Sotheby’s Auction House Launches NFT-Only Marketplace
Patrons who sign up for Metaverse are given a profile picture designed by well-known NFT artist Pak.
By Shiela Bertillo
Sotheby’s, one of the world’s largest auction houses, launched last Friday, October 15, its non-fungible token (NFT) exclusive marketplace, Metaverse. The launch marks the first of its kind NFT-only sale among blue chip auction houses, and Sotheby’s will now take place on this cutting-edge platform. The platform began its inaugural sale yesterday.
The new platform, Metaverse, offers new technical advancements that the traditional Sotheby’s website could not previously implement. Moreover, the layout of the website is similar in format to NFT-specific platforms such as OpenSea, wherein the NFTs are displayed in a way viewers can easily see the transaction history of any piece.
However, contrary to the pioneer NFT marketplaces, Metaverse offers a description of each piece’s significance, alongside the artist’s biography.
In addition, patrons who sign up for Metaverse are given a profile picture designed by well-known NFT artist Pak.
Natively Digital 1.2, Metaverse’s introductory sale, the first iteration took place in June, showcased premier NFTs.
Consequently, Sotheby’s is planning to make Natively Digital its flagship biannual (twice a year) NFT auction.
Accordingly, for the second iteration, the auction house will commit to a level of curation not often seen in the NFT scene: Sotheby’s tapped 19 NFT collectors to offer choice selections from their collections.
The second iteration made a total of 53 lots available, including NFT classics such as Crypto Punks from Larva Labs, sophisticated generative art from Art Blocks and Fingerprints DAO, and collectible Rare Pepe meme trading cards.
Michael Bouhanna, co-head of Sotheby’s Digital Sales stated that the auction house wanted to deliver “a very diverse sale in terms of category but also in terms of price point.”
Bidding will end on October 26 with the estimated bids range from $10,000 to $2 million.
Recently, cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase announced its plan to launch its very own NFT marketplace that would rival existing NFT marketplaces such as Opensea. (Read more on: Cryptocurrency Exchange Coinbase to Launch Its Own NFT Platform to Rival OpenSea)
This article is published on BitPinas: Sotheby’s Auction House Launches NFT-Only Marketplace
