The Story Of Pak: The Unknown NFT Artist.

Who is Pak?

Pak is a digital artist who is rapidly rising to the spotlight in the cryptocurrency arena. His latest feat was his digital artworks, in the form of NFTs, which sold for more than $17 million during a three-day sale at auction house Sotheby.

What we know so far: Pak enjoys anonymity.

The world knows virtually nothing about Pak. Everything from his name to his occupation to his gender is a mystery. He’s mentioned on the record that he prefers to be addressed with the pronouns they/them, but aside from this nugget of information, he’s a ghost. Did we mention his official nickname is “The Nothing”?

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he used a voice distorting mechanism to conceal his real voice and often replied to questions outside the interview with gif images of smiling children and cheering crowds.

The rationale behind his strict stance on privacy boils down to, you guessed it, the artwork. In his own words, he explained that anonymity was a “useful way to deflect attention from the artist to the art”. In simple terms, he wants people to appreciate his art for the work itself, without any influence from the artist’s face. He also elaborated further on using the avatar “0”, saying that “the use of an avatar appeals to core admirers” who share the same love.

Known for art, and a few other things as well.

Pak enjoys demonstrating the unconventional features that come with NFT smart contracts in his work. For example, once sold, some pieces can be digitally altered to the extent that they can be rendered entirely useless (more on this later), which simply can’t be done once a traditional piece of art like a sculpture. Other pieces contained hidden phrases like “I am the medium” embedded within the lines of its code.

Here are just a few of Pak’s notable accomplishments:

• Pak is best known for creating the Archillect, an AI algorithm that acts as a digital curator. The AI trawls social media feeds and posts images it believes to be popular roughly every 10 minutes on its own feed.
• He’s collaborated with Trevor Jones in the PAK X TREVORJONES – THE SIX PORTRAITS collab, which earned him $1.4 million. This artwork included oil paintings of portraits of various reputed artists like Picasso, Basquiat and many more.
• “The Title” is another one of Paik’s famous artworks. Unlike the others, Pak Pak sought to prove that NFTs were more than art but rather about the ownership of a file. This concept was demonstrated by the same artwork being sold at differing prices due to the scarcity and the title of each NFT. (He sold the same image at different prices).
• Another artwork, “The Switch”, was sold for 1.4 million. On the surface, it appears to be a digital image of a rotating, black and white geometric shape. However, its unique selling proposition is that the entire work is designed to change form upon its owner’s request. However, once altered, it cannot be reverted to its original state.

To put it in his own words, “I like creating things that are hard to consume.”

What are NFT’s?

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are digital certificates of authenticity that allow images to be tracked and traded.

These tokens are unique and can’t be replaced once they’ve been traded. NFTs can be made from anything which is in digital form, from drawings, music to virtually anything. For example, Dogecoin itself isn’t an NFT, but there’s a GIF of it which is.

While the digital file behind an NFT can be easily downloaded and shared, only the owner of the NFT will retain the title deed. This ownership aspect of NFTs is what’s driving people to pay millions of dollars for NFTs, and by the looks of things, these amounts are only going to get bigger as more people begin trading NFT’s.

So, what are the top 10 most valuable NFTs?

This is hard to answer, since NFT’s are being traded veery day, at differing price points. We’ll try our best though.

1. “EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS”, sold for $69 million.
2. CryptoPunk #3100, sold for $7.58 million.
3. CryptoPunk #7804, sold for $7.57 million.
4. “Crossroads” by Beeple, sold for $6.6 million.
5. Jack Dorsey’s First Tweet, sold for $2.9 million.
6. CryptoPunk #6965, sold for $1.6 million.
7. Axie Infinity Genesis Land, sold for $1.5 million.
8. CryptoPunk #4156, sold for $1.25 million.
9. “Not Forgotten, But Gone”, sold for $1 million.
10.  Metarift, sold for $904,410.