Sotheby’s joins the infallible drawing fad through a collaboration with digital artist Pak.
“We’re been following the NFT space for some time,” Sotheby’s CEO Charles Stewart said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday, announcing the auction house’s partnership with Pak. The upcoming auction will start next month.
“It’s new to all of us,” Stewart added. “But here’s a lot that’s really exciting and we think it’s staying power.”
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 it to be about the art, which is not necessarily a new thing in the art world,” Stewart said. “But it’s especially one of the many new things about crypto art that I think is different and possibly a little disruptive, certainly if you compare it to the traditional art world.”
The decision of Sotheby’s, founded in 1744 and known for selling paintings and other luxury items for millions of dollars – to embrace NFTs, is the latest milestone for the burgeoning digital art form. This comes after Christie sold a $ 69 million NFT collage at auction last week, elevating creator Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, to a spot among the top three most valuable living artists.
NFTs are blockchain-based assets that are uniquely designed, a scarcity that proponents value. The ownership of a specific NFT is recorded in a blockchain network, the distributed digital ledgers that support cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.
In addition to digital artwork, basketball highlights known as NBA Top Shots are popular to buy as NFTs. Earlier this month, rock band Kings of Leon released their latest album in the form of an NFT.
Some have dismissed NFTs as a fashion fad whose values will decline over time. Skeptics also note that the rise of NFTs has coincided with a massive rally in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, notorious for its volatility and ether, which runs on the Ethereum blockchain network.
The buyer of Winkelmann’s $ 69 million NFT was pseudonymous crypto investor Metakovan.
Winkelmann said he sees a variety of digital infrastructure applications that support NFTs. “I really think it’s a technology that has just as many use cases,” he told CNBC on Friday, calling it “an empty lead, even beyond digital art.” He added: “Every time you want to prove ownership, I think there’s a use case.”
But even for NFT-based digital art, according to Sotheby’s Stewart, it’s very early, needless to say ‘.
For its Pack partnership, Sotheby’s in New York will sell both one-on-one pieces of digital art and ‘what in the NFT world are called’ open editions ‘, where many people can buy tokens for the same work,’ Stewart explains.
NFTs offer new interest and a ‘new aesthetic’ to the art, Stewart said, claiming that there is potential “to bypass many of the traditional gatekeepers and research processes in the physical art world.” He added, “This is something that is really exciting, and as it develops, we are very curious to see where it takes us all.”
Benoit Pagotto – a co-founder of RTFKT, which helped sell a collection of NFT-based digital sneakers, told CNBC he expects some people to take some time to embrace the crypto-collectibles fully understand.
“Education and educating people is something we have to do,” Pagotto said on 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 esport is so strong and such a cultural movement. With these people, we will not spend too much time explaining. ‘
Jessica Bursztynsky of CNBC contributed to this report.