Auction house Sotheby’s announced the sale of two Banksy paintings for cryptocurrency Bids for the purchase of Love Is In The Air and Trolley Hunters will be settled in Ethereum in real time, as indicated on the organization's website.
“Sotheby's is the first auction house to use cryptocurrency as the standard currency for trading physical art in real time during live trading,” the auction house said. The auction will take place on November 18 and will be broadcast on Sotheby's website and social networks, including on the company's Discord channel.
Love Is in the Air is dedicated to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, depicting a protester, throwing a bouquet of flowers instead of a Molotov cocktail. On the graffiti “Cart Hunters” Banksy captured primitive people hunting for carts from the supermarket. According to the site Sotheby’s, the expected sale price of the work “Love Is in the Air” is 4-6 million dollars, and the paintings “Cart Hunters” – 5-7 million.
The auction house explained why they chose the Ethereum cryptocurrency for trading. “Ethereum, the world's second largest cryptocurrency by market value, is the preferred cryptocurrency for the digital arts and the NFT community, as the Ethereum blockchain is the main network on which NFTs are created and transactions are recorded with them,” the company's website says. Although the bidders will be bidding in Ethereum, the winning bidders will be able to pay for paintings in traditional currency, as well as with Ethereum, Bitcoin and USDC coins.
“Love is in the air” has already changed several owners. In May 2021, Sotheby’s also sold the painting for cryptocurrency. Back then, Banksy's work became the first physical work of art to be auctioned for digital money.
In November, the value of the crypto market broke a historic record. By the morning of November 8, market capitalization exceeded $ 3 trillion. This happened after the most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin, had risen in price.