Sotheby’s to Auction 3AC’s NFT Collection, Including Larva Labs’ Zombie Punk and Dmitri Cherniak’s ‘Golden Goose’

On Wednesday, Sotheby’s, one of the world’s largest brokers of fine and decorative art, announced its plans to auction a number of non-fungible token (NFT) assets that were previously owned by the now-defunct crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC). The auction, called the “Grails” NFT collection, will take place during Marquee Sale Week at the firm’s New York location.

In July of last year, the crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) filed for bankruptcy protection, and Teneo took over as the liquidator for the firm. In February, Teneo announced its intentions to sell a significant non-fungible token (NFT) collection that the now-insolvent company had amassed. Sotheby’s, the luxury auction house founded in 1744, will auction several of 3AC’s blue-chip NFTs under the name “Grails Collection.”

On Wednesday, Sotheby’s tweeted about the upcoming auction, which will begin on May 19, 2023. The auction house’s metaverse division Twitter account noted that the collection was primarily curated by 3AC in 2021. One of the NFTs up for auction will be Dmitri Cherniak’s “Ringers #879,” also known as the “Golden Goose.” The collection will include Autoglyphs, Cryptopunk #6,649, Tyler Hobbs’ small-scale Fidenza #725, and Snowfro’s full-spectrum Chromie Squiggle #1,780.

​​Sotheby’s stated that the collection will be sold in various live and online auctions, as well as private sales, throughout the year. The company said on Wednesday that “7 hand-picked works from the collection will come to auction for the first time during Sotheby’s Marquee Sale Week this May in New York, one of the most anticipated moments of the annual auction calendar with the most high-profile sales of Contemporary and Modern Art.”

Sotheby’s first entered the NFT market in the fall of 2020 after an employee from the company’s Contemporary Art department proposed the idea. According to a Forbes article, NFTs helped drive the auction house’s highest-grossing year ever in 2021. Michael Bouhanna, Sotheby’s head of digital art and NFTs, stated that the emergence of the Grails collection “marks a significant opportunity for collectors to celebrate the pioneering generative artists.”

“This expansive collection marks an important moment in the rise of generative art on the blockchain in 2021, and was guided by the 3AC ethos of acquiring the some of the highest quality and rarest works available on the market,” Bouhanna added. “Since that defining moment, when digital art and NFTs became a genuine pop culture phenomenon, generative art has continued to gain attention from a growing audience, including from major international institutions.”

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