Sotheby’s will auction off part of 3AC’s digital art collection

Sotheby’s auction house says it will be selling off a digital artwork collection formed as part of collapsed crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital.

In an April 19 announcement, Sotheby’s said it would auction off nonfungible token, or NFT, artwork assembled as part of 3AC’s digital portfolio in 2021. The firm will begin the auction with sales of seven NFTs that are part of the “grails” collection in May, described as “some of the highest quality and rarest works,” according to Sotheby’s head of digital art, Michael Bouhanna.

Among the pieces being auctioned by Sotheby’s include zombie CryptoPunk #6649 and Autoglyph #187 from Larva Labs as well as Dmitri Cherniak’s artwork “The Golden Goose,” purchased by 3AC co-founders Su Zhu and Kyle Davies in August 2021. They paid 1,800 Ether (ETH) — roughly $5.8 million at the time — for the piece.

Three Arrows was a crypto-friendly hedge fund that went bust amid the 2022 market crash. As part of the proceedings, advisory firm Teneo said in February it planned to sell off 3AC’s digital collection — excluding the firm’s “Starry Night Portfolio” — in an effort to “realize the value of the NFTs for the purposes of the liquidation.”

“From the outset, the Joint Liquidators of Three Arrows Capital have been conducting a thorough process to identify and recover company assets,” Teneo said in a statement to Cointelegraph. “We chose to partner with the Sotheby’s digital art team on the sale of this expansive NFT collection because we believe that they bring a best-in-class approach that will ultimately maximize the value of these assets on behalf of all creditors.”

Davies’ and Zhu’s whereabouts have been largely unknown sin the collapse of 3AC. However, both co-founders have continued to be active on social media channels as Davies risks being held in contempt of U.S. bankruptcy court for failing to answer a subpoena. In April, the pair backed the launch of a new crypto project called Open Exchange.

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Sotheby’s was one of the first major auction houses to launch a dedicated marketplace for digital artwork and NFTs in 2021 amid many pieces going for millions of dollars. Among the pieces included in listings on the platform was an NFT of the first tweet from former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, many CryptoPunks and the original manuscript of the book that coined the term “metaverse.”

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