I just reviewed the history of the most expensive NFTs ever sold and honestly, some of these numbers are brutal. Pak's The Merge remains the undisputed king, sold for $91.8 million in 2021. The crazy part is that it wasn't a single piece, but nearly 29,000 collectors bought different parts at $575 each. It's a completely different concept from what most would expect from the most expensive NFT on the market.

Next is Beeple's Everydays: The First 5000 Days, which went for $69 million at Christie's. The guy created a digital artwork every day for 5000 days and compiled it into a massive collage. The bid started at $100 but quickly exploded. Vignesh Sundaresan, known as MetaKovan, was the one who bought it with 42,329 ETH.

Then comes Clock, another collaboration between Pak and Julian Assange. A stopwatch that records Assange's days of imprisonment, updated daily. AssangeDAO bought it for $52.7 million to support his legal defense. That is the kind of NFT with real political significance behind it.

Beeple also has Human One, a 16K kinetic sculpture that runs 24/7 and which Beeple can update remotely. It sold for $29 million in November 2021. It’s a living piece that constantly evolves, not just a static image.

CryptoPunks dominate the rest of the list. #5822 (un Alien Punk azul) alcanzó 23 millones. El #7523 with a medical mask reached $11.75 million. #4156 (a monkey) sold for $10.26 million. These crypto punks are still incredibly sought after because they were literally the first major NFTs on Ethereum back in 2017.

There’s also TPunk #3442, which Justin Sun bought for 120 million TRX ($10.5 million at that time). It looks like the Joker from Batman, so they obviously gave it that nickname.

Dmitri Cherniak’s Ringers #109 is another important expensive NFT, sold for $6.93 million. The entire Ringers series on Art Blocks is generative and quite valuable.

XCOPY sold Right-click and Save As Guy for $7 million to Cozomo de' Medici. The irony is perfect: a piece about how people think they can download NFTs by right-clicking, sold for millions.

Beeple’s Crossroad, a 10-second short about the 2020 elections, went for $6.6 million. It shows two completely different endings depending on the election result.

What’s interesting is that most of these most expensive NFTs were sold in 2021-2022 during the market peak. Now the market is different, more consolidated. But these records remain historic. Axie Infinity and Bored Ape Yacht Club have the highest collection volumes with billions in total transactions.

Each of these works has its own unique story. Pak chose to remain anonymous but became a central figure in digital art. Beeple went from selling for $100 to breaking records. CryptoPunks were the starting point of all this.

The NFT market has evolved quite a bit since then. It’s no longer just about price speculation. There are projects with real utility, collections with strong communities, and artists using NFTs for social causes like Pak did with Assange.

If someone asks what the most expensive NFT of all time is, the answer still remains The Merge. But the real question is whether those prices will be seen again or if the market has found a new balance. Anyway, these historic records show that NFTs are here to stay as part of the digital art world.