s NFT drops have attracted attention from major blockchain and cryptocurrency investors. Prominent Ether investor Tim Kang was one of Beeple’s first major collectors, buying his early NFT collection “The Complete MF Collection” for $777,777. After purchasing it through ​​the Nifty Gateway platform back in December 2020, he held on to the collection for the entire year.

Beeple’s 2022:

Beeple originally learned about NFTs only in October 2020, but he is expected to continue cementing his expertise in the industry and making NFT history over the year. Because the artist is also working on VR and AR art, it is also fair to anticipate that Beeple’s work will be significant in the Metaverse in 2022. Regardless of whether there will be a new record-setting auction by Beeple, the digital artist will likely remain a major figure in the NFT space in 2022, continuing to drop more nonfungible token art.

Beeple is an active member of the crypto space, having 2.5 million followers on Instagram and nearly 600,000 on Twitter at the time of writing. He is expected to remain active on social media in 2022, continuing to post artwork and discuss issues that are close to his heart on Twitter and discussion channels like Discord.