In Brief:
- These images are a document of a true visionary during the infancy of his creation that will affect us all in ways we are just beginning to comprehend. : Artwork Description
- Das Magazin offered Reamer 750 Swiss Francs for his work, which amounted to about $750 USD at the time.
Matthew Reamer announced in a series of Twitter threads about the sale of three NFTs of portraits of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin. The California Based photographer clicked these pictures four months after Ethereum’s launch in 2015.
The portraits were auctioned on Reamer’s page over on NFT marketplace Foundation. The NFTs show Buterin when his star was just beginning to ascend.
Reamer in his post said that he clicked these pictures for Das Magazin after Buterin launched the blockchain platform that could “revolutionize the financial system”. Das Magazin reached out to Reamer on November 4, 2015.
The first NFT was initially bid at 1.65 ETH and was sold for 14.00 Eth ($46,079.32). It is an action shot of Buterin looking studious in bed on his laptop. The other two are more typical shots—a full-frontal shot and a headshot against a dark background.
Reamer tweeted: “We rented a crappy Airbnb to shoot in, and managed to make some nice portraits. I was happy to see our work make the cover, though I didn’t have an inkling of what the following years would bring.”
Back then, Ethereum was worth about a dollar. Today it trades at a price of $3,230. In the Twitter thread, Reamer expresses regret “about not looking deeper into it”. Had he put together his earnings in Ethereum, he’d have a crypto stash worth almost $2.5 million at today’s price.
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Reamer majorly talked about the world of Ethereum in the Twitter thread. He also talked about NFTs and their major growth.
Reamer tweeted of the NFT boom: “It soon occurs to me that I have what are, as far as I know, the only portraits of the person who created the platform on which NFTs live, photographed in the infancy of his creation. How meta!”
Matthew Reamer finally secured his place in blockchain history with a visual documentarian of Vitalik Buterin. Buterin’s achievements amount to much more than just currency.
