The auction house was now 277 years old and traditionally focussed on auctioning physical high-end items, it had a strong pipeline of NFT activity<\/p>\n
Panellists on Wednesday\u2019s opening keynote highlighted a shift in behaviour from younger people as a major factor for the growing hype around Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and the metaverse, resulting in a shake-up at one of the world\u2019s oldest and most-renowned companies.<\/p>\n
Sotheby\u2019s CEO Charles Stewart took the stage to explain that even though the auction house was now 277 years old and traditionally focussed on auctioning physical high-end items, it had a strong pipeline of NFT activity, a term he conceded \u201cno-one was familiar with\u201d even a year ago.<\/p>\n
Emphasising how big NFTs are becoming, Stewart noted 8 million tokens had been exchanged on trading platform Opensea in 2021 compared with 50,000 items sold by Sotheby\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Art is a major play for Sotheby\u2019s and Stewart explained this segment was \u201cno exception\u201d to becoming digital, with the company selling one art-based NFT in 2021 for $11.8 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have seen the shift in behaviour and we have all become digital in ways that are perhaps unexpected. Art is no exception to the way we access, consume and discover art. Some of the ways people purchase and collect art has changed significantly, so maybe it\u2019s not surprising that art itself has migrated into the digital arena as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Neeraj Roy, founder of Indian player Hungama Digital Media Entertainment, put focus on the metaverse, explaining the company\u2019s vision of creating a digital world combining its library of music, art, films, gaming and more.<\/p>\n
Roy said the idea of its metaverse play was to enable fans to go beyond simply consuming films, music and games, but actually gain more access to this content and \u201cdemocratise the entire space\u201d.<\/p>\n
Specifically, it would integrate NFTs with the metaverse, allowing users to gain rights to exclusive content by purchasing tokens and other digital assets, all of which would be secured on the blockchain.<\/p>\n
Roy added India was \u201cembracing blockchain meaningfully\u201d, estimating 500 million consumers from the country will join the metaverse.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The auction house was now 277 years old and traditionally focussed on auctioning physical high-end items, it had a strong pipeline of NFT activity Panellists on Wednesday\u2019s opening keynote highlighted a shift in behaviour from younger people as a major factor for the growing hype around Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and the metaverse, resulting in\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11071,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_scj_primary_category_id":136,"_scj_featured":false,"_scj_featured_from":"","_scj_featured_until":"","_scj_featured_order":0,"_scj_visibility_class":"current","_scj_layout_family":"standard","_scj_article_style":"","_scj_display_overrides":[],"_scj_intro_image_id":11071,"_scj_intro_alt":"Sotheby\u2019s boss paints picture for NFTs","_scj_intro_caption":"","_scj_intro_class":"","_scj_intro_float":"","_scj_full_image_id":11071,"_scj_full_alt":"Sotheby\u2019s boss paints picture for NFTs","_scj_full_caption":"","_scj_full_class":"","_scj_full_float":"","_scj_media_type":"","_scj_media_provider":"","_scj_media_external_id":"","_scj_media_url":"","_scj_media_poster_id":0,"_scj_media_width":0,"_scj_media_height":0,"_scj_media_aspect_ratio":"","_scj_media_description":"","_scj_gallery_items":[],"_scj_related_post_ids":[],"_scj_additional_authors":[],"scj_layout_family":"standard","scj_media_provider":"","scj_media_url":"","scj_full_caption":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n