- It was a gamble on the growth of the NFT industry, Trenchev said.
- Many purchasers are cryptocurrency millionaires.
Sotheby’s sold $65 million in NFTs in 2021, while Christie’s sold over $100 million. NFTs utilize the blockchain to track who owns digital assets like photographs and films. Moreover, which may be freely accessed, copied, and shared online. According to Art Market Research, such sales represent around 5% of the world’s main auction houses’ contemporary art sales. It’s a big jump considering how new NFTs are.
Many purchasers are cryptocurrency millionaires, according to art professionals participating in NFT auctions at major auction houses. In June’s $17.1 million Sotheby’s online NFT auction, over 70% of bidders were new. Last month, Kosta Kantchev, the founder of the Nexo crypto lending platform, paid 982,500 pounds ($1.3 million) at Christie’s in London for three crude cartoon ape NFTs.
Rapid Rise Since Its Debut a Year Back
The drawings were Christie’s first NFT sale in Europe and its largest in-person auction since the epidemic began. Kantchev interacted with art collectors bidding on David Hockney, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Bridget Riley works.
It was a gamble on the growth of the NFT industry, Trenchev said. Fueled by the advent of “metaverse” online worlds where nearly anything can be purchased or sold, from avatars to property and buildings. Furthermore, in the third quarter of this year, sales of NFTs surpassed $10 billion, an increase of eightfold over the previous three months.
Antoni Trenchev who is also a part of Nexo said:
“On one hand, there were the people in suits in the front, and on the sides, there were people on the phone getting semi-anonymous bids.”
They’re not the only ones. Facebook, a $1 trillion corporation, has relaunched itself, Meta, predicting a future of more immersive virtual worlds and experiences.
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