Fine arts auction house Sotheby’s made “close to $35 million” in digital art sales this year. The numbers were provided by Michael Bouhanna, the vice president of the company and its head for digital art, who called 2023 “one of the most exciting years for digital art.”
On Dec. 23, Bouhanna concluded Sotheby’s year results regarding digital art in his X (former Twitter) account. In 2023, Sotheby’s conducted its first live digital art auction with 300 attendees and $12 million in sales. It also recorded the highest fee for digital artwork yet, selling the non-fungible token (NFT) under the title “Ringers #879”, created by digital artist Dmitri Cherniak, for $6.2 million.
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Altogether, the house has conducted over 25 auctions, focusing exclusively on digital art or including it in contemporary art sales. The company has also launched its on-chain marketplace for the secondary trade of NFTs, called Sotheby’s Metaverse.
According to Bouhanna, next year, Sotheby’s will focus on “supporting creators and enhancing their primary market strategies.” Cointelegraph reached out for further details.
The 279-year-old British-American clearing house made its first appearance on the NFT scene in April 2021, when it auctioned off the work of a pseudonymous digital artist known as Pak. Since then, Sotheby’s has conducted a number of record-breaking digital art sales.
With a recent Bitcoin bull run, the NFT space has experienced a comeback, with the overall trade volume nearing $1 billion in November. During that month, the average value of NFT transactions surged by 114%, going from $126 to $270, suggesting that users are more willing to perform higher-value trades than in the previous months.
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