Sotheby’s, one of the world’s oldest and biggest auction houses, has announced that it will be accepting major cryptocurrencies as a new payment method at an upcoming auction. Sotheby’s CEO Charles Stewart said that the company will debut Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) payments as part of its upcoming auction of Banksy’s "Love is in the Air." The new payment method will be facilitated in partnership with United States’ largest cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, noted Stewart in a Tuesday interview with CNBC's Squawk Box. “It’s something we have been thinking about for quite some time,” the CEO said, elaborating that Sotheby’s …

German securities marketplace Deutsche Boerse and major bank Commerzbank have jointly invested in a new holding company that plans to focus on blockchain technology and digital assets. Deutsche Boerse announced Thursday that the company and Commerzbank entered a strategic partnership with fintech firm 360X to develop new blockchain-based digital marketplaces, for existing real asset classes like art and real estate. A representative from Deutsche Boerse confirmed to Cointelegraph that Deutsche Boerse invested 10 million euros ($12 million) for a stake of about 50% in 360X, while Commerzbank owns a lower double-digit stake. A Deutsche Boerse spokesperson noted that Thursday’s announcement …

The beginning of 2021 was marked by an unprecedented high interest in nonfungible token, or NFT, technology in various fields, the peak of which occurred in March. Nowadays, news about art deals with NFTs appears every day. What is more interesting is that NFTs are becoming fashionable among people who were previously ignorant of crypto. Examples of how the NFT mania is reaching its peak can be seen through Beeple selling his art piece for almost $70 million and the likes of the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, announcing that it will hold an exhibition of NFT art in …

The phrase “NFTs are going to the stars” gets a new meaning today as Irish conceptual artist (and one of Cointelegraph’s Top 100 in Blockchain 2020) Kevin Abosch has announced the planned launch of a orbital satellite dubbed “1111 KOSMOS.” The announcement comes shortly after the conclusion of a related NFT drop, Abosch’s 1111 series. A collection of 1111 NFT-backed images, the artist’s website hinted that the pieces would be a gateway to a larger project, and that “over time it will be revealed how communities from around the world can interact with the work.” In an interview with Cointelegraph, …

Copyright infringement in the online world has been an issue ever since the internet entered our lives. With a copy-and-paste culture, it’s never been easier to pass off a funny tweet as one’s own, upload unauthorized versions of chart-topping songs, and repurpose jaw-dropping photographs and videos. Now that nonfungible tokens have entered into the arena, a whole host of new issues have emerged. Opportunists are now tokenizing artwork without consent, and in some cases, artists haven’t realized their pieces have been plagiarized until the NFTs have been bought and sold. One attorney recently told Vice that, while creators do have …

A Latvian artist going only by the name of Kiwie has announced their intention to release more than a thousand nonfungible tokens that represent real-world street art. According to a statement from Kiwie, the NFT pieces will allow art connoisseurs to physically own street art without removing the brick wall, sidewalk or other infrastructure to which it was applied. The NFTs feature 3D renderings of the artist’s “Fat Monster” character spray painted in 1,001 real-world locations with corresponding geotags. “Using NFTs to represent ownership allows to maintain the beauty of the art intact,” said Kiwie. “Blockchain is not just a …

Nearly 100 characters from the popular crypto-collectibles project CryptoPunks will be displayed across bus shelters and billboards in Miami for one month from April 12. The showcase will be hosted by nonprofit art organization SaveArtSpace as part of its exhibition “Pixelated” — a month-long city-wide public art exhibition that will take over the streets of Miami for the first time this year. In addition to the 96 characters that will be on display across the city, the popular nonfungible tokens will also be displayed during the event as part of a pop-up exhibition of CryptoPunks in partnership with art equipment …

A decentralized finance, or DeFi, protocol says it has become the largest trading platform for nonfungible tokens on Binance Smart Chain — with users benefiting from lower gas fees than on Ethereum. BakerySwap claims the expensiveness of making purchases on Ethereum has meant that transaction costs can often outweigh the value of an artwork, shutting out small artists who are hoping to experiment and establish a reputation by sharing their creations with the world. This platform gives them the freedom to sell their works for just $4, something that is almost impossible to do on rival blockchains. According to the …

Nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, are “10 times better than their physical counterparts,” according to digital art collector MetaKovan. The pseudonymous art patron, who was recently revealed to be blockchain entrepreneur Vingaresh Sundaresan, bought the NFT of Beeple’s "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" for $69 million earlier this year. Explaining the motives behind his purchase in an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, MetaKovan pointed out that NFTs have a number of advantages over traditional artworks: They are easy to transfer, they don’t have any storage costs and their ownership can be shared. Also, they can democratize the art world by making it …

Nonfungible tokens appear to be an idea whose time has come. Originally developed for use with collectible trading-card games, NFTs can represent almost any unique asset. Outside of the gamer context, the first NFT to gain widespread popularity was probably CryptoKitties, which were released back in 2017. Related: CryptoKitties’ Dieter Shirley on breaking Ethereum and NFTs CryptoKitties became so popular that at one time, CryptoKitty trading clogged the Ethereum network, setting records for transaction volume. NFTs have only grown in popularity since then, and have now been developed for a range of in-game assets, digital collectibles, unique artworks and more. …

Tapinator, a publicly-traded mobile games publisher based in New York City, has announced plans to launch a new subscription casting service focused on nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, highlighting the growing popularity of digital art. Launching in summer 2021, NFT500 will host a collection of blue-chip NFTs from digital and traditional artists that subscribers can "cast" from their devices at home or work. The service will also make use of the recently minted NFT500 token, which allows subscribers to benefit from the price appreciation of the art collection hosted on NFT500. Ilya Nikolayev, Tapinator’s CEO, said the subscription service is based …

Can a new non-fungible token (NFT) platform finally solve the problem of ecosystem-wide royalties? NFT platform Recur announced on Thursday a $5 million seed round led by the DeFi Alliance, Delphi Digital, Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, and Gemini, among others. The raise claims a number of notable superlatives, including the first seed investment in the NFT ecosystem from industry veteran Gary Vaynerch, as well as the largest seed round ever for a NFT project (Dapper Labs has raised many multiples more money over its three year fundraising history, but largely in Series A rounds). Currently there are a number of …