22.”Īnd OpenSea, a marketplace for NFTs and crypto collectibles, announced in mid-July that it was laying off 20 percent of its 275 employees. “Due to market conditions,” Benjamin Arabo, the company’s chief executive, wrote in an email, “we have decided to push the auction to Aug. Jacob & Company, which sold its first NFT watch in 2021, had announced that its Astronomia Metaverso, a collection of eight physical and digital watches, would be sold in June on the UNXD platform - but the sale never happened. The second step was the June 15 introduction of the “viewer” feature on the brand’s Connected Calibre E4 smartwatch, which allows users to display their NFT (nonfungible token) artworks by connecting their watches to their crypto wallets.īut the NFT market, which is closely connected to cryptocurrencies, has suffered in the current downturn, too. (After all, one survey, released in January, showed that 36 percent of all millennials in the United States owned cryptocurrency.)Īt TAG Heuer, “the cryptocurrency payment was a first step in our strategy regarding NFTs and the metaverse,” Mr. Yet many watch brands and related businesses acknowledge that accepting crypto is one way to attract a young and digital-savvy clientele. “We may have a couple of lots in a watch sale accepting crypto, but it is an exception,” Mr. But according to Benoît Colson, international specialist at Sotheby’s Paris, none of the buyers chose that option. In the wider watch world, few resellers take crypto payments, although accepts five currencies through an arrangement with the payment processor Net Cents.Īs for auction houses, Sotheby’s said it would accept payment in cryptocurrencies at “Icon of Time,” a three-part auction of drawings and watercolor paintings by the watch designer Gerald Genta that was held this past spring. (However BitPay, the crypto payment processor that handles transactions for TAG Heuer, actually converts the sale price into dollars for payment to the brand. website would accept several cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, for sales up to the equivalent of $10,000. The brand, owned by the luxury group LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, announced in May that its U.S. “We have already sold a few hundred pieces in cryptocurrency.” “Crypto payments are one more service we offer our customers, even if many will never use it,” Frédéric Arnault, chief executive of TAG Heuer, said during a video interview in early July from the brand’s offices in Eysins, Switzerland. Even though the value of cryptocurrencies has plummeted in recent months, watch brands that accept the digital assets for payment, including TAG Heuer, Hublot and Breitling, show no signs of changing their minds.
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