Little could James Christie have known some 240 years ago, as he sold masterpieces by Rembrandt and Rubens to Catherine the Great, that his auction house would one day offer virtual apes to a crypto company for over $1 million.
Nor would Sotheby’s founder Samuel Baker, auctioning hundreds of rare books for about $1,000 in 1744, have envisioned selling a copy of the original source code for the web, as a non-fungible token (NFT), for north of $5 million.
Times change.
“Everybody wants to sell an NFT,” said Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s global head of science and popular culture. “My inbox is just absolutely clogged.”
Sotheby’s has sold $65 million of NFTs in 2021, while arch-rival Christie’s has sold more than $100 million of the new type of crypto asset, which uses blockchain to record who owns digital items such as images and videos, even though they can be freely viewed, copied and shared like any other online file…. Read the Full Article | https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/new-masters-how-auction-houses-are-chasing-crypto-millions-2021-11-08/
