Christie’s Auction House continues its entry into digital art and launched its own venture capital firm on 18 July. Called Christie’s Ventures, it will finance new and financial technology companies relevant to the art market, according to a press release from the auction house. The company has already invested in LayerZero laboratories, a start-up focusing on facilitating the movement of assets across blockchains.
This announcement comes as both Christie’s and competitor, Sotheby’s, reported high sales figures for the first half of the year. Christie’s has sold 4.1 billion dollars this year, an increase of 17% from the same period last year, while Sotheby’s sales of 746 million dollars show an increase of 37%.
Despite Christie’s impressive overall sales, it saw a decline in sales of non-fungible tokens (NFT), with $ 5 million in sales in the first half of this year compared to $ 93.2 million in the first half of 2021. The auction house has also recently lost its NFT expert Noah Davis, who left Christie’s in June after helping usher in the art world’s NFT boom and leading the historic sale of a $ 69 million NFT in March 2021 by artist Beeple.
“What has happened in the last three to four months is a normalization. There was a lot of speculation last year, prices went up, said Devang Thakkar, the world manager of Christie’s Ventures, in an interview with Observer. “The fog has eased and helped people focus on what is the right technology for this space, not who is going to make money the fastest.”
This announcement comes after a decline in the market for NFTs
Christie’s Ventures will primarily focus on technology that improves the consumption of art, financial innovation and web3 companies, according to Thakkar. Web3 is a vision of the internet that includes cryptocurrencies and blockchains, databases that store cryptocurrencies and records of other transactions.
“With each of these three areas, we get to work with pioneering entrepreneurs,” said Thakkar. “Some of these pioneers will also be collectors, so we want to make sure we engage with them.”
Christie’s has been involved with NFTs since 2018, Thakkar said, when the auction house held its first Art + Tech Summit, a conference focusing on digital art technology. “We continue to be optimistic and positive about the path to digital art and NFTs,” he said.
However, not everyone is equally enthusiastic. The blow of cryptocurrency in recent months has led to a sense of disillusionment in the art world, according to Jon Ippolito, a professor of new media at the University of Maine. He believes that when the hype surrounding cryptocurrencies is no longer profitable, the incentive for money to flow into the NFT ecosystem will dry up. “Some people used art to validate the cryptocurrency they owned,” Ippolito said. “It’s not that I think NFTs will definitely go away, but this is a low point in morale.”
The downturn has led companies to withdraw from blockchain investments, said Ippolito, who added that Christie’s Ventures was launched at a strategic time. “They have made a lot of money with (NFT), and people who are true believers should stick to the program.”
