More than half a million for a painting of a rock may seem too good to be true. However, one shabby illustration from NFT initiative EtherRocks sold for exactly that today.
EtherRocks are NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, blockchain-based tokens that show ownership of digital goods like photographs or video files, as well as real assets.
There are 100 EtherRocks in all, all of which were constructed in 2017—quite old for an NFT project. The illustrations were inspired by royalty-free clip art and came from a royalty-free clip art database.
Sellers are now demanding even more for the fancy JPEGs. The cheapest pet rock is worth a million dollars. The lowest rock was just $305,000 yesterday, and one went for $100,000 only two weeks ago.
Although each of the 100 rocks appears to be the same, some are painted in different hues. Only four blue rocks exist, including EtherRock 55, which sold for $409,000 yesterday. The selling resulted in a surge in trading volume.
TRON CEO Justin Sun, who is known for his extravagant spending, revealed he spent half a million dollars on a rock this morning. He didn’t specify which one it was, but his tweet suggests it was a gray rock. Two hours before Sun’s tweet, an EtherRocks Twitter bot confirmed the sale of such a rock for $580,000.
The cheapest EtherRock available for sale is now $1 million.