Sothebyʼs sold Banksy's painting “Love is in the air” for $ 13 million. And first allowed the buyer to pay cryptocurrency

On May 12, the Sotheby= auction house sold a picture of the street artist Banksy “Love is in the Air” (“Love is in the air”). She became the first physical lot in the 277-year-old story of Sotheby=, which could be bought not only for ordinary money, but also for cryptocurrency-bitcoin or etherium.

The picture left the hammer for $ 12.9 million. This is more than twice as high as the Estimeite , which was from three to five million dollars. Bidding lasted 14 minutes. In response to the “Medusa” request at Sotheby= specified that the winner made a bet in dollars. He has not yet made payment for work; What currency he will choose, they do not know in the auction house.

Banksy created the graffiti “Love is in the air” (other names - “Rage” and “Flower thrower”) in 2003 in Bethlehem, shortly after the construction of the wall separating Israel from the western bank of the Jordan River. Later, the artist repeated this work in different form more than once.

Sothebyʼs announced that he would accept cryptocurrency as a payment for Banksy's painting, in early May. To do this, the auction house has concluded an agreement with Coinbase crypto accounts. The head of Sotheby= Charles Stewart explained the introduction of a new method of payment with a growing interest in cryptocurrencies and NFT .

“It is obvious that there is a large audience interested in the aesthetics and capabilities of NFT. Why not extend this to the world of physical art? " - said Stewart CNBC.

In April, Sotheby= first put on auction NFT art. The auction house sold a number of works of an anonymous digital artist PAK in the form of non -replaceable tokens. A total of 16.8 million dollars were paid for them.

In March, the auction house Christiegn sold for a record 69.3 million dollars tied to NFT the work of the artist Mike Vinkelmann, known as Beeple. It was a JPG file consisting of five thousand images. During the trading of Christiegn, he first accepted the Ethereum for payment.