By Samuel Indyk
Investing.com – Auction house Sotheby’s has said it will accept cryptocurrencies as payment for Banksy’s ‘Love is in the Air' artwork, the first time the company will accept Bitcoin or Ethereum as payment for a physical artwork.
The fine art auctioneers said they will accept cryptocurrency as payment using the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN).
“It’s something we’ve been thinking about for quite some time,” said Sotheby’s CEO Charles Stewart in an interview on CNBC.
The next step?
The sale of the Banksy artwork comes amid what has been described as a boom period for sales of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The sales of NFTs went mainstream after the artist Beeple sold a piece of digital art for $69.4mln at the Christie’s auction house in February.
“We had our first NFT sale a few weeks back. We had over 3,000 bidders and participants in that sales series,” Stewart added.
“It made us really think that we need to take this next step and begin to explore accepting crypto as payment for physical art as well.”
The artwork is estimated to sell for between $3mln and $5mln and Sotheby’s have said they would also be accepting cash at the auction if the buyer wished to pay using traditional currency.
However, the Sotheby’s CEO seemed to appear more excited by the opportunity to sell the artwork via cryptocurrency than cash.
“What better combination to introduce crypto than an iconic Banksy painting?” Stewart said.