Raphael Stevens

Sotheby’s announced Tuesday it will accept bitcoin and ether in an upcoming auction of Banksy’s “Love is in The Air.”It represents the first time a major auction house will accept the two cryptocurrencies as payment for a physical piece of art, according to Sotheby’s. The winning bidder can also pay in U.S. dollars.”What better combination to introduce crypto than an iconic Banksy painting,”  Sotheby’s CEO Charles Stewart said Tuesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”Sotheby’s latest entrance into the world of digital assets is being done through a partnership with the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, which went public in April. Sotheby’s first jaunt came last month, when the auction house sold nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, created by the digital artist Pak.Banksy’s “Love is in The Air” is one of the best-known works from the British street artist, whose real name is not known. The auction is set for May 12. Stewart said bidding is estimated between $3 million to $5 million.Gallery assistants adjust “Love is in the Air” by British graffiti artist Banksy ahead of its sale in London on June 24, 2013.Justin Tallis | AFP | Getty Images”It may well be that the winner of this painting pays in dollars and not crypto, but I think for us, creating the possibility for this is interesting,” Stewart said. “There’s clearly a large audience interested in the NFT aesthetic and possibility there. Why wouldn’t that extend to the physical art world, as well? It will be very interesting to see.”In its three-day sale of Pak’s NFTs, Stewart said Sotheby’s saw over 3,000 buyers. The collection, in total, sold for $16.8 million in U.S. dollars. “We are definitely seeing a large — and largely new — audience from a Sotheby’s perspective,” Stewart said.In March, Christie’s became the first major auction house to sell an NFT,  which are blockchain-based assets that are unique by design. The work from digital artist Beeple sold for nearly $70 million. Christie’s accepted ether as payment for that Beeple auction.Bitcoin is the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market value, which sits just over $1 trillion as of Tuesday afternoon, according to CoinMarketCap.com. Ether — which runs on the Ethereum blockchain network — is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value of nearly $400 billion.If the winning bidder pays for the Bansky painting with in either bitcoin or ether, CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin asked whether Sotheby’s plans to hold the cryptocurrency or immediately convert it into U.S. dollars.”We have an agreement with the owner of the painting, the consigner of the painting, so that will ultimately be up to them,” Stewart responded. “Part of the partnership with Coinbase gives us not only the ability to process the payment, but that possibility as well.”The announcement Tuesday from Sotheby’s, which was founded in 1744, represents further institutional adoption for cryptocurrencies.Mastercard earlier this year said it would begin to provide support for certain cryptocurrencies on its network, while major Wall Street banks Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have taken steps to offer their respective wealth management clients exposure to bitcoin.Other companies, such as Tesla and Square, have bought bitcoin to hold on their balance sheets. Tesla also began to accept bitcoin as payment for its electric vehicles.Using bitcoin to make purchases carries noteworthy tax implications because of its classification with the Internal Revenue Service.The IRS considers bitcoin property, so spending bitcoin is viewed essentially the same as selling it. That means an individual who pays for an item or service in bitcoin could potentially owe capital gains taxes at the point of ownership transfer if the value of bitcoin is higher than when they initially acquired it.Bitcoin traded just below $55,000 per token Tuesday afternoon, putting its year-to-date gains at nearly 90%, according to Coindesk. Ether traded just over $3,400 Tuesday, which is below the all-time high it reached earlier in the day. Ether has rallied more than 360% so far in 2021. More

Employers across the country are crafting plans to bring workers back to the office as Covid-19 vaccination rates rise and pandemic restrictions ease.Those decisions could have an outsize impact on restaurant sales for businesses located near city centers and office buildings, according to celebrity chef Ming Tsai.”We don’t know the new normal,” Tsai said at CNBC’s Small Business Playbook conference. “Are half the people going to come back to work and the other half are going to stay at home, or is it two-thirds? Whatever it is, it greatly affects restaurants that rely on the lunch business, because right now there’s none. … It relies on happy hour and, of course, on dinner.”Tsai is the host and executive producer of the TV cooking show “Simply Ming” and owns the Boston restaurant Blue Dragon. When lockdowns started, Tsai teamed up with Chef Ed Lee, more than a dozen other restaurants and Kentucky distiller Maker’s Mark to use Blue Dragon’s staff to create meals and care packages for unemployed or furloughed restaurant workers.But after the funding for that initiative ran out, Blue Dragon closed. The restaurant has been temporarily shuttered for 11 months, and its future survival is still unclear.More from CNBC’s Small Business PlaybookHow to get billion-dollar retail to stock your million-dollar product ideaBiden is targeting Amazons of world in tax plan, so why is small business worried?Main Street sees revenue gains ahead, but remains on edge: CNBC surveyIts location in Boston’s Seaport district was once advantageous. Before the crisis, Amazon announced plans to bring several thousand jobs to the area, creating more customers for Blue Dragon. Now the restaurant’s location could be a liability depending on how the local workforce returns to their offices.”It was the last year and really the next 12 to 18 months — we just don’t know what’s going to happen to that area and so many areas like that across the country,” Tsai told CNBC’s Kate Rogers.According to a survey conducted by Arizona State University with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, 66% of employers are planning to allow employees to work from home full-time through 2021. Goldman Sachs and the New York Stock Exchange are among the employers that are calling workers back to the office sooner.When the pandemic is over, 73% of employers intend to offer flexible work arrangements, according to the survey results. But the majority of respondents still want their workforce in the office for at least 20 hours a week. More

As more of the country gets vaccinated and stores continue to reopen and operate under less Covid restrictions, small business owners are poised to see revenue gains this summer. But amid intensifying competition for consumer dollars, the lion’s share of the spending will go to entrepreneurs who know how to effectively create content on social media, according to serial entrepreneur and media mogul Gary Vaynerchuk. The key to a smart social media advertising strategy, according to Gary Vee, is to think more like a publisher and less like a salesman.”The reason so many businesses struggle with social media is because they put out content that’s in their best interest, instead of the person on the other side,” Vaynerchuk said at the CNBC Small Business Playbook virtual event on Tuesday. “Try to put out content that educates instead of sells. You start becoming more of a publisher [who’s focused on] editorial, than you do a salesman. That simple rule is probably the best that I’ve seen people use to become successful,” the CEO of VaynerMedia told CNBC’s Seema Mody.Specifically, he cites Facebook, Instagram and TikTok as a “requirement” for small businesses looking to hedge their advertising spend. “It’s not just about organic, it’s about ads. You’ve got to run media on these three platforms in a demo that comes to your shop or uses your service,” Vaynerchuk said, adding that small businesses should be spending “as much as possible” on those platforms.”You’ve got to test and learn, test and learn … then you find an ad that works for your business, that’s ROI [return on investment] positive, and you pour lighter fluid on it. It’s like how you get better with your health. You work out and you eat healthy. You eat healthy and you work out. And you do it every day. The formula is simple — the execution is hard.”More from CNBC’s Small Business PlaybookHow to get billion-dollar retail to stock your million-dollar product ideaBiden is targeting Amazons of world in tax plan, so why is small business worried?Main Street sees revenue gains ahead, but remains on edge: CNBC surveyVaynerchuk’s advice comes after a year of small business closures across the U.S. and the world. Even amid improving economic conditions and vaccination rates in the U.S., there has been a continued wave of bankruptcies which in some regions were back near peak levels in early 2021, according to a report from Facebook and the Small Business Roundtable released in April and based on data through February. Still, more small business owners across the U.S. currently describe business conditions as good, according to the second quarter CNBC | Survey Monkey Small Business Survey, which saw confidence among business owners rise slightly.”Everything in business is hard. It’s hard to find a good campaign, it’s hard to find good employees, it’s hard to do many things,” Vaynerchuk, an early investor in companies like Twitter, Uber, Snap and freshly public crypto exchange Coinbase, said of the current landscape. “But if you put out enough good content, you will attract an audience because the algorithms, or attention, is there for you for free.” More

Life is Good was on the verge of filing for bankruptcy protection last year, according to its CEO, but the retailer managed to overhaul its business strategy in a matter of weeks to have its best year ever during the Covid pandemic.”When [Covid] hit, 50% of our business was wholesale … and that business died in a hurry,” Life is Good co-founder and CEO Bert Jacobs said Tuesday during CNBC’s Small Business Playbook event.”We were in a situation where we were facing bankruptcy, and we were facing having to cut at least half of our staff. That’s when we said … let’s play offense really hard. Let’s produce this stuff to order, and let’s see what happens.”Instead of ordering in bulk shirts, pullovers, hats and other accessories that are already printed with logos, slogans and other designs, Life is Good started ordering batches of blank items last year, the CEO explained. Then, monitoring consumer sentiment, it began printing inventory on-demand that had phrases about staying home and quarantining, wearing masks, and other pandemic-related trends.”We started speaking to whatever was culturally relevant, which at the time was a lot of difficult things, but we tried to keep it light,” Jacobs said.Bert Jacobs, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Optimist of Life is goodPaul Morigi | CNBCThe strategy clearly helped. Not only did it aid in boosting customers’ morale, but it was a financial success story.”2020 ended up being the best top line we’ve ever had in 27 years, and the strongest bottom line,” Jacobs said. (The privately held company didn’t break out exact sales figures.)”2020 showed us how we should be running our business,” he said, adding that sales in 2021 are still “growing like mad” because Life is Good is sticking to the business principles that it picked up on during the past few months.”We are working for the consumer, and everybody’s got to do that,” Jacobs explained. “The [retailers] that survive are going to be the ones that listen closely and capture the data. … The consumer gives you the answers.”More from CNBC’s Small Business PlaybookHow to get billion-dollar retail to stock your million-dollar product ideaBiden is targeting Amazons of world in tax plan, so why is small business worried?Main Street sees revenue gains ahead, but remains on edge: CNBC surveyA number of retailers were not as lucky as Life is Good last year, as they buckled under the pressures brought on from the health crisis. Dozens filed for bankruptcy, and thousands of store closures were announced by retail businesses, many in the apparel category.There is a renewed sense of optimism, however, that demand is beginning to rebound as consumers leave their homes and prepare to socialize again. Americans will be returning to work, in droves, in the months ahead, and families are looking to book long-awaited summer vacations.”This is really a community of rational optimists,” Jacobs said. “I say rational optimists because we recognize that there are challenges in the world … that it’s difficult … but we decide when we wake up in the morning to focus on what’s right with our lives, what’s right with the world, more than what’s wrong with the world.” More

In this articleGPSRon Antonelli | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesGap Inc. said Tuesday it agreed to sell its Intermix designer clothing brand to the private equity firm Altamont Capital Partners, hoping to hone in on its four core brands.Altamont will acquire the entire Intermix business, including its store leases and e-commerce operations. Intermix operates 31 U.S. stores. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.Gap acquired Intermix in 2012 for roughly $130 million in cash. The business represented a little less than 1% of Gap’s 2020 sales of $13.8 billion, a Gap spokeswoman said.She added that the deal isn’t expected to have a material impact on its margins.In April, Gap sold Janie and Jack, a high-end children’s clothing brand it acquired from Gymboree, to Go Global Retail.By getting rid of these two fashion banners, the company will be able to focus more on growing its stronger-performing Athleta and Old Navy brands, while working to turn around its namesake Gap label as well as Banana Republic.Gap shares were down around 2% by Tuesday afternoon. The company’s stock is up more than 340% over the past 12 months. It has a market cap of $13 billion.BofA Securities was Gap’s financial advisor.Read the full release from Gap. More