Hilton hotel heir creates NFT digital artwork, eventually sold at auction for $17,000

Paris Hilton, heiress to the Hilton hotel chain and a well-known American personality, recently sold an NFT on the auction platform Cryptograph for 40 ETH (valued at approximately $17,000).

Hilton Heir's NFT Artwork

Cryptograph is a digital art auction platform launched on June 6th this year, allowing celebrities to auction their NFT (non-fungible token) artworks on the platform. Many well-known figures in the industry have been invited to auction their works on the platform, with the proceeds being used for charitable purposes to help underprivileged groups in society. Hugo McDonaugh, co-founder of Cryptograph, stated:

"Every Cryptograph sold on our platform is used to support charitable causes. Each bid or transaction of a Cryptograph automatically raises funds for its charitable organization, creator, and our company's 'altruism'."

On August 3rd, Paris Hilton, heiress to the Hilton hotel empire, released her NFT artwork on the Cryptograph platform. According to Cryptograph's description:

"Paris' Cryptograph is a hand-drawn portrait featuring her cat named Munchkin. This is Paris' first NFT ever. If you view it as a portrait of 'Kitty,' it carries some level of similarity in meaning to NFTs and Crypto Kitties."

Starting from August 12th, Paris Hilton's artwork received four bids, with the winning bid coming from an anonymous user named Adirolls, who bid 40 ETH (approximately $17,000) and won the auction on August 15th. Previously, this anonymous user had also purchased works by Bitcoin.com founder Roger Ver and Ethereum Foundation researcher Vlad Zamfir for 7 ETH (about $3,000) and 25 ETH (around $10,800) respectively. Another user, known as skydownnoenemy, made a high bid of 77.35 ETH (currently $33,300) on July 11th to acquire an NFT created by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

NFTs and Liquidity Mining

Many believe that the NFT concept will be the next wave after DeFi, but attracting market users to participate will be a key challenge for NFT trading platforms. On July 16th this year, the NFT-based digital art trading platform Rarible launched liquidity mining and issued the platform's governance token RARI for user participation in platform governance.

Anyone can upload images on Rarible to create and buy/sell digital artworks. Over half of RARI's total supply is allocated to sellers and buyers in the Rarible market. Eligible users trading NFTs on the platform can share 75,000 tokens every Sunday.

Will this approach bring the same level of attention to the NFT market as DeFi? Stay tuned to find out.