Sotheby’s joins the madness of non-fungible chips through a collaboration with digital artist Pak.
“We’ve been following the NFT space for some time,” Sotheby’s CEO Charles Stewart told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday, where he announced the auction house’s partnership with Pak. The next sale will be launched next month.
“This is new to us all,” Stewart added. “But there are a lot of things that are really interesting and we think he has the strength to stay.”
Pak has been producing digital art for decades, but the artist’s identity is unknown.
“The artist prefers to remain anonymous, in part because the artist wants to be about art, which is not necessarily a new thing in the art world,” Stewart said. “But it’s one of the many new things about cryptographic art, in particular, that I think is different and potentially a little disturbing, certainly when compared to the world of traditional art.”
Sotheby’s decision – founded in 1744 and known for selling multi-million dollar paintings and other luxury items – to embrace NFTs is the latest stage in the growing digital art form. It comes after Christie sold an NFT collage for $ 69 million last week, raising its creator, Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, in a place among the first three most valuable living artists.
NFTs are blockchain-based assets, which are unique in design, a shortcoming that proponents say supports their value. Ownership of a specific NFT is registered in a blockchain network, distributed digital registries that support cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.
In addition to digital art pieces, highlighting basketball known as the NBA Top Shots has become popular to buy in the form of NFT. Earlier this month, rock band Kings of Leon released their latest album as an NFT.
Some have rejected NFTs as a way whose values will fall over time. Skeptics also note that the rise of NFTs has coincided with a massive rally in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, infamous for its volatility and ether, running on the Ethereum blockchain network.
Winkelmann’s $ 69 million NFT buyer was the cryptocurrency pseudonym Metakovan.
Winkelmann said he sees a number of applications for the digital infrastructure behind NFTs. “I really think this is a technology that has so many use cases,” he told CNBC on Friday, calling it “an empty slate, even beyond digital art.” He added: “Whenever you want to prove ownership, I think there is a use case there.”
But even for NFT-based digital art, it’s still “very early, needless to say,” according to Sotheby’s Stewart.
For the Pak partnership, New York’s Sotheby’s will sell both digital artwork and “so-called” open editions “in the NFT world, where many people can buy chips for the same work,” Stewart said.
NFTs bring a new interest and a “new aesthetic” to art, Stewart said, arguing that there is the potential “to bypass a lot of traditional guardians and processes of checking the world of physical art.” He added: “This is something very interesting and as it develops, we are very curious to see where it takes us all.”
Benoit Pagotto – co-founder of RTFKT, which helped create a collection of recently marketed digital sneakers based on NFT – told CNBC that he expects some to take some time to fully understand the excitement around cryptographic collections.
“Educating and bringing people to speed is something we need to do,” Pagotto told Squawk Alley on Tuesday. “But at the same time, we know that people will never understand [NFTs], just like today, there are still people who do not understand why e-sports is so strong and such a cultural movement. With these people, we will not spend too much time explaining. “
– Jessica Bursztynsky from CNBC contributed to this report.