Christie’s NFT sales slump 96% in 2022

For 2022, Christie’s sold 87 NFTs for a total of $5.9 million, down 96% from the previous year.

At the time, amid the NFT market bubble, sales surpassed $150 million. A large portion of the figure was driven by works by Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple. In March, NFT Everydays: The First 5000 Days was sold for $69.3 million, and in October — HUMAN ONE for $28.9 million.

In 2022 the most expensive lot in the segment was the NFT-sculpture Living Architecture by Refik Anadol, which sold for $1.4 million.

The company attributed the decline in digital-art performance to its experimental nature and the overall volatility of the crypto market.

However, Christie’s emphasised that it would continue pursuing initiatives in this area. In July the firm held the fifth Christie’s Art and Tech Summit and created a Web3-focused venture fund. The initial investments included LeyZero, Manifold and ProtoHologram.

Following the implementation The Merge update on the Ethereum network in September, the company launched an on-chain platform Christie’s 3.0. Two early auctions were held on the platform.

Despite the NFT segment’s collapse, the current year was a record for the company — total sales volume reached $8.4 billion.

The NFT market turnover, as a whole, continued its steady decline throughout the year, according to the ForkLog report.

According to The Block, on a weekly basis there was a spike when the period May 1–8 saw sales of $1.2 billion. About $792 million of the total went to the NFT sector GameFi.

continue the implementation of initiatives in the NFT space. For example, the Starbucks coffee chain launched a loyalty program based on non-fungible tokens. Automaker Porsche announced its own collection of 7,500 NFTs.

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