beetle net worth
What is Beeple’s net worth?
Beeple is an American graphic designer, digital artist and animator known for producing comical and often surreal multimedia works with social and political messages. Beeple has a net worth of $50 million. In 2021, one of his NFT collages titled “Everydays: the First 500 Days” sold for nearly $70 million at Christie’s, making it the fourth most expensive artwork by any living artist. Beeple is considered to be at the forefront of the movement towards non-fungible tokens in digital media.
Early life and education
Beeple, whose real name is Michael Joseph Winkelmann, was born in 1981 in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. His mother works at a senior center, while his father is an electrical engineer. For higher education, Winkelmann graduated from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, in 2003 with a degree in computer science.
artistic career
On May 1, 2007, Winkelmann started his famous “Everydays” project, which involves creating a piece of art every day. Inspired by Tom Judd, who has been painting a painting every day for a year, Winkelmann’s project has seen more than 5,000 consecutive days of digital art. In addition, Winkelmann has been working on personal media and shows over the years, such as Adobe Illustrator in 2012 and Cinema 4D in 2015. Thematically, his work often focuses on dystopian futures and uses iconic figures in pop culture or politics to satirize current news. Some of Winkelmann’s work was used in Louis Vuitton’s Spring/Summer 2019 ready-to-wear collection.
NFT
In November 2020, Winkelmann began selling non-fungible tokens on Nifty Gateway, an online auction platform for digital art. A non-fungible token or NFT is a digital representation that can only be owned by one person through the blockchain. One of Winkelmann’s NFTs, called “Crossroad,” is designed to transform into one of two animations based on the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election. It originally sold for $66,666.66 and later resold in February 2021 for $6.7 million.
In 2021, Winkelmann created a collage of images titled “Everydays: the First 5000 Days” from his “Everydays” series. Its associated NFT was auctioned at Christie’s in London, where it sold for $69.3 million. In the process, it became one of the most expensive works by a living artist, the most expensive NFT ever sold, and the first NFT to be sold by a traditional auction house. The buyer, Singaporean programmer Vignesh Sundaresan, paid for the artwork using 42,329 ether, a cryptocurrency. He displays his work in full resolution in a digital museum.
other items
Other media Winkelmann practices include short films, Creative Commons VJ loops, and virtual and augmented reality productions. He has also produced concert visuals for artists including Katy Perry, Eminem, Nicki Minaj, Zedd, One Direction, Wiz Khalifa, Janet Jackson and Imagine Dragons. On the corporate side, his clients include NBC, Apple, Samsung, Nike, Sony Pictures, Coca-Cola and Space X.
personal life
Winkelman moved from Wisconsin to North Charleston, South Carolina in 2017. There, he lived with his wife and two children.
