Clock - $52.7 million

The third most expensive NFT ever sold stands out from the rest on this list for being a token dedicated to a social cause. Titled “Clock”, this non-fungible token is a joint creation of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and Pak, and depicts as digital counter of the days Assange has spent behind bars at London’s Belmarsh Prison, where he’s being held awaiting extradition to the US over a number of espionage charges. It was created to raise funds toward Assange’s defense and it was auctioned for the equivalent of $52.7 million in February of 2022 to AssangeDAO, a decentralized organization (DAO) with over 10.000 Assange supporters, established to crowdfund the sale. The Clock NFT is part of a larger NFT collection called Censored, which features over 29,000 tokenized messages by buyers of the project. They can be viewed on OpenSea. The proceeds for this NFT series went to pro-freedom organizations Assange and Pak chose, including the Wau Holland Foundation, which supports Assange’s defense. This was not the first time this sort of NFT initiative hit the auction block as last year NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden raised $5.4 million by selling an NFT featuring his own face made from pages of a US appeals court decision