Tad Smith Agrees to Buy Most of Candy Digital’s Assets and Plans to Take Over as CEO
Tad Smith, the chairman of Doodles and the former CEO of Sotheby’s, is stepping back into the digital collectibles arena with a deal to acquire most of the assets of Candy Digital, a platform that once rode the crest of the NFT boom.
In a post on X, Smith said he is “doubling down” on his “commitment to digital collectibles,” adding that when the transaction closes “in a week or two,” he expects to serve as CEO.
The move arrives at a delicate moment for Candy Digital. Founded in 2021, the company expanded quickly during a period when blockchain-based collectibles were drawing mainstream attention and venture capital. Candy Digital attracted investors including Michael Rubin, Mike Novogratz, and Gary Vaynerchuk, and it secured licensing relationships with major entertainment and sports brands, among them Major League Baseball, DC Comics, and Netflix.
Those partnerships helped Candy assemble a portfolio that spans sports and pop culture: licensed digital collectibles tied to organizations such as NASCAR and WWE, as well as digital editions of comic book properties through its agreement with DC Comics, including early issues featuring Superman and Batman.
At its peak, Candy Digital reported roughly 1.5 million users. But the broader NFT market’s downturn in 2022 reshaped the landscape. Operational changes followed, and by 2024 the platform had entered what was described as a maintenance phase, prompting speculation about its long-term viability.
The scale of the contraction has been stark. A 2023 report by dappGambl, a blockchain and finance research community, analyzed 73,257 NFT collections and found that 95 percent, nearly 70,000, had a market value of zero Ether. Once a $17 billion phenomenon in 2021, NFTs now sit in the wallets of an estimated 23 million investors with little to no practical value.
Against that backdrop, Smith’s acquisition reads as a confident bet on the category’s next iteration rather than a retreat from it. Smith has indicated that the intent is to build on Candy Digital’s existing infrastructure, emphasizing continuity for current users and licensors while refocusing the business on user engagement and clearer communication.
Asked for comment, Smith said: “Nothing to say until the deal is closed.”
The deal also underscores that institutional interest in digital collectibles has not disappeared, even as trading volumes remain far below their 2021 peak. Smith led Sotheby’s from 2015 to 2019, a period in which the auction house pushed to modernize its digital capabilities. In 2018, Sotheby’s acquired Thread Genius, a firm specializing in image recognition and machine learning tools designed to improve artwork discovery.
Smith later oversaw Sotheby’s expansion into NFT sales, including high-profile auctions of digital artworks. Beyond his current role at Doodles, he serves as chairman of the supervisory board at the Fine Art Group and is a partner at 50T Holdings, a growth equity fund focused on investments in digital assets.
In remarks to The Art Newspaper late last year, Smith argued that blockchain’s promise lies in its ability to formalize ownership in a medium defined by frictionless copying. “There’s no real way to have ownership unless you have some way to register ownership, because otherwise it’s just a JPEG that exists freely on the internet,” he said. “Blockchain creates the possibility for that ownership, and so the art can begin to have value.”
Whether Candy Digital can translate that thesis into renewed momentum will become clearer once the transaction closes and Smith formally takes the helm.
