Sotheby’s Sold a Huge Diamond for $12.3 Million in Cryptocurrency

‘The Key 10138’ diamond for sale at Sotheby’s. Sotheby’s

Last Friday, Sotheby’s sold a pear shaped, 101.38-carat diamond to an anonymous private donor for $12.3 million; the purchase was made via cryptocurrency, prompting Sotheby’s to announce that the transaction represented the most expensive purchase of a jewel that’s ever been made with cryptocurrency. The jewel itself is the second largest pear-shaped diamond ever to appear on the public art market, indicating that Sotheby’s will likely continue accepting cryptocurrency indefinitely if they can lure buyers interest in utilizing the currency to make such high-profile acquisitions. Sotheby’s first announced that they would be accepting cryptocurrency as payment in May, and since then, several sales have subsequently gone well.

Although auction houses don’t always disclose the payment methods that were used for the purchase of artwork, earlier in July, Sotheby’s sold an NFT version of the World Wide Web’s source code for $5.4 million, indicating that interest in non-fungible tokens has risen in tandem with the normalization of cryptocurrency within the fine art market industry.

In regards to the Sotheby’s diamond sale, flawless white diamonds are evidently particularly in demand at the present moment. “We are thrilled to witness a historical moment, when one of the Earth’s oldest and rarest treasures was purchased using humanity’s newest universal currency,” Wenhao Yu, the Deputy Chairman of Sotheby’s Jewelry in Asia, said in a statement. “By introducing this innovative payment option to our luxury sale, we open up new possibilities and expand our reach into a whole new clientele, many of whom are from the digitally savvy generation.”

The sale of a diamond is particularly noteworthy at global moment in time in which young, digitally savvy people are not necessarily expected to have the enormous funds necessary to make these kinds of luxury purchases. It’s not clear whether Sotheby’s accepted Bitcoin or Ether in exchange for the diamond, but the sea change in the industry is here to stay.