🖼️ 👩🏻⚖️ 💸 Artworks from an acrimonious divorce have raised $676m at auction in New York, the most valuable sale ever held at Sotheby’s. Works by Rothko, Warhol and Pollock, acquired over more than half a century by real-estate magnate Harry Macklowe and his wife, Linda, were put on the market after the warring couple could not agree on the collection’s value. A judge concluded that the only way to establish its worth was to test the market and ordered the works to be sold. After the 14-week divorce case, the 84-year-old Macklowe celebrated marrying Patricia Landeau, 65, by posting 42ft-high images of the newlyweds on one of his buildings in New York’s Park Avenue – within sight of his ex-wife’s apartment.
A buoyant year for superyachts
🚢 😎 🏝️ This year will “smash all records for superyacht sales”, says Stewart Campbell, editor-in-chief of Boat International. People are thinking: “Life is short. Let’s buy a boat.” More than 1,000 superyachts are being built around the world, a 25% jump on last year. Jeff Bezos’s new $500m mega-yacht marks the upper boundary, but the market for second-hand superyachts has also had a record year, “by some distance”. People appreciate the comfortable, mobile isolation a yacht can provide, says Campbell, and after the pandemic, they’re thinking: “If not now, when?”
Bitcoin scores a home run
🦘 ⚾ 👾 Australia’s top baseball team has become the first sports club in the world to pay its players in Bitcoin. Perth Heat announced that its players would have the option to receive the digital currency from Friday after signing a sponsorship deal with an LA crypto-payments firm called OpenNode. Newly minted chief Bitcoin officer Patrick O’Sullivan says the club is “embracing the reality” that the future of money may well revolve around cryptocurrency. Perth Heat will also be accepting Bitcoin for further sponsorships and stadium food sales.