The South Korean parents of the pup featured in the Dogwifhat meme, Achi, will take home some $4.1 million from the NFT sale.
An Ethereum NFT photo of the original Dogwifhat memeâwhich inspired one of the hottest Solana meme coins of the moment, WIFâwas sold for a whopping $4.3 million worth of ETH early Monday, narrowly surpassing the previous record held for most expensive meme NFT ever sold.Â
The on-chain image of a Shiba Inu puppy in a knit beanie sold for 1,210.759 ETH early Monday, a sum worth $4,311,234 at the time of the transaction. The NFT sold to GCR, a prominent pseudonymous crypto trader, via an auction on the digital art platform Foundation.Â
Just two hours before the auction concluded this morning, the Dogwifhat NFT had only secured a top bid of 55 ETH, worth about $195,000 at writing. Then, a furious bidding war ensued between GCR and Memeland, an NFT venture collective from the team behind social media platform 9GAG. Memeland bid as high as 1,100.69 ETH before GCR secured the piece with a final offer north of $4.3 million.
That figure officiallyâif ever so slightlyâmakes todayâs Dogwifhat NFT acquisition the most expensive meme NFT sale of all time. The record was previously held by the original Doge NFT, which sold to the collective PleasrDAO on June 11, 2021, for 1,696.9 ETHâa sum then worth $4.234 million.
âIt went for far more than expected,â Path, the pseudonymous facilitator of the Dogwifhat NFT sale, told Decrypt. âI think itâs great for the entire category [of memes] and the concept of provenance. WIF is definitely more crypto-native than Doge.â
The NFT was put on sale by two South Korean pet owners who took the original photograph from the viral Dogwifhat meme back in 2018âone featuring their Shiba Inu, Achi. Achiâs parents will now receive the entirety of the proceeds from todayâs sale, Path said, after Foundation takes a 5% platform fee.Â
While a $4.1 million payday for a photo taken of a dog in a beanie is certainly nothing to scoff at, the haul pales in comparison to the amount of money thatâs been made on Achiâs likeness in the last few months.
WIF, a viral Solana meme coin inspired by the Dogwifhat meme, has skyrocketed since its creation in December. On Friday, the token reached a record $3 billion market capitalization. It then fell off slightly over the weekend, before climbing another 25% in the last 24 hours.
In one sign of the meme coinâs absurd success, several WIF community members raised nearly $700,000 last week to plaster Achiâs face on Sphere, the massive LED screen-covered arena in Las Vegas.Â
Yet so far, it appears that none of WIFâs spoils have made their way back to the family of the dog who inspired the meme coinâs meteoric rise.
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