just scrolled through some wild nft sales data and honestly the numbers are insane. pak's merge going for $91.8m back in 2021? that's still the highest ever. wild part is it wasn't even one collector—28k+ people bought pieces of it. like a shared ownership thing. then you've got beeple's stuff everywhere on this most expensive nfts list. his 5000 days sold for $69m at christie's, and human one went for $29m. the man really dominated the space.

what's crazy is how much the market shifted. cryptopunks were literally free to mint in 2017, and now individual punks are selling for millions. #5822 hit $23m. that's insane for something that cost nothing to start. the most expensive nfts tell this whole story about how people's perception of digital art completely changed in like 5 years.

there's also this political angle with pak's clock nft about julian assange—$52.7m raised for his legal defense. kind of shows nfts aren't just about money, they became this tool for activism too. the most expensive nfts aren't always just art flex, some of them actually mean something.

still wild to think about. 95% of nfts apparently have near-zero value now, but the ones that hit? they're generational wealth moves for collectors. wondering if we'll ever see those prices again or if the whole market peaked back then.