Beeple opens a store to sell moments in time

The Future. Beeple is launching a non-fungible token marketplace for iconic moments in time, like big sports wins or historical events — it’s basically a NBA Top Shot for culture. Each NFT will also be bundled with a one-of-a-kind experience (like playing tennis with Grand Slam champion Andy Murray), which shows that true mainstream adoption of NFTs might ultimately involve merging the digital with the physical.

Get some “iconics”
After scoring a record $69.3 million sale of his Everydays: The First 5000 Days NFT, Mike Winkelmann (aka Beeple) is creating his own NFT marketplace.

• Beeple partnered with Pitchfork founder Ryan Schreiber on Wenew — a platform to “auction off historic and iconic moments across sports, politics, history, fashion, and more.”
• The collections are made in collaboration with the “person, estate, or organization” that is behind each moment in time.
• Wenew also plans to hire journalists to write “feature-length” stories on why these moments are important.
• Additionally NFTs will also be bundled with actual physical items or experiences.

Wenew’s first big auction is for an image of “tennis champion Andy Murray’s match-winning point at Wimbledon 2013 that marked the first time in 77 years that a British player won the U.K.-based Grand Slam title. Whoever wins the bid will also get the chance to play a match with Murray at Wimbledon and receive two courtside tickets to the 2022 Wimbledon finals.”

Make it last
The incredible experiences that come with the NFT auctions make the NFTs seem almost like an afterthought… and it’s something that Beeple himself is both aware of and is planning to subvert.

• He said “we’re really trying to add as much value to these NFTs as possible. Everybody’s [asking], ‘what gives NFTs value?’ And it’s really no different than any other medium, whether that be music or paintings. It’s the emotional connections we have that gets to people.”
• Additionally, he explained that the use of cultural moments as opposed to original artworks (the thing that made him $69 million): “By taking moments that we already have given relevance to in culture, it’s another use case for NFTs that I think will show people the value of these things in a different way.”

Wenew also wants to build something sustainable (both in terms of longevity and environmental impact), so each NFT will be made using what’s called Layer 2 solutions — a set of protocols to process transactions off the blockchain to help with scalability, speed, and sustainability.