By Hannah Lang and Elizabeth Howcroft
(Reuters) – Auction house Sotheby’s announced Friday seven non-fungible tokens from bankrupt cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital sold for about $2.5 million.
Of the tokens, “Fidenza #725,” an image with graphic dashes and curves in a muted palette of cream, yellow, pink and black, fetched the highest price at over $1 million. Three Arrows Capital purchased it for 135 ether in 2021, equal to about $341,786 at the time, according to DappRadar.
The auction was part of liquidating Three Arrows, according to a February memo from Teneo, one of the court-appointed liquidators.
Singapore-based Three Arrows was the first major crypto firm to go bankrupt in 2022, brought down by the collapse of cryptocurrencies Luna and TerraUSD. It filed for bankruptcy in the British Virgin Islands in late June 2022.
The company at the time estimated its assets at around $1 billion, with its extensive non-fungible token (NFT) collection valued at about $22 million, according to a filing seen by cryptocurrency news site The Block.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are a blockchain-based asset that represents ownership of a digital item, such as an image, video or piece of text.
The market for NFTs exploded in 2021, and auction houses including Sotheby’s and Christie’s joined the craze.
But sales volumes and prices have since dropped, as the demand for speculative assets has cooled.
(This story has been refiled to remove an extraneous word in paragraph 2)
(Reporting by Hannah Lang in Washington and Elizabeth Howcroft in London; Additional reporting by Gursimran Kaur Mehar in Bengaluru; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
