No, your computer did not crash, the image has finished loading and is not pixelated.
CryptoPunk at number 7523 belongs to a series of creatures designed in 2017 by the young American company Larva Labs.
This Thursday, it was awarded a record amount at Sotheby's.
Each image roughly represents a pixelated face, reminiscent of crossed characters in 80s video games like PacMan, with a set of characteristics that make it unique.
Buyer Shalom McKenzie, the largest shareholder in US online betting operator DraftKings, put in $ 11.75 million to win the stake.
In the process, he acquired the second most expensive NFT artwork in history behind the digital artwork “Everydays” by artist Beeple, which sold for $ 69.3 million in mid-March.
A work protected by blockchain
The 7523 is the only character, among the 10,000 CryptoPunks created, to wear a surgical mask, which made him a particularly prized item.
This Cryptopunk has been associated with a theoretically inviolable certificate of authenticity, the NFT, for non-fungible token or non-fungible token, a term which means that it is unique and its rights are therefore protected for life thanks to the technology of verification by the blockchain.
All transactions are listed on a database that no one can modify.
What reassure collectors and give them the guarantee of ownership of a work.
“It's like a certificate of ownership for a virtual work, if an object uses this image there will be copyright,” explains Gauthier Zuppinger, co-founder of the specialized site NonFungible.com.
"Anyone can draw Batman but DC Comics which has the rights and can open an official store and produce merchandising", he compares.
In total, CryptoPunks have generated $ 351 million in transactions since their launch, according to NonFungible.com. The very first NFT, "Quantum" by New York artist Kevin McCoy, was acquired this Thursday at Sotheby's for $ 1.47 million. It was created in 2014 with the same technology as NFTs, but three years before the word was invented.