NFT sales platform from Sotheby’s

The auction house bets on NFT (non-fungible tokens), which now represent 2% of the global art market. It announces the creation of a platform dedicated to collectors and plans a biennial sale of these digital objects. The first will take place next week.

Sotheby’s announced the creation of a digital space reserved for NFT

The auction house Sotheby’s announced the creation of a digital space reserved for NFT collectors and a now biennial sale of these digital objects, a sign of its desire to settle permanently in this sector.

Image, video, tweet, computer program, NFT (non-fongible tokens), certificates of authenticity associated with a virtual object that they make unique, have boosted contemporary art in 2020-2021, against a backdrop of the pandemic. They now represent 2% of the global art market, according to Artprice’s annual report published in early October.

Almost unknown until a year ago, they broke records at an auction at Christie’s, where an all-digital work by American artist Beeple was auctioned for $69.3 million in March, or Sotheby’s, where the original program was sold for $5.4 million in early July.

Future of the NFT art

In this context, Sotheby’s announced the launch of "a dedicated platform for digital art collectors", called "Sotheby’s Metaverse". Buyers will be able to create a personal profile, with "an avatar designed by the famous crypto designer Pak", and payments can be made in cash or in certain cryptocurrencies (Etherum, bitcoin, USDC), explains Sotheby’s in a statement.

On the platform appeared Wednesday profiles of known collectors in the middle, including that of the American star Paris Hilton and DJ Steve Aoki.

The first sale, named "Natively Digital 1.2: The Collectors", will take place between 18 and 26 October, with 53 lots. The auction house took the opportunity to announce that the event would now be held twice a year. Among the works, there are creations by Pak, Rare Pepe, or Larva Labs.

They will be presented on Saturday in London, where Sotheby’s broke Wednesday’s record for a work by British artist Banksy, "The Girl with the Ball" (18.6 million pounds). A very real painting, but which had partially destroyed itself during its last sale, three years ago, an action claimed by the artist to denounce the "commodification" of the artwork.