You may remember a world record setting NFT sale occurred in March: Beeple sold a college of his work for $69m in a Christie’s auction - a first in many ways. The media was alight for several days, excitedly calling the top of a bubble that seemed too manic to be real.
You may have heard of a recent mind-blowing move by Visa to buy a cryptopunk for $150,000; causing an instant repricing of Larva Labs’ NFT project. It now takes $400,000 to buy a cryptopunk avatar photo, up from $30,000 in March.
However, even those on NFT Twitter 24/7 may have missed the legendary $70,000,000 sale of generative AI portraits this last weekend. As of 2pm on labor day, I can’t find a single article written about this on crypto or mainstream media.
ShortsHoward | NFT Siblings @ShortsHoward
Historic ~58,000 NFTs sold for +$70 million in 1.5 hours - super smooth, no chaos whatsoever in the drop discord (one #pak channel), 3.5k unique owners, and total gas of $392k! Kudos to @poetslost @muratpak @manifoldxyz @NFTSiblingsHere’s a crypto-native article on the most expensive NFTs ever sold: Decrypt Media
CNN ran an article today called “Remember NFTs? They're back, big time” with no mention of this sale!
So how is an art project with a marketcap in the $150m range flying so under the radar?
It appears that Pak is truly challenging what gives art value. By being an anonymous creator, in addition to being entirely cryptonative, Pak is challenging the status quo at the intersection of design, value, and art.
Without anyone catering to traditional media, this means that no one is publishing press releases to advertise these things to a mainstream audience. This is a performance happening exclusively for those involved, making it that much more meaningful and exclusive for those that understand.
It’s also hard to explain why people are buying millions of dollars worth of “blank pages”.
At introduction, a LOSTPOETS page was .32 ETH, with those buying the most pages being rewarded with x of 1024 “origin poets”. Over the weekend, the price of a page has doubled, with 8 million in ETH volume exchanging hands on opensea, setting a record for secondary market interest.
In a week, each page will allow you to mint a “poet,” an AI-generated portrait designed by Pak. Pak rewarded those who are participating in his cryptocurrency ecosystem, $ASH, with some free pages.
Earlier this year, Pak held a record sale with NiftyGateway and Sotheby’s, raising $13,000,000 in an auction and cube sale. The first day, the cost of a cube was $500, $1000 the second and $1500 the third. After sales on the first day closed, it was announced that cubes can be burned for Ash, the new token of Pak’s NFT ecosystem.
A cube today is worth around $15,000.
A cube burned on day 1 of the burn.art experiment is now worth ~$20,000 worth of $ASH as well as having been airdropped lostpoets pages worth ~$14,000.
Anyone who bought one cube and burned it is holding approximately $30,000 of value for “investing,” in Pak.
Using Twitter as a stage, Pak has created an ecosystem worth a couple hundred million dollars out of nothing. He is consistently redefining how value is perceived and created. As an anonymous creator driven to design simplicity, Pak is thinking at a scale larger than any designer before him. Bringing a cryptonative perspective to some of the most visually stimulating pieces of art available in the NFT space, Pak uses the opportunity to gamify value in the most interesting game theory experiment being played in our world today.
LostPoets is a project driving speculation beyond price speculation. It’s a game and a collectible. Getting just one page would be a smart way to participate in the fun value game that Pak has created.
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It's strange, down in the depths of this world it felt like everyone was talking about it and then out in the real world: nothing.
Most people don't even know who PAK is outside of the art world. I spoke with a collector about this project and they were staying away because of the unknown in the future where those have collected these pages will somehow be...changed.
I like a lot of the ideas, the entry point was too high for me, which to say is frustrating is an understatement watching this happen in real time.
Murat Pak! I got to know him years ago on Twitter thanks to Archillect. Archillect is a synthetic intelligence that finds inspirational images through social media channels and shares them through these channels, or an artificial intelligence depending on the point of view. Developed by Murat Pak.
I knew him before I knew anything about NFT. I follow Archillect and him with great interest. I was very excited and surprised when his one-pixel NFT sold for $1.36 million.
His art of pure simplicity is truly extraordinary. Simplicity coincides with my understanding of design and art. Perhaps one of the artists who does it best. He uses Twitter effectively and makes sure everyone is aware of him. I am sure that he will take the NFT industry to a very different dimension with his art.
I am happy that you mentioned him, thank you for the article!