Grimes beats Elon Musk at his own game as she nets $5.8m in 20 minutes selling crypto-artwork

Grimes has truly met her match in billionaire partner Elon Musk, after making a fortune of her own from selling artwork on the crypto market. 

The British musician, real name Claire Boucher, launched the digital collection, WarNymph, on Sunday featuring one-off pieces and some which have 100 copies. 

During the 48-hour sale, Grimes has sold the artwork using a crypto asset known as a non-fungible token (NFT) through trading platform Nifty Gateway. 

Just 20 minutes after the auction opened on Sunday, Grimes had earned an eye-watering $5.8 million (£4 million), according to Business Insider. 

One piece of art that has proved to be particularly popular is titled Newborn and features a baby guarding Mars. It originally sold for $300,000 (£215,000) but has since been relisted for $2.5 million (£1.8 million). 

The art is said to be inspired by the ‘Goddess of Neo-Genesis’ and speculation has mounted that the baby is actually modelled on Grimes and Elon’s son X Æ A-12. 

Describing the WarNymph collection, the Nifty Gateway website states: ‘Merging the raw images of a photogrammetry scan, enunciating her iconic tattoos, with a retopologised mesh that was sculpted, modelled, and morphed into a variety of forms before being permanently sealed into the body of a baby angel, a cherub. 

‘She exists in the liminal state of the virtual world, a Grimes narrative universe, within an alternate history of mythology and the infinite fragments of the future. She is a pioneer in the rapidly expanding metaverse.’ 

It’s all partly for a good cause as a percentage of the proceeds will be donated to Carbon 180, a non-profit organisation which aims to reduce global carbon emissions. 

Multi-billionaire Elon, 49, is responsible for the recent surge in Bitcoin after his company Tesla bought $1.5 billion (£1 billion) worth of the cryptocurrency. 

Grimes, 32, has proved to be a loyal supporter of his ambitious endeavours and recently shared her plans to get brain chips implanted from his computer chip company Neuralink. 

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