Disseminating and realizing benevolent idea’s,
To Sotheby’s or Not to Be: the Easiest NFT Argument
Nederlands NFT’s have myriad raisons d’être and could improve many existing things. One of the easiest ways to express their current success and likely bright future ahead is an argument from authority. Christies and Sotheby’s auction off NFT’s!
Christies and Sotheby’s were founded in the 18th century and basically form a duopoly in art auctions. Don Thompson emphasizes in his book The $12 Million Stuffed Shark, The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art that they are the branded, value-adding auction houses. Therefore Christies and Sotheby’s have enormous curating power by selecting particular things to sell. In addition, there is great merit for a class of things to be included in their auctions, because they recognize it as a potential container for meaning.
The importance cannot be overstated of the naked fact that Christies and Sotheby’s deal in NFT’s. They simultaneously signal that NFT’s can function as a vehicle for collecting and whatever an NFT represents can be meaningful art. Furthermore, they sufficiently trust the underlying, digital infrastructure supporting NFT’s. They understand the need to innovate and the urgency to include NFT’s in their auctions, in order to compete with digital platforms for selling art such as Opensea. They likely acknowledge the advantages of NFT’s over their physical counterparts such as unforgeable authenticity. These ancient institutes are deeply involved in NFT’s and legitimate their role in contemporary art and society at large.
Christies and Sotheby’s have been auctioning off NFT’s since the first half of 2021 when an NFT bull market was at hand. The first NFT auction by one of them was the artist Beeple’s work Everydays: The First 5000 Days. It was a true blockbuster, because Christies sold it for $69 million to blockchain technologist Metakovan. This remains to date the most expensive NFT sale consisting of one piece.
Equally impressive is that Christies and Sotheby’s conviction didn’t wane during the subsequent NFT bear market. In a notable recent auction Sotheby’s soldThe Goosefor $6 million to NFT devotee Punk6529. The piece is part of the generative art collection Ringers, created by Dimitri Cherniak using the Art Blocks platform. Due to blockchain’s obvious, public provenance and the transfer of the Goose, we can even discover what NFT’s Sotheby’s currently holds in its wallets, identifiable as "sothebys-grails.eth" and "sothebys-grails2.eth".
According to Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s former chief auctioneer, “people just want to own the signs of our time”. Christies and Sotheby’s decided that NFT’s are signs of our time and are worthy of collecting. Their declaration is a success for NFT’s today which suggests a broader adoption and appreciation tomorrow. Without Christies and Sotheby’s endorsement it would almost be as if NFT’s don’t exist or at least have a reason to exist. Luckily they know better!