Sotheby’s Metaverse Gears for ‘Biggest NFT Charity Auction’, Proceeds Will Go to Healthcare Workers

Sothe­by’s has put up a series of non-fun­gi­ble tokens (NFTs) for auc­tion, with plans to donate the pro­ceeds to front­line health­care work­ers. The auc­tion house­’s vir­tu­al plat­form Sothe­by’s Meta­verse has part­nered with health­care-focussed non-prof­it Sos­ten­to as part of its ini­tia­tive. A series of NFTs have been put up for auc­tion on the Sothe­by’s Meta­verse web­site under the title “Gift­ed: The 140 Col­lec­tion.” The price range of these NFTs lies between $1,000 (rough­ly Rs. 74,000) and $2,200 (rough­ly Rs. 1.6 lakh), as list­ed on the website.

NFTs are valu­able vir­tu­al col­lectibles, inspired by real-life ele­ments like sketch­es, art­works, and more. Col­lec­tors can pur­chase these NFTs with fiat mon­ey or cryp­tocur­ren­cies.

The NFTs being auc­tioned in this project were actu­al­ly gift­ed to 140 ran­dom Twit­ter fol­low­ers in June. These win­ners were called the Besties, out of which, sev­en have come for­ward to sell their hold­ings and help the front­line workers.

“The NFTs illus­trat­ed the many facets of Twit­ter, from the first iter­a­tions of its logo to its 140-char­ac­ter lim­it. Now, sev­en of those lucky strangers have unit­ed to sell a full set of sev­en NFTs with pro­ceeds going towards Sos­ten­to, an organ­i­sa­tion that gives vital sup­port to front­line pub­lic health work­ers,” Sothe­by’s Meta­verse has writ­ten in a post, describ­ing the collection.

Images and videos of many of the action­able NFTs have emerged on Twit­ter under the hash­tag, #Gifted140.

“It is inspir­ing to work not only along­side an organ­i­sa­tion like Sos­ten­to, but also with the group of Besties who recog­nise the sig­nif­i­cance of their NFTs and are har­ness­ing that pow­er for a good cause,” Coin­Tele­graph quot­ed Cas­san­dra Hat­ton, Sothe­by’s Glob­al Head of Sci­ence and Pop­u­lar Cul­ture as saying.

The bid­dings are open till Decem­ber 1.

NFT sales vol­ume surged to $10.7 bil­lion (rough­ly Rs. 79,820 crore) in the third quar­ter of 2021, up more than eight­fold from the pre­vi­ous quar­ter, accord­ing to data from mar­ket track­er Dap­pRadar.

Surg­ing sales and hefty prices on NFTs — items which do not phys­i­cal­ly exist — have baf­fled many but the mul­ti-fold growth shows lit­tle or no depre­ci­a­tion whatsoever.