Visa believes in Bitcoin and crypto https://ift.tt/32jah4z

That Visa believes in Bitcoin is a given! The global digital payments pioneer supports the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem, as its chief Cuy Sheffield publicly shares his thoughts of support for Crypto Black Art NFT. 

Visa believes in Bitcoin: mass adoption, consulting, and new cryptocurrency cards

As early as the beginning of 2021, the global payments giant has been talking about Bitcoin, the queen of cryptocurrencies, and how it was interested in participating in the mass adoption of BTC. 

In fact, last February, Mike Milotich, Visa’s Senior Vice President of Investor Relations, had explicitly said that the company intends to allow users to cash out Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies for spending in 70 million stores. 

And here we are, closing out the year with two major events at Visa. On the one hand, the launch of the Global Crypto Advisory Practice, the advisory service to help its partners navigate the world of cryptocurrencies, and on the other hand, the launch of the new cryptocurrency debit cards for the European and UK markets. 

Still, the cryptocurrency ecosystem continues to expand, so much so that Visa’s head of cryptocurrency, Cuy Sheffield, wasted no time expressing his thoughts towards that niche cryptocurrency industry that has become explosive in 2021: NFTs. 

NFT collector Cuy Sheffield

In a roundup of tweets, Visa chief Cuy Sheffield announced that he is a collector of NFTs, especially Black Crypto Art, for which he sees a digital renaissance future for communities of color. Here’s a portion of his tweets about it.

“Crypto art as a new form factor and platform for Black artists, curators, and collectors is one of the most exciting avenues that could spur a Black Digital Renaissance that would create and capture billions of dollars of value for Black communities over the next decade…

…Public blockchains like Ethereum are general purpose technologies that enable new assets to be created, have their ownership recorded, and be easily traded on exchanges. Non-fungible tokens or (NFTs) have evolved from games to artwork.”

According to Sheffield, NFTs create an alignment of incentives between collectors and artists, calculating that the fine art market is worth $65 billion with average annualized returns of 7% per year. 

Cuy Sheffield: “crypto art as a mass art movement”

Continuing with his talk, Sheffield argues that crypto art with its NFTs has all the potential to make for a mass art movement. 

This way, “black” culture would return to the hands of black creatives, who have always struggled to own their art like music, literature, and more. Therefore, the new art movement makes ownership and discovery of digital artworks democratic by offering a direct bridge between content creator and collector. 

“According to @xx1off from January to November, 58 Black crypto artists sold a total of 513 pieces of crypto artwork for 1,132 ETH (market value of $736k).

During this period, the average selling price for Black crypto art increased from $144 to $927! The value of Black crypto art has been recognized by the market and Black artists are seeing promising demand and anticipated returns for their work.”

Visa entered the NFT world last August 2021, with the purchase of one of the famous CryptoPunks ( the Crypto Punk 7610) at 49.50 ETH, the equivalent at the time of about $150,000.