Paris Hilton, a businesswoman, model, singer, and heiress to the Hilton Hotel chain has successfully sold in an auction a picture of her cat as a non-fungible token on an Ethereum-based platform for 40 ETH.
While employing the same platform to auction off a picture of his own, Ashton Kutcher burned the paper copy to immortalize the digital form existing now only on the blockchain.
Based on the Ethereum blockchain, Cryptograph enables famous individuals to auction personal digital artworks (cryptographs) as unique non-fungible tokens (NFTs) stored on the ETH network. Some of the proceeds are then distributed to various charity organizations.
One of the most recent successful auctions involved Paris Hilton, as she drew a picture of her cat and advertised the campaign on Twitter.
“Paris’ Cryptograph is a hand-drawn portrait of one of her cats named Munchkin. This is Paris’ first-ever NFT, and so the fact it is a portrait of a Kitty is some would say rather appropriate given how NFTs and Crypto Kitties are so synonymous. Her Cryptograph is supporting three different charities all related to feeding and housing the vulnerable.” – the auction platform noted.
Hilton’s action was live for three days, and it gathered four bids. The winner offered 40 ETH (worth over $16,000). Interestingly, the same person with the username Adirolls previously bought artworks from Roger Ver for 7 ETH and Ethereum Foundation researcher Vlad Zamfir for 25 ETH.
The famous actor and entrepreneur Ashton Kutcher, who previously made a sizeable donation to Ellen DeGeneres in Ripple (XRP), followed Hilton’s example.
Kutcher promoted his self-drawn picture of a collection of cartoon eyeballs and a one-stroke star dubbed “The Eye Of The Beholder.”
According to Cryptograph’s explanation, his artwork is a “historical work” as he immortalized it by digitizing it on the blockchain and then destroyed the physical version, hence making the winner’s copy the only one existing.
“Ashton here is probably playing on the idea that all art is subjective and that art wholly exists in the eye of its beholder. Perhaps he has created a minimal artwork to symbolize the subjective nature of art and to provoke the viewer into deriving their own meaning from his piece.”
The auction ends tomorrow, and the current highest bid is for 9.8 ETH (nearly $4,000).
Featured Image Courtesy Of Yahoo. The article was first published on: Aug 20, 2020
