Breaking News: Sotheby’s Astounds The Art World with $35 Million Worth Of Digital Masterpieces Sold In 2023!

Sotheby’s, the 279-year-old British auction house, reported that its NFT auctions in 2023 generated $35 million in revenue.

Michael Bouhanna, Sotheby’s’s vice chairman, said the auction house had generated $35 million from NFT auctions in 2023.

Sotheby’s, the 279-year-old auction house, also declared that “2023 was one of the most exciting years for digital art,” noting that it had set new records for NFT auction prices.

In 2023, Sotheby’s conducted over 25 auctions of digital artworks. The first live-streamed auction saw 300 participants and generated $12 million, nearly 35% of the year’s total revenue.

Notably, 2023 also marked the highest-priced digital artwork auctioned to date at $6.2 million, for the NFT titled ‘Ringers #879’ created by digital artist Dmitri Cherniak.

In 2023, Sotheby’s also observed a deeper immersion into the realm of digital art as:

• Introducing Gen Art Sotheby’s, a new Creative Art Program supported by the Art Blocks Engine – a platform bringing contemporary art into Web3 as NFTs.
• Releasing ‘Themes and Variations,’ a comprehensive on-chain art project.
• Completing the auction of the first Bitcoin Ordinals collection, ‘BitcoinShrooms’ designed by the anonymous artist Shroomtoshi.
• Concluding the second NFT art sale ‘The Goose’ by the bankrupt investment fund Three Arrows Capital, generating over $10.9 million in total revenue.

Alongside innovative successes, Sotheby’s in 2023 faced collective litigation related to the NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), accused of manipulating BAYC prices via the auction of 101 NFT Bored Apes in September 2021, fetching $24.4 million from a single suspected buyer, allegedly FTX – the bankrupt exchange of former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

Sotheby’s, a British auction house with a 279-year history, ventured into NFT auctions in April 2021, starting with artist Pak and earning $16.8 million in three days.

Since then, Sotheby’s has conducted several auctions of other digital artworks, with sales that have consistently broken records, such as the original source code of the World Wide Web (USD 5.4 million), the CryptoPunk NFT #7523 (USD 11.8 million), and the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection of 101 NFTs (USD 24.4 million).

Sotheby’s also launched a dedicated platform for NFTs, called “Sotheby’s Metaverse.” The auction of NFTs in 2021 helped them achieve a revenue of up to USD 100 million.

* We hope this information will help you in your investment process, but this is not investment advice. Every investment carries risk, especially in this industry, so DYOR before making a decision.