Auction house Christie's NFT sales fell 96% in 2022

Art auction house Christie's saw a tremendous decrease in NFT sales this year compared to 2021, despite a bumper year elsewhere in its art business. 

Christie's sold 87 NFTs in 2022 for a total of $5.9 million. In 2021, the art auction house sold over 100 NFTs worth more than $150 million — one of them being Beeple's "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" NFT for $69.4 million. Christie's NFT sales fell 96% between 2021 and 2022. 

Despite the lower NFT volume, Christie's made notable progress in advancing its web3 and NFTs vertical in 2022. It established a venture fund that made its first investment in blockchain interoperability startup LayerZero on Jul. 18. Christie's also sold pieces by 18-year-old NFT artist Diana Sinclair, who had created media for a $1 million NFT sale of an unreleased Whitney Houston track, The Block previously reported. Sinclair later signed on with the major talent representation firm United Talent Agency. 

Depressed market conditions led to fewer NFT trades across the board in 2022. However, this year did also see its highest NFT trading volume ever on the week of May 1, coming in at $1.2 billion, The Block's Data Dashboard shows.