Indian entrepreneur Vignesh Sundaresan has bought a non-fungible token (NFT) called Beeple for $69.3 million in an auction. NFTs are digital assets that exist on a blockchain, a record of transactions kept on networked computers.
Sundaresan is the founder of the online gaming company Play Games24x7, and he plans to use Beeple as the basis for a new gaming platform. “I’m excited to own Beeple and build something amazing on it,” he said in a statement. “The possibilities are endless.”
Beeple is an NFT that was created by artist Alex Generalov, who has made it available for free download.
Sundaresan’s purchase was made through a Dutch auction, where the price tends to fall as more tokens are sold. Therefore, he ended up paying an average of $813 per token. The previous record for an NFT purchase was set by Robby Kraft in 2018 when he bought 10,000 CryptoKitties for $110,000.
An NFT is a digital asset that exists on a blockchain, a record of transactions kept on networked computers. They can be anything from popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether to new projects such as Beeple and CryptoKitties that use blockchain technology to represent unique digital assets.
The process of buying something with bitcoin is called ‘spending’ — just like when you spend gold or cash. You own and control the bitcoin until you spend it, like handing over cash for a coffee in a shop. But whereas spending money typically means giving something up, spending cryptocurrency simply means transferring ownership.