Christie’s has shuttered its digital art department, ending a short-lived but influential experiment that saw Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have a place alongside paintings, sculptures, and other works in the auction house’s art sales, according to a report from Now Media.
Two staffers were let go at the end of August, including vice president of digital art Nicole Sales Giles, while specialist Sebastian Sanchez will remain in New York.
Giles played a prominent role in Christie’s Art+Tech Summit in Hong Kong last year, which ran alongside Hong Kong Fintech Week.
Giles had been a prominent face of Christie’s digital push, notably at the Art+Tech Summit in Hong Kong last year, which ran alongside Hong Kong Fintech Week.
There she argued that Christie’s brought the same valuation discipline to NFTs as it did to paintings or sculptures, but with one critical difference.
“What’s unique with digital art is the community engagement aspect, which absolutely comes into play in a way it never has with traditional art,” she said at the time.
Others at the summit acknowledged that the category was still far from mature.
“I do not think at this very moment we have a very standardized understanding of [digital art’s] value,” said Angelle Siyang-Le, director of Art Basel Hong Kong last year. “That’s why you do see a lot of it all of a sudden coming out, and then obviously created that excitement. That excitement created that awareness. And now from here to the next phase … how do we align such standards of values?”
A year later, the numbers show how fragile that foundation was.
NFT trading volume fell 45% last quarter to $867 million, even as sales counts rose 78% to 12.5 million, according to DappRadar.
Floor prices for blue chip NFT collections have slipped well below their peak levels: CryptoPunks trade around 46.6 ETH ($210,000), Bored Apes hover at 9.1 ETH ($41,000), and Moonbirds sit at 2.8 ETH ($12,600). By contrast, Ethereum itself has rallied 76% in the past three months to $4,509, outpacing the NFT market.
On X, some observers argued that Christie’s decision reflects simple economics rather than capitulation, noting that NFTs are increasingly being absorbed into mainstream contemporary sales rather than treated as a separate “collectible” category.
This retreat by Christie’s hints that without firmer valuations and clearer standards, NFTs risk remaining an add-on to contemporary art rather than sustaining a market of their own.
