A LeBron James highlight over sold Monday for $208,000, a new record for NBA Top Shot, the product that allows fans and collectors to own a highlight of a particular player on the blockchain.
It's the first time that specific highlight, which features James slamming over Nemanja Bjelica in November 2019, has been sold. There were 49 of those highlights minted, labeled by Top Shot as "Cosmic" and was originally plucked out of a legendary pack for $230.
"Iconic buy," said Roham Gharegozlou, CEO of Dapper Labs, the company that produces Top Shot and the blockchain behind it Flow, which protects the security of the asset. "It's one of the rarest moments that will ever exist on Top Shot."
Before the $208,000 sale, there had been roughly a dozen sales on the Top Shot marketplace for $100,000.
According to CryptoSlam, a website that monitors the sales of NFTs (non-fungible tokens), Top Shot has generated $180 million in sales on its marketplace, with 91 percent of that taking place within the last month. Sixty-two percent of sales have happened in the last week.
Unlike trading cards, the NBA and the players get a cut of every sale on the blockchain. Gharegozlou said he would like to share the details of the contract with the NBA, which was signed in 2019, but the NBA has been relatively mum as things have exploded.
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