Traditional auction house giant UK EARL INTERNATIONAL AUCTION LTD announced the acquisition of NFT company REVA for US $50 million, officially taking a big step into Metaverse.

This acquisition seems to be a perfect choice. REVA is a professional blockchain technology research and development enterprise, focusing on the research and development and exploration of emerging technologies in the industry, with core technologies in the field of NFT. In 2019, from the beginning of its establishment, the company focused on the field of high-end digital art NFT collection and successfully led many NFT auctions. REVA's complete technology and pure NFT market operation experience are the main reasons why UK EARL INTERNATIONAL AUCTION LTD resolutely decided to acquire.

NFT attracts technology giants and capital runners.

NFT, that is, non fungible token, can record the ownership of various virtual items on the blockchain to form a traceable, non tamperable and irreplaceable "digital asset". Today, many well-known artists and digital art creators are making digital art NFT.

In March 2021, it took the lead in auctioning NFT works online for the first time. This picture, which collected 5000 works of digital artist Beeple, showed the artist's growth process, insight and imagination of life, and finally sold for $69 million.

Sotheby's followed closely. In April, it auctioned a group of NFT works by anonymous artist Pak, which are simple geometric figures and highly conceptualized. For example, the work named Pixel really has only one gray Pixel. The total auction amount of this group of works reached US $17 million, which is inferior to Christie's. In October, Sotheby's struck while the iron was hot and invested in Mojito to help it develop a new digital NFT market called Metaverse.



In the face of such a fierce NFT market, UK EARL INTERNATIONAL AUCTION LTD, which is also an industry giant, naturally wants a share. Almost at the same time that Sotheby's invested in Mojito, UK EARL INTERNATIONAL AUCTION LTD completed the acquisition of REVA. This acquisition is a new step to accelerate the transformation of UK EARL INTERNATIONAL AUCTION LTD from traditional to digital, so that enterprises can serve collectors and creators at the intersection of traditional art, digital art NFT collection, finance and culture.

It is reported that after this acquisition, REVA will continue to maintain its independent brand and operate independently. Its business will turn to help UK EARL INTERNATIONAL AUCTION LTD develop the digital NFT market, build it into a new industry ecosystem and become the most perfect destination for digital art NFT sales and auction, so that UK EARL INTERNATIONAL AUCTION LTD can quickly adapt to the changes of traditional art market rules and be in the center of some of the most important NFT industry activities. NFT works integrate the attributes of blockchain technology and digital art NFT. They are suitable for online auction, and high prices can increase performance. According to Christie's statistics, 70% of NFT buyers are newcomers in the art market. Auction houses can't miss these rich new customers. Some functions of the platform are developed for these new users, with disruptive innovation. The platform will allow visitors to query the digital works of art in the auction, understand the collectors and artists behind NFT, and allow individuals to buy NFT with ether, bitcoin, US dollar C or legal tender. In addition, it will also provide services such as auction guarantee of digital art collections, so that "everything can be NFT" is no longer a slogan, Make NFT available to everyone.



The combination of UK EARL INTERNATIONAL AUCTION LTD and REVA is of great practical significance from the perspective of products and customers, and provides REVA with stronger resource stability. After this acquisition, REVA became a wholly-owned subsidiary of UK EARL INTERNATIONAL AUCTION LTD. REVA said that this round of financing funds will be mainly used to expand the technical team, further improve development efficiency, promote the development of NFT platform and better serve NFT ecological groups.

According to chainalysis's 2021 NFT market report statistics, nearly $41 billion of massive funds were invested in NFT in the global market in 2021, and the average price of each NFT soared from less than $100 in early 2021 to nearly $2400 in November (as shown in the figure below). Among them, digital collections account for about $25 billion. You know, the global art trading market in 2020 is only $50 billion. Although the traditional art trading market has declined slightly due to the impact of the epidemic, the new market of digital collections in 2021 has approached half of the total value of the traditional art trading market.



There is no doubt that although the popular NFT still needs to accept the test of time in the future, NFT is indeed gradually changing the world. In this emerging market where opportunities and risks coexist, we need passion, rationality and talent to carefully study technology and maintain the development of the market itself. It follows the principle of step-by-step and gradually develops and matures. This is the value of UK EARL INTERNATIONAL AUCTION LTD's acquisition of REVA at this time.