First ‘digital home’ sells for €420,000 in cryptocurrency sale

A “digital home” set within a Mars-like landscape has sold for 288 Ether, a cryptocurrency whose value makes it the equivalent of €420,000, in the latest virtual purchase on the non-fungible-token market.

The house, called Mars House, was designed by Toronto artist Krista Kim with the help of an architect and video game software, the architecture and design magazine Dezeen reported.

The new owner of the 3D digital file will be able to explore the open-plan mansion’s rooms using virtual reality (a digital world) or, in future, augmented reality (where digital elements are added to a view of the real world). SuperRare, a marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), said it was the “first NFT digital house in the world”.

The purchaser now possesses a digital certificate of ownership protected by blockchain technology, described by New Yorker writer Nathan Heller in 2017 as "like the digital version of a scarf knitted by your grandmother. She uses one ball of yarn, and the result is continuous. Each stitch depends on the one just before it. It's impossible to remove part of the fabric, or to substitute a swatch, without leaving some trace".

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The sale comes after a digital-only work by the artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, was bought for $79.4 million (€67.1 million), "positioning him among the top three most valuable living artists," according to auction house Christie's.

This week the first tweet by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, sent almost exactly 15 years ago, sold as an NFT for $2,915,835.47 (€2.4 million). The post said: "just setting up my twttr".

Earlier this month, Gucci launched sales of digital-only footwear at $17.99 (€15), a "virtual steal" at around $480 (€406) less than the luxury brand's shoes usually sell for. The shoes could be "worn" using virtual and augmented reality.

Kim told Dezeen she believes the NFT market “supports positive change through the crypto revolution” and that this revolution will “create real political action to support green energy and sustainability”.

For the time being, NFTs are notoriously unsustainable, because producing an NFT is extremely energy-intensive. An artist named Joanie Lemercier who sold his digital works for six NFTs in 2019 calculated that the sale had used the equivalent of two years of energy use in his studio, Wired reported. – Guardian