Christie's is closing its digital art department and has parted ways with Nicole Sales Giles, the auction house's vice president of digital. The decision comes over four years after Christie's record-breaking $69.3 million sale of Beeple's "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" (2021), which ignited the NFT boom. Christie's stated it will continue selling digital art within its broader 20th- and 21st-century art category.
The closure reflects the dramatic collapse of the NFT market since its 2021 peak. Christie's NFT sales plummeted 96% from 2021 to 2022, and by 2024, 95% of NFTs were considered effectively worthless. The move follows similar cutbacks at rival Sotheby's, which laid off staff from its NFT divisions. This signals a major retreat by top auction houses from the speculative digital art market that briefly reshaped the art world.