The Chief Executive Officer of Sotheby, Charles Stewart disclosed on Tuesday that the company would begin to accept Bitcoin and Ethereum via Coinbase.
Sotheby, an American multinational corporation is one of the world’s largest auction houses that auctions fine arts. The company is the first auction house in the world to accept crypto in exchange for physical art.
On CNBC, Stewart said, “As you may recall, we did our first NFT sale a few weeks back. We had over 3,000 bidders participate in that sale series and so it made us think that we need to take this next step and begin to accept crypto as payment for physical art as well.”
This market-defining arrangement paves the way for further adoption of cryptocurrency across the physical art world.
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The decision to accept cryptocurrency via Coinbase comes on the back of the success of ‘The Fungible’ Collection, Sotheby’s debut NFT sale, which made more than 3,000 unique collectors, majority of whom were first-time buyers with the company.
Stefan Pepe, Sotheby’s Chief Technology Officer, said, “With the growing adoption of digital art and NFTs, along with our increased focus on digital innovation, we’ve seen an increasing appetite among collectors for more seamless payment options when doing business with Sotheby’s.
“Leveraging the trusted exchange Coinbase is a natural progression and is in line with our dedication to enhancing our client buying experience and developing new ways to expand our client base by meeting them where they are.”
The decision to accept crypto by the company is an important step for the crypto world, especially after the S&P Dow Jones Indices launched its first three cryptocurrency indexes on Monday.
Data gotten from coin market cap on Tuesday, revealed that the live price of bitcoin price was $54,322.33 with a 24-hour trading volume of $67,948,670,303.
Bitcoin was down 6.37 per cent on Tuesday. Its live market cap is $1,015,797,250,096, a circulating supply of 18,699,443 BTC coins, and a max supply of 21,000,000 BTC coins.
The live Ethereum price was $3,331.29 with a 24-hour trading volume of $64,314,416,124. Ethereum was up 1.65 per cent on Tuesday.
