Art Market Overview: The NFT Boom


01/20/2022

Will the recent misadventures of non-fungible tokens, especially the hacking of many collectors’ virtual portfolios, dampen the meteoric rise that began in 2021?



by Vanessa Schmitz-Grucker

PHOTO CC
In any case, the art market will remember 2021 as the year NFTs burst upon the scene. Some 307 lots were sold at auctions in 2021, sometimes having to contend with regulatory issues. That is just one in 3,000, but some of them made headlines, like Beeple’s 5,000 Days, which fetched $69 M, and Human One ($28.9 M)—the two best results for NFTs in 2021. Unsurprisingly, the United States accounts for 94% of NFT sales, followed very far behind by Hong Kong with 6%. NFTs have a higher sales rate than physical lots, with just 12% going unsold compared to 34% for non-digital works.