Auction house Christie’s sells US$5.9m worth of NFT artwork in 2022

Auction house Christie’s sold 87 pieces of NFT artwork involving a total value of US$5.9 million in 2022, it said.

Its whole-year sales for all kinds of artwork also reached US$8.4 billion, up 17 per cent from 2021. Christie’s said on a December 19 statement that this was the highest annual sales in the art market.

Nearly half of those bids were online. New buyers accounted for 35 per cent of all buyers in and 65 per cent of them bid online. In addition, 34 per cent of the new buyers were bored after 2000.

The U.S.-headquartered auction house started a partnership with leading NFT marketplace OpenSea in November 2021 and launched its own platform marketplace Christie’s 3.0 this September.

The inaugural sale of Christie’s 3.0 featured NFT works created by Diana Sinclair, an up-and-coming digital artist and NFT curator based in New York City, as well as works by prominent NFT artists such as Mad Dog Jones and Fewocious.

In July, Christie’s established Christie’s Ventures, an investment fund that supports projects that connect Web 3.0 and FinTech with art. Initial investments include LayerZero, a blockchain-related company, and Manifold.xyz, an NFT platform developer, with which Christie’s is collaborating to help clients buy and sell. 

In the same month, the company held Christie’s Art and Tech Summit, an art and NFT conference in New York, which included panel discussions attended by crypto asset-related companies.