A 101.38 diamond sold for millions at auction for Sotheby’s. Surprisingly the 247-year-old auction house allowed the buyer to pay in cryptocurrency. It was the most expensive gem ever purchased with cryptocurrency to according to officials at Sotheby’s.
The crypto-friendly diamond auction surfaced in the month of June, with estimates that the diamond would hit prices somewhere in the range of $15 million. Known as “The Key 10138,” the diamond’s name reportedly pays homage to crypto industry lingo.
It is very common of the crypto industry that the diamond auction would yield an anonymous buyer that is paying in crypto. However the auction did not include which digital asset the buyer put up as payment. Buyers had the option to wager their offers for the diamond in Bitcoin, Ethereum or regional currencies.
Using a price of $33,000 per Bitcoin, the buyer would have paid about 372 BTC for the diamond. If paying in ETH, the rock would have cost about 5,857 ETH, assuming a price of $2,100 for each ETH coin.
