Auction giant Christie’s winds down NFT department: Report
Christie’s is reportedly winding down its dedicated digital art and NFT department, folding non-fungible token sales into the broader 20th and 21st-century art category rather than operating them under a separate unit. According to the report, the move was described by Christie’s as a “strategic decision,” and the auction house will continue to sell digital artworks and NFTs within this larger art category.
The report also states that Christie’s laid off two employees tied to the digital art team, including its vice president of digital art, while retaining at least one digital art specialist on staff. Christie’s has had a high-profile presence in the NFT space, most notably selling Mike “Beeple” Winkelmann’s Everydays: The First 5000 Days, which fetched $69.3 million at auction in March 2021.
Christie’s expanded into Web3 initiatives in recent years, launching an NFT auction platform in September 2022 and forming a crypto-only real estate team the following July. Observers quoted in the report suggest the decision may reflect broader market conditions rather than a complete retreat from digital art.
Digital art adviser and collector Fanny Lakoubay suggested the change could be tied to an ongoing contraction in the wider art market. The Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report 2025 noted a decline in global art sales, with total sales down 12% in 2024 to $57 billion and combined public and private auction house sales falling about 20% to $23 billion—data cited as context for Christie’s restructuring. Lakoubay argued auction houses may struggle to justify a standalone department if it generates less revenue than other areas.
Voicing a different perspective, an NFT collector known as Benji suggested the underlying business model for auctioning digital works—high commission structures on assets that do not require traditional authentication, storage, insurance, or shipping—may have been unsustainable. He characterized Christie’s shift as potentially akin to a “Kodak moment,” where an institution must reassess how it participates in a changing market.
Cointelegraph reports that Christie’s did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The article also places the move against recent trends in the NFT market: after a sharp downturn in trading volume and sales in the year prior, the sector showed signs of recovery in 2025, with notable month-to-month market-cap fluctuations and renewed activity in several major collections.
