On September 23, 2020, Christie’s planned sale of Robert Alice’s *Block 21*—a physical artwork accompanied by an Ethereum-based non-fungible token—entered the public record. The lot was scheduled for Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale in New York on October 7, with an estimate of $12,000 to $18,000.
The development mattered because it placed a blockchain-linked asset inside an established auction system rather than a crypto-native marketplace. The proposed transaction joined three different records of ownership and provenance: a physical painting, an Ethereum token and Christie’s conventional catalogue and settlement process.
No sale had occurred on September 23. The estimate was Christie’s expected auction range, not an executed price, appraisal of the wider NFT market or cryptocurrency valuation.
What Christie’s intended to offer
*Block 21 (42.36433° N, -71.26189° E)* was created by London-based artist Benjamin Gentilli under the name Robert Alice. Christie’s described it as a circular work made with 24-carat gold leaf, suspended pigment and acrylic, measuring 50½ inches in diameter. The lot also included an NFT and an OpenDime hardware key.
The work came from *Portraits of a Mind*, a series of 40 paintings carrying a distributed transcription of Bitcoin’s original version 0.1.0 code. Christie’s later catalogued the series as containing approximately 12.3 million code digits across more than 50 metres of paintings. Its account says 322,048 hexadecimal digits radiate across *Block 21* itself.
The title referenced Bitcoin’s maximum supply of 21 million units, while the coordinates formed part of the work’s identity. The first 20 paintings had already entered private and corporate collections, according to the artist and Christie’s. *Block 21* was presented as the first work from the project to become publicly available.
Contemporaneous reporting said the accompanying NFT would be hosted on Ethereum and serve as a digital representation and authenticity record for the physical work. That description should be read narrowly. An NFT can identify a particular token and record transfers on its blockchain, but it does not independently prove every claim about a physical object or automatically transfer copyright in the associated artwork.
A bridge between two systems
For Christie’s, the proposed lot tested whether its specialists, catalogue, bidder registration and auction process could accommodate an asset partly represented by blockchain software. For crypto art, the Christie’s name offered access to collectors accustomed to institutional authentication and centralized sale administration.
The structure was hybrid rather than fully on-chain. Christie’s remained responsible for admitting bidders, conducting the auction and handling the physical painting. Ethereum supplied the token record. The OpenDime device provided another mechanism for transferring control associated with the work. The arrangement therefore did not eliminate intermediaries; it added a blockchain component to an established intermediary’s process.
The subject matter also crossed networks. Bitcoin supplied the code, monetary reference and cultural foundation of the artwork, while Ethereum hosted the non-fungible token. That combination illustrated how Bitcoin’s history could become the subject of a collectible issued through another blockchain’s programmable-token infrastructure.
What remained uncertain on September 23
The September 23 record established the planned lot, estimate, exhibition schedule and physical-plus-digital structure. It did not establish demand, a completed token transfer, settlement, resale liquidity or a general market price for NFTs. The available contemporaneous reporting also did not fully reproduce the token’s contract address or all buyer-rights terms.
Those limitations were material because provenance claims depend on connecting the correct token, wallet credentials, physical object and contractual rights. Christie’s involvement supplied a recognized auction framework, but buyers still needed to understand what the NFT represented and what legal rights accompanied it.
Later context
Christie’s reported after the October 7, 2020 auction that *Block 21* sold for $131,250, including the buyer’s premium, against the $12,000-to-$18,000 estimate. Christie’s subsequently characterized it as the first NFT introduced to the global auction stage and the first NFT sold at a major auction house. Those later facts confirm the plan’s institutional significance but were not knowable outcomes on September 23.
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