Thread by @DelNFT

How NFT and Twitter are changing the Auction Houses-

In March @Sothebys announced they were working with "the leading NFT artist" @muratpak, and something interesting happened: They garnered more engagement then ever before.

This is incredible for a few reasons; A Thread -

Both @Sothebys & @ChristiesInc have struggled to garner online engagement with auctions of: Rare watches, masterful Impressionist paintings, and even original Van Gogh's. Whilst these pieces DO sell, they are not engaging "new" collectors. It seems its quite the opposite.

One of the methods to alleviate this decline in new buyer interest is to look outside of the West. Asia for example has been largely propping up the Art market where Western audiences have lesser appetite.

There is also the added realisation that "historically significant pieces" aren't auctioning like they used to. Whether it be Prized Rare Porcelain stolen in WW2

Or rare pieces of last century's "popular culture". The numbers just ain't there anymore. This is nothing new it's been on the slow decline for over a decade at least.

In comes NFT. The culmination of generations raised in the cyberspace, and identifying more with digital than analogue - so much so that they would likely value a digital Blue Tick over any Autograph.

@Sothebys see online engagement spike:
@ChristiesInc see their sales explode:

What's interesting is that @Sothebys is still getting extremely sought after pieces of physical art. This incredibly rare 700 yr old book being auctioned used to be the sort of things that would rock the art world. Yet it simply doesn't move the needle with online engagement.

@ChristiesInc are seeing the same thing. Focus your auction house on NFT instead of the impressionist masterpieces and you attract the NEW wealth. You don't necessarily need to go to China.

It used to be that auction houses wanted only to deal with Dead artists, but now there's a social capital on NFT artists. You can sell a Caspar Van Wittel painting for $1.6M but nobody online cares. There's no modern prestige behind it. The internet cares about @fewocious more🤍

If @BoredApeYC can get you an opening bid of $20M then how can you reasonably continue to allow your auction house to not focus on NFT? The engagement and value of digital native art far outweighs anything else you can show the digital generation.

The Paradigm shift now is that Auction houses are no longer telling anyone what the most important art is. Millennials on Twitter are.
In comes the weird part. In an effort to appease the new gen @ChristiesInc and @Sothebys are trying to NFT old works or sell Art for Crypto🙃

The last time we saw anything close to this kind of auction house shake up where living artists completely stole the shine from historical was Banksy's performance art auction which definitely raised engagement.

Yet none of those can compare to @muratpak who went on to sell $17m in his first @Sothebys auction. An anonymous, completely digitally native enigma.
In a new online society, the value is not placed in the physical and some outlets have noticed.
Photo by @blockchaingoals

Having the Art being loved & understood by the digitally native BEFORE the art critics of yesteryear is a dynamic that is hard for many to understand.
A brief summary of @muratpak from @WSJ is okay, but for a deep dive you need @ShortsHoward blogs and @SibsCommunity discord.

Which leads to another question. Nobody is discounting that a Basquiat piece selling for $9M isn't newsworthy - but why is it that @muratpak sold a single collection last week for $70M and not a single news outlet is discussing it? Perhaps this paradigm shift has only begun...

Aaaaand what better way to update this thread with another @Sothebys announcement on @muratpak

https://twitter.com/Sothebys/status/1440662314873593870?s=19