The launch of a digital art department at upscale auction house Christie’s was precisely as well-publicized as its eventual shuttering was devoid of fanfare.

On March 11, 2021, Christie’s made history as the first major auction house to sell art in the form of a non-fungible token (NFT). Digital artist Beeple managed to offload his massive mosaic, Everydays: The First 5000 Days, for a whopping $69 million, generating hundreds of astonished headlines and getting those three letters, NFT, in front of untold scads of early-adopter eyeballs. It was the sale heard ’round the world, a starter pistol kicking off the NFT gold rush.

Cut to last month, when Christie’s quietly closed its digital art department. It was as if the moment when NFTs briefly became the molten core of culture, tech, and c

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