“A year ago I didn’t know what an NFT was, now we sell them on our platform”

“Thirteen months ago, myself, along with 99% of my colleagues, didn’t even know what an NFT (non-fungible token) was. Now, we sell NFTs on all our platforms, including from some famous artists,” said Isabelle Paagman, Senior Director, European Head of Private Sales at Sotheby’s, during the Mind The Tech London 2022 conference, which was sponsored by Calcalist, Bank Leumi, and LabTech. Paagman spoke of the non-fungible tokens, which are currently one of the most active and dominant players in the crypto market, during a discussion about fintech and how the industry is changing the future of money.

Paagman added that officials at Sotheby’s first spoke to artists to better understand how to navigate the new space, and later adjusted their platform to sell NFTs. An NFT is a certificate of authenticity of an item in a blockchain system that allows people to mark a particular digital asset as unique. While NFTs are best known as representations of digital art (such as JPEG files), they can also be represented by virtual plots of land (virtual real estate), or virtual clothing (such as details of an avatar in a video game). NFTs are nearly always purchased through cryptocurrencies – most often Ethereum.