Christie’s Sells NFTs for More Than $150 Million in 2021

One of the world’s oldest and most famous art auction houses, Christie’s, announced that after it started trading non-fungible tokens (NFTs), its industry sales accounted for about $150 million of total volume throughout 2021.

Through a post on its Twitter account, the house reported that it is “leading” NFT auctions. Additionally, the post mentioned that Christie’s “historic sale” is an NFT created by artist Beeple.

Beeple’s piece was the first digital art tokenized on the blockchain ETH auctioned by Christie’s. The sale of the artistic piece called “The First 5,000 Days” took place last March and reached US$ 70 million.

The work is a collage that condenses 5,000 images drawn daily by Beeple between May 1, 2007 and January 7, 2021.

“As an industry leader in digital innovation, Christie’s also continues to pioneer new technologies that are redefining the art business. This includes creating and viewing experiences that integrate augmented reality contests, live shopping channels and hybrid sales formats,” said the auction house.

However, the company is far from being the market leader in selling NFTs. After all, this position is easily occupied by OpenSea, Rarible and other platforms focused on cryptocurrencies.

Christie’s in NFT sector

After success with the Beeple auction, the auction house founded in 1766 auctioned off some NFTs. Among them, he traded a batch of 9 CryptoPunks that sold for US$17 million.

Also, as part of its most recent forays into the NFT ecosystem, Christie’s has partnered with OpenSea. Together, the organizations auctioned a number of works under the title Christie’s X OpenSea.

At the auction, NFTs were sold for 843 ETH ($3,300,000). The highest-grossing works were CyberKongs. Item #201 sold for 185 ETH and item #46 for 96.6 ETH.

The money raised by the two CyberKongz was donated to benefit Virunga National Park. Located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the park is known to have a population of mountain gorillas.