Musician Grimes’ debut NFT auction generates $5.8M in 20 minutes

Candian musician and visual artist, Claire Elise Boucher, or Grimes, has sold a mammoth $5.8 million worth of tokenized art in less than 20 minutes on Nifty Gateway.

On Feb. 28, the popular musician launched her debut NFT collection, “WarNymph,” in collaboration with her brother, digital artist Mac Boucher.

The collection takes elements from mythology and futurism to create the “Oth3rkin universe,” with Grimes’ WarNymph collection comprising a goddess who battles obsoletion and future decay within a fictional realm. The listing on Nifty Gateway states:

“WarNymph is the Goddess of Neo-Genesis. She battles the destructive force of obsolete ideas and systemic decay that threatens the future. She embodies the power of perpetual regeneration that manifests in a state of infinite infancy where she sheds her old skin of corruption.”

The collection included four drawings sold by open draw, three images sold through silent auction, and a regulator auction for a single one-of-a-kind multimedia piece.

. Each of the artworks depicts angelic infants, often featured in dystopian scenarios invoking themes pertinent to popular culture — such as an incubator reminiscent of The Matrix, and a monolith that invokes The Planet of the Apes.

Dropping NFTs tomorrow at 2pm EST. enter the void pic.twitter.com/l9fNFUCheX

— ☘︎ (@Grimezsz) February 28, 2021

The four open edition tokenized drawings were priced at $20 and limited to 100 copies each, with the buyers of each piece being chosen through a random draw. More than 13,000 people signed up for each open draw.

The silent auctions, which allowed bidders to anonymously vie for one of 10 copies of three artworks, fetched prices from $77,000 to $111,000 — despite minimum bids starting at just $1,000.

The most-expensive NFT sold was “Death of the Old”, an animation depicting flying infant angels circulating a glowing white cross that is accompanied by an exclusive demo track from Grimes. The piece was sold through a regular auction, with the winning bidder paying nearly $389,000 for the one-of-a-kind artwork.

Grimes is a well-known Canadian musician and wife to Tesla CEO and Dogecoin enthusiast, Elon Musk. The entire Musk family is now involved in crypto, with Tesla investing $1.5 billion in Bitcoin on Feb. 8., and Elon purchasing Dogecoin for his 9-month-old son on Feb. 11 so that he could become a “Toddler Hodler”. 

After her tokenized art debut, Grimes has become the top-performing musician in the NFT industry to date. The musician also teased further drops that will be released as she continues to develop the Oth3rkin universe.

Grimes also noted that a portion of the proceeds will go to Carbon 180, an NGO dedicated to reducing carbon emissions.

Grimes’ debut follows moves from other celebrities to embrace NFTs, such as entrepreneur Mark Cuban, actress Lindsay Lohan, vocalist of rock band Linkin Park, Mike Shinoda, and former MLB player, Micah Johnson.