Sotheby’s will accept Bitcoin and Ether as payment for a physical artwork for the first time, through a collaboration with the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. The option will apply to Banksy’s Love is in the Air, offered in Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction on 12 May 2021 in New York.
The work is estimated at $3 million to $5 million. Bidding will be conducted in US dollars, as is customary at Sotheby’s New York, but the buyer will also have the option to settle the hammer price in cryptocurrency via Coinbase Commerce.
The arrangement follows Sotheby’s debut NFT sale, ‘ The Fungible’ Collection with the digital artist Pak, which drew participation from more than 3,000 collectors, most of them first-time buyers with the house.
Making its auction debut, Love is in the Air shows a masked figure in the archetypal pose of civic unrest, but with a bunch of flowers in place of a projectile. One of the artist’s best-known works on canvas, it was illustrated in Banksy’s 2005 monograph Wall and Piece and is distinguished by hand-painted flowers in oil.
The painting was on view at Sotheby’s York Avenue galleries through 12 May, ahead of the evening sale. Coinbase, founded in 2012, is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges.
(Press Release)
