Phillips, an international auction house, has said it would accept cryptocurrency as payment for a series of paintings. It is auctioning off a Jean-Michel Basquiat collection and has listed Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) as payment options.
The centrepiece in the collection is a 16-foot painting called Untitled, 1982. Its estimated price is $70 million (roughly 1,650 BTC or 25,513 ETH). It goes under the hammer on May 18 at the New York auction house.
Recently, more art buyers are interested in the prospect of using crypto to pay for traditional artworks. Scott Nussbaum, a Senior International Specialist at Phillips, believes spells well for the auction industry.
The decision to allow buyers to pay in crypto is a calculated move. It would likely attract the interest of both seasoned and novice art collectors. And Nussbaum believes that this trend will only continue.
“The interest in cryptocurrency and NFTs from the traditional art world is rapidly growing. Although it is impossible to predict the future, we believe the intersection of digital and traditional art worlds will only continue to flourish.”
Is this crypto payment a new trend in the auction industry?
This is not the first time Phillips would explore cryptocurrency payments, although the previous sale was far smaller in scale. In June 2020, it auctioned off a Banksy piece for about $3.2 million and accepted payment in Bitcoin and Ether.
Coincidentally, the hammer price for the controversial Beeple NFT auction that ended in March 2021 was roughly $70 million for the Basquait. Christie’s auction house handled the transaction, sparking more crypto-related auction house activity.
In November 2021, Sotheby’s, a rival auction house, accepted real-time ETH bids for a Banksy auction. Sotheby’s worked with Coinbase in May to manage Bitcoin and Ether auctions before taking over in-house crypto payments.
Nussbaum sums up the crypto trend in the art world by stating that “there are many new collectors who are very engaged in cryptocurrency. It is only a matter of time before it would be of interest as a method of payment.”
