“We are accepting [a buyer’s premium of] Ethereum for this purchase,” Davis says. “I feel like that’s actually the biggest deal of this whole thing, secretly.”
Speaking a day before the sale closed, Davis said he was “90% sure” that the final buyer would be paying in cryptocurrency. Christie’s didn’t immediately confirm if that was the case once the sale concluded.
Given the wild volatility of cryptocurrencies, Christie’s may be taking a risk accepting its premium in Ethereum. The second-biggest digital coin lost 50% of its value on Feb. 22, sinking as low as $700. As of 10:11 a.m. EST on Mar. 11, Ether was trading at $1,815 to the dollar, a roughly 160% growth over the prior week.
This sale is the latest in a whirlwind boom in the market for NFTs. Beeple’s previous record was set in late February, when a work that someone had purchased just months earlier in October for $66,000 sold for $6.6 million—a 9,900% growth. Before that, his record stood at $777,777.777, which was set in January. A year before that, he hadn’t sold a single artwork.
The $60.25 million sale isn’t just an unprecedented price for an NFT, it’s an unprecedented price for a new artist, period. It puts Beeple’s Everydays in the same range as major works by giants of art history. A still life by Vincent Van Gogh sold for $16 million at Sotheby’s last October; the year before Christie’s London sold a striking late oil painting by Picasso, Homme et Femme Nu for $15.6 million.
Davis says this is just the beginning. “It’s a huge shot in the arm for the business generally, when you have a sale result like that,” he says. “I think we will have really compelling and exciting NFT-based art opportunities at Christie’s in the near future.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.