Auction Giant Christie's Shuts Down Its NFT Department

BlockBeats News, September 9th, British auction giant Sotheby's is closing its digital art department dedicated to NFT sales and integrating it into a broader art category. A Sotheby's spokesperson stated that the auction house will continue to sell digital art, including NFTs, but it will now be part of a broader 20th and 21st-century art category.

Sotheby's has had a significant impact in the NFT space, having auctioned off several pieces of digital art, including Mike "Beeple" Winkelmann's "Everydays: The First 5000 Days," which sold for $69.3 million in March 2021. Prior to this, Sotheby's launched an NFT auction platform in September 2022 and established a cryptocurrency-exclusive real estate team in July. According to the "Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report" released in April 2025, the global art market has been in a continuous decline, with a 12% decrease in global art sales in 2024, totaling $570 billion, and a 20% decline in the total value of public and private sales by auction houses, amounting to $23 billion.