Colnago has created a special one-of-a-kind C64 NFT with a paintjob that combines all 67 years of historic Colnago moments, and plans to auction it on May 11 with bids opening at €5,515.
Wait, that's the price of a standard C64 with custom paint. Why so cheap?
The clue is in the initials: NFT standards for non-fungible token. In other words, it’s not an actual bike – it’s a unique digital rendering of a bike, only one of which exists.
Colnago says the bike/artwork is “guaranteed to be one-of-a-kind and publicly verifiable on Blockchain’s distributed ledger.”
Blockchain is a decentralised digital ledger that documents transactions, ownership and validity of NFTs.
NFT has taken off in the art world this year, with over $300 million spent on it in the first two months of 2021. The most frequently quoted example of it is a digital compilation painting by the artist Beeple, called Everydays: The First 5000 Days, which sold for $69,346,250 in March.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet as an NFT for just over $2.9 million.
Colnago’s marketing director, Manolo Bertocchi, said: “Colnago has demonstrated its ability to innovate and propose new technologies that have subsequently become commonplace. The first NFT bicycle is no different.
“We have developed a digital C64 that is a celebration of some of our most significant bikes and major victories in our history… the greatest thing about it is that the C64 NFT will never be produced – it will be digital only. “
(Image credit: Colnago)
The C64 NFT takes its design from eight historic Colnago models including the Colnago Concept, which Ernesto Colnago conceived with Enzo Ferrari; the titanium Colnago Bititan with the split down tube, which Abraham Olano rode to World Championship victory in 1995; the polka-dot C59 of Anthony Charteau from 2010; the Mapei C40, possibly Colnago’s most famous frame; and the Colnago V3RS of Tadej Pogacar, who gave Colnago its first Tour de France victory in 2020.
If you’re a Colnago collector who really wants to be sure that no one is going to pull up alongside you at the traffic lights on the same bike, head over to the Colnago website to bid for the C64 NFT.
Having said that, you won’t be pulling up at any traffic lights on the Colnago C64 NFT because it’s not real, remember?
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Simon Smythe is a hugely experienced cycling tech writer, who has been writing for Cycling Weekly since 2003. Until recently he was our senior tech writer. In his cycling career Simon has mostly focused on time trialling with a national medal, a few open wins and his club's 30-mile record in his palmares. These days he spends most of his time testing road bikes, or on a tandem doing the school run with his younger son.
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