Sotheby’s, an art and jewellery brokerage, put a 101.38-carat diamond up for auction and has received more than $10 million in crypto for the rock on 9 July.
According to a report from MarketWatch, the diamond was sold for $12.3 million to an anonymous buyer last Friday at Sotheby’s Hong Kong. As per Sotheby’s records, it is the most expensive gem ever to be purchased through the use of cryptocurrency.
The diamond auction was completely crypto-friendly, with news of this breaking in late June. It was estimated that the price at which the diamond would be sold will be around $15 million. The name of the diamond is “The Key 10138,” which supposedly pays homage to the commonplace lingo of the crypto industry. It is derived from the fact that private keys give access to the holdings of each crypto owner.
Furthermore, choosing to stay anonymous or using pseudonyms is not very rare in the crypto industry. Crypto traders and social media personalities often comment on Twitter about cryptocurrency by using pseudonymous profiles. Even the creator (or creators) of Bitcoin, the crypto asset that started it all, has remained anonymous under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.
When the results of the auction were disclosed, the annoucement did not include which digital asset the buyer put up as payment, as reported by MarketWatch. Buyers had the option to wager their offers for the diamond in Bitcoin, Ethereum (ETH), and regional currencies (fiat).
On 9 July, Bitcoin’s price approximately continued to fluctuate between $32,670 and $34,170, based on Cointelegraph’s Bitcoin price index. Ethereum was fluctuating roughly between $2,070 and $2,180 on that day. By using a price of $33,000 per Bitcoin, the buyer would have paid about 372 BTC for the diamond. If they were paying in ETH, the rock would have cost an estimated 5,857 ETH, assuming a price of $2,100 for each ETH coin. Howevr, the actual totals were not shared, so the aforementioned values simply serve as a logically estimated benchmark of potential based on price action on 9 July.