XCOPY is an anonymous digital artist who has made glitched, dystopian images exploring death and decay since around 2010, building an early following by posting them for free on Tumblr. He became one of the earliest artists to sell his work as an NFT, launching editions on the marketplace Ascribe in early 2018.
His early works VOID (2012) and DE$CENT (2013) were minted as genesis editions on Ascribe in 2018, priced from £1 and rising with each sale. When Ascribe shut down in the 2018 crypto downturn, the artwork files hosted on its private servers were lost, leaving early collectors holding tokens that pointed to nothing. He also released Last Selfie (2018) and hello admin dm me (2019) on the marketplace KnownOrigin. Right-click and Save As guy (2018) pairs a hooded portrait rendered in flickering, glitch-pixelated style with the description “Why would I buy it when I can right click and save as?”, framed as an argument that digital files could nonetheless be made scarce and owned. The work's price rose from 1 ETH (about $90) at its 2018 mint to $7 million when it resold in December 2022.
















