Christie's Leads Art World Embrace of Inscriptions as Next Step After Record-Breaking NFT Sales

Christie's held its first auction of inscriptions on the Bitcoin blockchain through the Ordinals Protocol, establishing itself as a leader in the NFT art world.

While NFTs faced backlash over environmental concerns and financial speculation, the art world has embraced them, with Christie's making history in 2021 with a $69 million Beeple NFT sale.

Inscriptions allow artists to inscribe data directly on the Bitcoin blockchain, advancing over NFTs which rely on links to external servers and face data loss risks.

The auction, curated by ZK Shark, signals that inscriptions may have staying power, with top NFT projects now minting on Bitcoin.

As an over 200-year-old auction house, Christie's views the historical story and zeitgeist around inscriptions as artistically interesting.