just been down the rabbit hole on nft price history and honestly some of these numbers are wild. like, pak's merge selling for 91.8 million back in 2021? that's still the most expensive nft ever. what's crazy is it wasn't even one buyer - 28k+ collectors pooled together to purchase different quantities. the whole concept was genius, honestly.

beeple seems to be everywhere in this conversation too. first with everydays: the first 5000 days at 69 million (started as a 100 dollar opening bid lol), then human one for 29 million. dude literally created one artwork every single day for 5000 days and turned it into a masterpiece. that's the kind of grind that justifies the price.

what gets me is how cryptopunks dominated the expensive nft rankings. like, 5822 went for 23 million, 7523 for 11.75 million, and there's literally a bunch of them in the top 15. these were free to mint back in 2017 on ethereum. now people are paying millions for specific attributes - rare aliens, zombie punks, stuff like that.

there's also this interesting pattern where the most expensive nft doesn't always mean the best art. sometimes it's about rarity, sometimes it's about the artist's reputation, sometimes it's pure speculation. pak's clock with julian assange? 52.7 million. that's political art meeting activism. ringers #109 by dmitri cherniak hit 6.93 million because it's generative art on art blocks.

the market's definitely cooled since 2021-2022 when these crazy prices were happening, but the fact that some of these pieces still hold value is telling. bored ape yacht club did 3.16 billion in total sales, axie infinity 4.27 billion. those numbers are insane when you think about it.

anyway, if you're looking at most expensive nft history, these 15 basically tell the whole story of how digital art went from nothing to millions. curious if we'll see new record-breakers soon or if the hype has peaked.