A bottle of Champagne has sold for $2.5 million, eclipsing the auction record for bubbly and likely becoming the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold.
But there's a fizzy gimmick: the magnum of Chateau Avenue Foch, 2017, comes with a single NFT that includes the digital art and intellectual property rights to an image of "Bored Ape Mutant" and to other collectible cartoon figures that adorn the bottle. (A magnum is the equivalent of two regular-sized bottles.)
NFTs are digital images that trade on the blockchain. The highly speculative market for them peaked in 2021 with $41 billion in sales but has slowed sharply due to the recent slide in cryptocurrencies.
The buyers of the Champagne were brothers Giovanni and Piero Buono. They're Italian investors in cryptocurrencies who are active in the fashion and technology industries. Despite their crypto profile, the purchase was made in dollars, according to the seller. The sale was first reported in The Wall Street Journal.
Shammi Shinh, the British entrepreneur who commissioned and sold the bottle, said he hoped Champagne's fizz may juice the market for NFTs at a time that it, and other financial markets, are substantially off their highs.