Nifty Gateway Closure Highlights Risks of NFT Ownership

In 2021, Christie's sold a Beeple NFT for $69.35 million, and Sotheby's took another $24.40 million for 101 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs. The market was booming, with cartoon primates getting the auction-house treatment usually reserved for Fabergé eggs.

But now, not five years later, one of the marketplaces that helped sell the digital art revolution is explaining how customers could take their belongings with them when it closed. Nifty Gateway, the NFT marketplace owned by crypto exchange Gemini, announced its closure in January as its parent decided to concentrate on its primary financial app.

The exit arrangements included plans for a bulk withdrawal tool and somewhere to host the artwork. But this is a pretty sad and uneventful end for an industry that made ownership sound like a technological breakthrough on the order of discovering fire.