Auction House Christie’s Is Accepting Ethereum for the First Time for Digital Art Sale

Christie’s, the world’s leading auction house established in 1766, will start accepting the cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH) as payment.

This decision came following the announcement that it will auction a work by Beeple, “Everydays: The First 5000 Days,” in a standalone sale that will run from Feb. 25 to March 11.

“Christie's is excited to announce that, for the first time, it will accept Ether as a payment option for the sale of beeple's ‘First 5000 Days.' We are grateful to beeple +makersplace for its partnership on this monumental sale,” shared the auction house on Twitter.

While the principal price would be accepted in Ether, the premium, which is their fees, will be paid in dollars.

“We’re at this precipice where crypto is going to be such a more established and mainstream mode of conducting business,” Noah Davis, the Christie’s specialist who’s organized the auction, told Bloomberg.

“With this [sale], I think it’s the perfect way to dip our toes in and give this a shot.”

According to analyst Mati Greenspan, it isn’t about the top auction house accepting crypto for art, “In fact, you might call it a revolution.”

Digital artist Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann and has 1.8 million Instagram followers, put out a digital artwork last October. Each of the 100 editions cost $1, and they were sold out in less than a second. Beeple said about this mania,

“The rabbit hole of possibilities that this is going to bring to the art world—I don’t think people are fully recognizing that this is going to be a massive, massive shift.”

Punk 4156 bought for 650 ETH ($1,245,633.99 USD) by 0xf476cd from 0x9e199d. https://t.co/kot9CYmE1h #cryptopunks #ethereum pic.twitter.com/KDTKRvtScj

— CryptoPunks Bot (@cryptopunksbot) February 18, 2021

Non-fungible tokens (NFT) have exploded in popularity over the last few months, some pieces being sold for as much as millions of dollars.

“NFTs are now going mainstream, and the innovative gameplay is worth learning,” noted Jau Hao, CEO of crypto exchange OKEx, who said, “we need more liquid NFT markets for mass adoption.” Hao added,

“Leveraging the VR and the open-world gaming market to build a digital realm during the pandemic is another way we can bring NFTs to the masses.”