Between Amazon launching next month its NFT Marketplace – tentatively called the “ Amazon Digital Marketplace ”, Sotheby’s already launched high-end secondary marketplace for “digital artwork” , and Christie’s launchin g l a s t y e a r its Christie’s 3.0 – a platform allowing for fully on-chain sales that demonstrates “the auction house’s commitment to both artists and collectors in the Web3 space”, programmable digital assets/NFTs are simultaneously entering both ends of the mainstream market.
Probably the most important takeaway from such broad initiatives turns on the fact foundational brands have decided to supplant the prior NFT free-for-all initiated by PFP projects, artists and collectors. Despite potentially risking the same fate of Dapper Labs , Amazon will rely on a private blockchain that takes credit cards while Sotheby’s eliminates “NFTs” from the equation altogether to focus on what it calls “digital artwork” even though digital art has already been around for decades. What is clea
Being swept aside by this establishment wave is OpenSea – the newly-displaced old guard and wild-west pioneer who likely never contemplated insider trading as a risk until a former OpenSea Manager was recently convicted of it . Not surprisingly, OpenSea offloads tax obligations and refers its users to CoinTracker for tax calculations. OpenSea even explicitly points out to users of the marketplace that “[y[ou are responsible for determining what, if any, taxes apply to your purchases, sales, and transfers