The announcement came days after the brand announced that it was open to the idea of accepting crypto payments in future.
eBay has become the first major e-commerce company to allow non-fungible tokens to be sold on its platform.
The announcement came days after the brand announced that it was open to the idea of accepting crypto payments in future.
It means that eBay users will now be able to get their hands on tokenized versions of trading cards, artwork, photographs and video clips.
According to Reuters, eBay initially plans to provide NFT inventories to sellers who meet its standards — and a range of policies and tools will be rolled out to users in future.
eBay executive Jordan Sweetnam told the news outlet:
“In the coming months, eBay will add new capabilities that bring blockchain-driven collectibles to our platform.”
A Big Adoption Milestone?
It seems somewhat inevitable that eBay will have to accept crypto payments off the back of this announcement, at least for NFTs, given how these assets aren’t designed to be transacted with cash.
eBay will no doubt be hoping to attract blockbuster sales such as Beeple’s “EVERYDAYS” collage, which sold for a whopping $69 million.
But there’s a lot of competition in the market right now, with Binance and Crypto.com among the outlets that have recently unveiled their own platforms.
Indeed, another big auction took place on Tuesday night at Christie’s in New York, with nine rare CryptoPunks going under the hammer for $16.8 million — far beyond the estimates of $7 million to $9 million that had been set.
When the event was initially announced, the auction house had said all nine CryptoPunks had mint numbers under 1,000. Overall, only 10,000 retro characters exist. Noah Davis, the auctioneer’s specialist in post-war and contemporary art, had said:
“The CryptoPunks are the alpha and omega of the CryptoArt movement. This is a historic sale.”
