On Tuesday local time, Sotheby's announced that it will accept bitcoin and Ethereum as payment methods in the upcoming auction of graffiti artist Banksy's art "love in the air".

According to reports, this is also the first time that a large auction house in the world has accepted cryptocurrency as the payment method in real art auction transactions. Sotheby's previously entered into a partnership with coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange, and last month completed its first NFT auction, selling digital creator Pak's works for $16.8 million.

In an interview with the media on Tuesday, Sotheby's CEO Charles Stewart said: what better way to introduce cryptocurrency in the auction of banks' works? Stewart also confirmed that the auction will take place on May 12 and the transaction price is expected to be between $3 million and $5 million.

In addition to cryptocurrency, successful bidders can also choose to pay in US dollars. Stewart said that for auction houses, creating the possibility (of cryptocurrency settlement) is very interesting in itself. Obviously, there are many audiences who are interested in the aesthetics and possibility of NFT. There is no reason why this interest can not be extended to the physical field. The subsequent development will be very interesting.

With the nearly 300 year old Sotheby's entering the field of cryptocurrency, the acceptance of this emerging technology by traditional institutions has been further expanded. In March this year, Christie's auction house sold nearly 69 million US dollars of art works of the artist beeple, which caused NFT, a digital storage form, to be more widely recognized by the society.

(2021-5-5)