Eliud Kipchoge career highlights sold as NFTs for $50,000

Eliud Kipchoge has auctioned off a couple of his career highlights as NFTs (non-fungible tokens), earning a whopping CAN$50,000 for the two videos. Holding the auction on momentible.io, Kipchoge sold highlights from his world record marathon in Berlin in 2018 and his historic sub-two-hour marathon in Vienna a year later. In addition to both of these sets of highlights, Kipchoge added personal video messages for the highest bidders. 

I can say that I am really grateful to have the highlights of my career now available as NFT. I hope it will give someone around the world the same positive memories as it does to me. Please visit https://t.co/2c9YO7esK6 to find all information. pic.twitter.com/icFerGNzTm

— Eliud Kipchoge – EGH?? (@EliudKipchoge) April 3, 2021

What are NFTs? 

“Non-fungible” means something is one of a kind and cannot be replaced. This means that NFTs are, of course, irreplaceable and unique, but what separates them from something physical (like the shoes Kipchoge wore in his sub-two-hour marathon at the INEOS 1:59 Challenge, for example, which are certainly one of a kind), is the fact that NFTs are digital. 

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NFTs are sold under the umbrella of Ethereum, a cryptocurrency (like bitcoin). Earlier this year, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet for 1,630.58 ether, which, at the time, worked out to be more than CAN$3,600,000. Ethereum’s value has risen significantly since then, and the same amount today would work out to $5 million. Even since Kipchoge’s NFT auction closed on April 8, the value of ether has continued to rise, and while his sales earned him $50,000 then, the same sale would add up to about $55,000 now. (Of course, if he hasn’t sold the ether for regular currency, Kipchoge’s Ethereum account will have updated and grown accordingly.)

https://www.instagram.com/p/CNcZpKMsmJH/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Kipchoge’s auction 

Kipchoge reportedly earned 17.9837 ether between his two auctions. His INEOS 159 Challenge highlight package (in which Kipchoge will be seen running 1:59:40) was the more popular and hotly contested NFT of the two available, and the auction got up to 14.8837 ether before it was sold. The 2018 Berlin Marathon highlight package features Kipchoge’s official marathon world record of 2:01:39, and it went for the still-high (although much more reasonable) price of 3.1 ether. 

Those are the only two NFTs that Kipchoge has sold so far. He has a race set for Sunday at the NN Mission Marathon in the Netherlands, though, where he will hope to run another NFT-worthy result. 

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