An auction house in the United States will accept cryptocurrency as payment for a set of artworks. Phillips is auctioning off a Jean-Michel Basquiat collection, with payment choices including BTC and ETH.
On May 18th, Untitled, 1982, a 16-foot artwork will be auctioned in New York. It is considered to be worth USD 70 million (approx 1650 BTC or 25,513 ETH). Buyers are “excited in the idea of cryptos as a way of payment for conventional artworks,” according to Scott Nussbaum, Senior International Specialist, 20th Century & Contemporary Art at Phillips.
Accepting cryptocurrencies as payment for other works, according to Nussbaum, “will only continue to grow.” Phillips auctioned a Banksy piece in June 2020, accepting Bitcoin and Ether as payment. It was offered for roughly USD 3.2 million
Interestingly, the hammer price for the controversial Beeple NFT auction, which concluded in March 2021, is roughly $70 million for the Basquiat. For a Banksy auction in November 2021, Sotheby’s accepted real-time ETH bidding. Sotheby’s was able to bid in Bitcoin and Ether in May of that year before taking over cryptocurrency payments in-house.
