The most expensive NFT ever sold is The Merge by the pseudonymous artist Pak. It brought in $91.8 million on Nifty Gateway in a 48-hour sale that began on 2 December 2021, and about 28,983 buyers took part. Because so many people bought pieces of it, many lists use a second answer. The most paid for a single NFT by a single buyer is $69,346,250, for Beeple's Everydays: The First 5000 Days, sold at Christie's in March 2021. Neither record has been beaten since. The biggest sale since then is a CryptoPunk that sold for 4,500 ETH (about $16 million) in March 2024.
The ranked list
| # | NFT (artist / collection) | Price | Venue and date |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Merge (Pak) | $91.8M (about 28,983 buyers) | Nifty Gateway, 2–4 Dec 2021 |
| 2 | Everydays: The First 5000 Days (Beeple) | $69,346,250 (42,329 ETH) | Christie's, 11 Mar 2021 |
| 3 | Clock (Pak with Julian Assange) | 16,593 ETH (about $52.7M) | Auction in Pak's Censored drop, 9 Feb 2022 |
| 4 | HUMAN ONE (Beeple) | $28,985,000 | Christie's New York, 9 Nov 2021 |
| 5 | CryptoPunk #5822 (CryptoPunks) | 8,000 ETH (about $23.7M) | CryptoPunks marketplace, 12 Feb 2022 |
| 6 | CryptoPunk #3100 (CryptoPunks) | 4,500 ETH (about $16M) | CryptoPunks marketplace, 4 Mar 2024 |
| 7 | CryptoPunk #7523, "Covid Alien" (CryptoPunks) | about $11.75M | Sotheby's "Natively Digital", 10 Jun 2021 |
| 8 | TPunk #3442 (TPunks, Tron) | 120M TRX (about $10.5M) | Tron NFT marketplace, Aug 2021 |
| 9 | CryptoPunk #3100, earlier sale (CryptoPunks) | 4,200 ETH (about $7.58M) | CryptoPunks marketplace, 11 Mar 2021 |
| 10 | Right-click and Save As guy (XCOPY) | 1,600 ETH (about $7M) | SuperRare, 9 Dec 2021 |
Ringers #109 by Dmitri Cherniak sits just below the top ten. It sold for 2,100 ETH (about $6.93 million) on 2 October 2021.
Dollar values for ETH-priced sales depend on the exchange rate used, so outlets give slightly different figures. For example, DappRadar's sales table puts the XCOPY sale at about $5.08 million, while other sources put it near $7 million.
#1 The Merge: Pak, $91.8 million
The Merge was not sold as one finished artwork. Buyers bought "mass" units, and any units held in the same wallet merged into a single, larger token. According to Decrypt, existing Pak collectors could buy early at $299 per unit. The public price started at $400 and rose $25 every six hours, and the last units sold for $575. Sources disagree on the number of units sold: Wikipedia gives 312,686, while Decrypt reports more than 266,000. Decrypt also counts 28,984 buyers, not 28,983.
That structure is why people argue over calling The Merge the "most expensive NFT." It holds the record for the largest total amount spent on one work, but no single buyer paid anywhere near $91.8 million.
#2 Everydays: The First 5000 Days: Beeple, $69.3 million
Mike Winkelmann (Beeple) made the piece by combining 5,000 daily images into one file. Christie's sold it in March 2021 for $69,346,250. According to Reuters, it was the first time a major auction house had sold a purely digital artwork with no physical form. Christie's confirmed that the buyer, MetaKovan, paid in ether. CoinDesk and Reuters report the amount as 42,329.453 ETH. It is still the largest NFT sale to a single buyer.
#3 Clock: Pak and Julian Assange, about $52.7 million
Clock is a counter showing how many days Julian Assange had spent in prison. AssangeDAO, a group formed in December 2021 to buy the piece, won it on 9 February 2022 for 16,593 ETH. The Block reported that the DAO had raised 17,422 ETH from its members for the bid. Dollar estimates range from $52.7 million (NFT Now) to $53 million (The Block).
#4 HUMAN ONE: Beeple, $28.985 million
HUMAN ONE is a physical sculpture about seven feet tall with four video screens, sold together with an NFT. Christie's sold it at its 21st Century Evening Sale in New York on 9 November 2021 for $28,985,000. The buyer was Swiss entrepreneur Ryan Zurrer.
#5 CryptoPunk #5822: $23.7 million
#5822 is one of nine Alien punks in the 10,000-piece CryptoPunks collection. Deepak Thapliyal, CEO of the blockchain infrastructure company Chain, bought it for 8,000 ETH in February 2022. That doubled the previous record for a CryptoPunk. Decrypt reported that he borrowed against his crypto through a DeFi lending protocol to fund the purchase.
CryptoPunks #3100 and #7523
#3100 appears twice in the table. It sold for 4,200 ETH (about $7.58 million) on 11 March 2021, which was then the highest price ever paid for a CryptoPunk. It sold again for 4,500 ETH, worth about $16 million, on 4 March 2024. The Block reported that the CryptoPunks platform called it the second-highest CryptoPunk sale in both dollar and ether terms.
#7523 is the only Alien punk that wears a medical mask. It sold for about $11.75 million at Sotheby's on 10 June 2021. Business Insider and The Block named the buyer as Shalom Meckenzie, the largest shareholder of DraftKings.
Sales that look like records but are not
Not every large on-chain number is a real sale:
- CryptoPunk #1563, "24,000 ETH" (3 October 2024). It was reported as a $56 million sale. Decrypt and Cointelegraph found that the buyer used a flash loan, meaning the ETH was borrowed and repaid within the same transaction. The same 24,000 ETH then went back to the lender. The punk has no rare traits, and its previous sale in September was for about $69,000 worth of ETH.
- CryptoPunk #9998, "about $532 million" (2021). This was also funded by a flash loan. The owner effectively sold the token to themselves.
To check a headline sale yourself, open the transaction in a block explorer such as Etherscan:
- Find where the buyer's funds came from. If the same amount goes back to a lending contract in the same transaction, it was a flash loan.
- Compare the price with the token's earlier sales and with prices for tokens that share its traits.
- For auction sales, check the result on the auction house's own lot page.
How the record NFT sales compare
Switch between dollar and ether prices to see how far the top sales sit above the rest of the list.
Data table
| Item | $ million | Source |
|---|---|---|
| The Merge (Pak) | 91.8 | |
| Everydays (Beeple) | 69.3 | |
| Clock (Pak, Assange) | 52.7 | |
| HUMAN ONE (Beeple) | 28.985 | |
| CryptoPunk #5822 | 23.7 | |
| CryptoPunk #3100 (2024) | 16 | |
| CryptoPunk #7523 | 11.75 | |
| TPunk #3442 | 10.5 | |
| CryptoPunk #3100 (2021) | 7.58 | |
| Right-click and Save As guy | 7 |
Data table
| Item | $ million | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Everydays (Beeple) | 42,329 | |
| Clock (Pak, Assange) | 16,593 | |
| CryptoPunk #5822 | 8,000 | |
| CryptoPunk #3100 (2024) | 4,500 | |
| CryptoPunk #3100 (2021) | 4,200 | |
| Ringers #109 | 2,100 | |
| Right-click and Save As guy | 1,600 |
Dollar values for ether-priced sales depend on the exchange rate each outlet used, The Merge's total came from about 28,983 buyers rather than one, and flash-loan 'sales' and the unverified 2025 sale are left out.
Why these pieces sold for so much
The top of the list is concentrated:
- Two artists. Pak and Beeple account for four of the top five.
- Rare CryptoPunks. All three punks in the table that sold for more than $10 million are Aliens, a type with only nine examples in the collection.
- Auction houses. Christie's and Sotheby's ran three of the ten sales.
- One period. Most of these sales happened between March 2021 and February 2022.
In short, the record prices came from an artist's established name, a trait with a small, fixed supply that anyone can check on-chain, and the 2021–2022 market.
Where the market is now
The newest major event was outside the art market. On 9 July 2025, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov said that Snoop Dogg's digital collectibles drop on Telegram "sold out in just 30 minutes today, generating $12M in sales". The drop was close to one million collectibles priced at a few dollars each, with minting on the TON blockchain planned afterwards. That is a high-volume, low-price model, very different from single-work auctions.
For the overall market, DappRadar's Q3 2025 report counted a record 18.1 million NFT sales in the quarter, with about $1.58 billion in trading volume. DappRadar announced on 17 November 2025 that it was shutting down, so its quarterly series stops at Q3 2025. No NFT sale in 2025 or 2026 has come close to the 2021 records.
