Buyers pay $7 million for unseen NFT collection
NFT investors have paid $7 million for 50 tokens that grant ownership over digital artworks.
From December 9 to December 13, Tyler Hobbs, the artist behind the popular NFT series Fidenza, will debut 100 one-of-a-kind digital artworks in his current collection Incomplete Control at the Bright Moments gallery in New York City.
Hobbs' followers paid 1,800 ETH (about $7 million) on Oct. 22 in return for 50 of 100 “Golden Tokens,” which give the bearer ownership rights to one of the artworks set to be created during the event. Each token has a number between one and fifty that relates to a single piece of art from the collection.
The Golden Tokens were sold in a quick 90-minute Dutch auction sponsored by Mirror Protocol. The tokens were initially priced at 500 ETH apiece, with a non-linear price fall every 5 minutes until a floor of 5 ETH was reached. Each of the 50 tokens was sold for between 30 Ether (approximately $120,000) and 80 Ether (about $320,000).
Investors in nonfungible tokens (NFTs) have poured $7 million into a Dutch auction that auctioned 50 tokens that allowed buyers to manufacture digital artworks they had never seen before.
did a thing today congrats @tylerxhobbs and @brtmoments on raising ~1,800 ETH for NFT tickets redeemable for IRL mints also s/o the entire @viamirror team across protocol, product, design, data, growth, etc. for shipping a dutch auction protocol + UI in a week pic.twitter.com/nfSxhmPlM6— p.mirror.xyz (@patrickxrivera) October 22, 2021
On Nov. 5, the remaining Golden Tokens will be given at random to 50 wallets holding artwork from Hobbs' earlier series Fidenza or the CryptoCitizens NFT initiative. Individuals that get the tokens will be able to acquire an Incomplete Control NFT for 15 ETH, which is a 50% reduction off the final clearing price of the auction.
Hobbs' Incomplete Control series explores issues of imperfection and how the digital sphere is able to transcend many of the flaws that exist in the physical world, according to Hobbs. According to Hobbs' website:
“The forces of chaos and entropy give the natural world a certain warmth, and there are patterns and lessons there that we can use. I like to introduce these elements into the digital world, and Incomplete Control continues that work.”
Hobbs' previous NFT series Fidenza consists of a selected drop of 999 NFTs that include one-of-a-kind generative artworks made with the purchaser's transaction hash as a data input. The collection was sold for almost 37,000 ETH (approximately $400,000) and is now on display on Art Blocks, a generative NFT platform.
Hobbs chastised SolBlocks, a Solana-based NFT initiative, in September for utilising Fidenza's open-source code to produce pictures for commercial reasons without Hobbs' permission. Hobbs has now turned down SolBlocks' offer to split sales revenues with him.