Three Arrows Capital’s 37 NFTs sold for US$4.6 million loss at Sotheby’s amid crypto winter that has seen sales plummet
- The hedge fund, which filed for bankruptcy last year, sold the NFTs for US$10.9 million after buying them in 2021 for US$15.5 million worth of cryptocurrency
- The most expensive item ‘Ringers #879 (The Goose)’ by Canadian artist Dmitri Cherniak sold for US$6.2 million
A set of non-fungible tokens previously bought by bankrupt cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital sold for US$10.9 million at Sotheby’s in New York on Thursday, the auction house said.
Three Arrows Capital, which filed for US bankruptcy a year ago, spent US$15.5 million worth of cryptocurrency on the 37 NFTs in a series of purchases in July and August 2021, data from blockchain tracker DappRadar showed.
The most expensive item “Ringers #879 (The Goose)” is part of a series of 1,000 computer-generated abstract images by Canadian artist Dmitri Cherniak.
It sold for US$6.2 million on Thursday, Sotheby’s said, having been bought by Three Arrows Capital for around US$5.9 million in August 2021 according to DappRadar data.
“We see a growing interest and more non-crypto, non-NFT collectors starting to really understand the quality and why it’s interesting,” said Michael Bouhanna, head of digital art and NFTs at Sotheby’s.
NFTs only exist in digital form and anyone can view them online for free, but many of the items in the auction are accompanied by physical print copies which buyers can display, Bouhanna added.
Singapore-based Three Arrows Capital was the first in a series of major crypto firms to go bankrupt in 2022, following the collapse of cryptocurrencies Luna and TerraUSD.
The market for NFTs exploded in 2021, as cryptocurrency prices surged and technology enthusiasts bet that digital assets would become highly-valued in online virtual environments.
But the speculative frenzy has since cooled, with around US$675 million worth of NFT sales in May 2023, down from a peak of US$5.7 billion in January 2022, according to DappRadar data.
Another seven of Three Arrows Capital’s NFTs were already sold for US$2.5 million at a Sotheby’s auction in May.
