Auction house (notable for crypto-art sales 2021–)
Christie's is the global auction house that catalysed mainstream awareness of NFT-based digital art with its March 11, 2021 sale of Beeple's Everydays: The First 5000 Days for $69.3 million — at the time the third-highest price ever paid for a work by a living artist. The sale opened the door to a broader wave of NFT auctions including the October 2021 Curio Cards charity sale.
Christie's subsequent crypto-art programming included sales of CryptoPunks, Curio Cards, Art Blocks works, and other on-chain art — establishing the auction-house category as a legitimacy signal for early NFT collections including the 2017 Ethereum-era series.