Over the past years, cryptocurrency is becoming a payment method in auction houses. The well-known auction house Christie’s sold the NFT of digital artist Beeple’s painting and accepted the cryptocurrency Ether as payment.
Now, the auction house Phillips is joining the trend. Phillips will accept cryptocurrency as an option to pay for the Banksy’s Laugh Now Panel A painting that will be auctioned at the 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale. The artwork is estimated to be somewhere around HK$22,000,000 to 32,000,000.
More importantly, this marks the first time an auction house in Asia takes cryptocurrency as payment for a physical piece of art. The buyer can use Ether or Bitcoins. Prior to this, Phillips sold the NFT of Mad Jones’ REPLICATOR. The multimedia creation went for about US$ 4 million. That was the first time that Phillips auctioned an NFT.
Coming back to the 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, the event is happening in collaboration with Poly Auction. This auction which will take place at JW Marriott will be conducted in Hong Kong Dollars. There will be a morning sale held on June 7 at 11:00 AM and an evening sale on June 8 at 6:00 PM.
For those interested, the auctioning is open for the public to view. Art aficionados from any part of the world can stream it on Phillips.com, the Phillips app, the Poly Auction app and WeChat Mini Program.
For anyone who wants to see the artwork ahead of the auction, Phillips and Poly auction is organising a viewing tour in Asian cities including Hong Kong, Beijing, Taiwan, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Taipei and Taichung. Check for the exact location and dates of the tour at Phillips’ official website.
Laugh Now Panel A is part of Banksy’s Laugh Now collection. The artist is famous for his socio-political street art. Banksy is also well-known for using art as a form of satire. He has touched on topics like Brexit, immigration and more.
Recently, another work of Banksy titled Love is in the Air was auctioned at Sotheby’s. It was the first time an auction house took crypto payment for a non-digital artwork. According to Sotheby’s, the bidding lasted for 14 minutes and fetched US$ 12.9 million.
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