Jean-Claude Biver and Carlos Moreira, CEO of WISeKey Successfully Launched the World’s First NFT Auction of a Luxury Watch

Jean-Claude Biver and Carlos Moreira, CEO of WISeKey Successfully Launched the World’s First
NFT Auction of a Luxury Watch

Where auctions are already soaring for works of art and intangibles, never before has a luxury watch been the subject of an NFT (Non-Fungible Token) sale.

This watch is the first luxury watch to have a digital life with certified ownership and authenticity. This digital twin will be the “authentic” double of the physical watch in the digital space. A new chapter is opening.

Jean-Claude Biver and Carlos Moreira, CEO of WISeKey, hosted a live chat discussing the repercussions of such a sale and its significance for the watch industry. You can view the interview at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiEL3TO0QIo.

The launch of the auction was also promoted on the Times Square NASDAQ Tower:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ls0iKQ7wTw0.

Geneva, Switzerland – March 31, 2021 – Jean-Claude Biver and WISeKey International Holding Ltd (SIX: WIHN, NASDAQ: WKEY), a Swiss cybersecurity company, are leading the way in announcing the successful launch of the first NFT auction of a luxury watch.

The auction will take place from March 31 to April 6, 2021 on the leading Trusted WISe.ART NFT MarketPlace platform which is already active in sale of artworks. The NFT auction is accessible from www.wisekey.com/wiseart/.

To mark the history of this first NFT sale of a luxury watch, Jean-Claude Biver has symbolically chosen the famous “Bigger Bang All Black Tourbillon Chrono “special piece,” a historic watch for the major role it played in paving the way for today’s new trends.  This watch has marked the history of watchmaking, is an emblem, symbol of success, cornerstone, and source of inspiration and Jean-Claude Biver’s favorite watch.

The never-before-seen ‘All Black’ color, its dial open to the movement to reveal the beautiful mechanics (again the best defense against counterfeiting at the time), its tourbillon in an ultra-contemporary design, has turned this  watch into  a true icon because it opened up new fields of exploration, new trends that have become today’s standards. The watch symbolically represents the starting point of a whole new generation of contemporary watchmaking envisioned and successfully initiated by Jean-Claude Biver at the time.

Jean-Claude Biver commented, “This watch has brought me so much success and happiness. It is one of the most important watches in my private collection. It has not only inspired me professionally but has also brought me so much personally.”

Jean-Claude Biver … 45 years of an extraordinary career. From the early years at Audemars Piguet, the amazing Blancpain adventure, the collaboration with Nicolas Hayek, Omega, then the dazzling development of Hublot, the presidency of the watchmaking division of the French group LVMH, the rejuvenation of TAG Heuer, the re-launch of Zenith, the creation of the first Swiss luxury connected watch with Google and Intel, or his commitment against racism during the EURO2008 and the Charity Water campaign with Depeche Mode to name but a few, not forgetting his swiss mountain cheese… Jean-Claude Biver is a living legend in the watch industry, characterized by his commitment to the Swiss watch industry, his spirit of daring and entrepreneurship, with passion.

Jean-Claude Biver and Carlos Moreira, CEO of WISeKey, launched 12 years ago at BaselWorld the first digital certification of a luxury watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIWx_Z6JdJA. They are now repeating this technology breakthrough with the use of Digital identification combined with NFT to use the existing digital certificate of authenticity on the Hublot watch and checking and creation of a Digital Twin with its corresponded Non–Fungible Token.

Today, they go again together for a new breakthrough linking watchmaking and new technologies with the use of digital identification combined with NFT to use the existing digital certificate of authenticity on the watch with the creation of a digital twin with corresponding NFT (Non-Fungible Token).

“I am delighted to join JC Biver again in demonstrating how latest technologies can disrupt an entire industry such as the luxury watch industry. WISeKey is launching this first ever luxury watch NFT auction to demonstrate its technology and encourage luxury watch brands to start using it to auction their high-end watches through WIS.Watch NFTs. We launched two weeks ago a WISe.Art, a digital certificate of authenticity, a NFT for art pieces that will live forever on the blockchain, unchanged and unchallengeable, as proof of the buyer’s ownership. This announcement generated strong interest from the luxury and art community,” said Mr. Moreira.

WISeKey, was the first company in the world to use dual factor authentication combined with blockchain technology to secure luxury watches, currently protects over 2.5 million luxury watches. Since 2010, WISeKey has collaborated with manufactures of luxury watches deploying this unique technology to integrate semiconductors tags powered with its VaultIC154 NFC secure element and provide brands with the ability of:

• issuing a storage device comprising of a digital certificate of authenticity
• checking, when required, the validity of the digital certificate of authenticity
• modifying, when required, the status of validity of the digital certificate of authenticity.
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Dematerialization and creation of a Digital Twin with its corresponded Non–Fungible Token.

These tags, when placed on any product and tapped by an NFC phone, securely authenticate, and track the product much like an embedded ePassport and confirm the identity of the product on the blockchain ledger. This technology has received a patent in the USA http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=8&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=wisekey&OS=wisekey&RS=wisekey  

About WISeKey
WISeKey (NASDAQ: WKEY; SIX Swiss Exchange: WIHN) is a leading global cybersecurity company currently deploying large scale digital identity ecosystems for people and objects using Blockchain, AI and IoT respecting the Human as the Fulcrum of the Internet. WISeKey microprocessors secure the pervasive computing shaping today’s Internet of Everything. WISeKey IoT has an install base of over 1.5 billion microchips in virtually all IoT sectors (connected cars, smart cities, drones, agricultural sensors, anti-counterfeiting, smart lighting, servers, computers, mobile phones, crypto tokens etc.).  WISeKey is uniquely positioned to be at the edge of IoT as our semiconductors produce a huge amount of Big Data that, when analyzed with Artificial Intelligence (AI), can help industrial applications to predict the failure of their equipment before it happens.

The WISeAuthentic blockchain platform integrates the WISeKey semiconductors tags based on the company’s VaultIC154 NFC secure element. These tags, when placed on any product and tapped by an NFC phone, securely authenticate and track the product much like an embedded ePassport and confirm the identity of the product on the blockchain ledger. WISeKey has included the NFT capability to its WISe.ART which uses a patented method for digital certification of authenticity of a physical object, and corresponding computer program and storage device, as well as using the method for digital certification of authenticity of a physical object of value. 

WISekey technology is trusted by the OISTE/WISeKey’s Swiss based cryptographic Root of Trust (“RoT”) provides secure authentication and identification, in both physical and virtual environments, for the Internet of Things, Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence. The WISeKey RoT serves as a common trust anchor to ensure the integrity of online transactions among objects and between objects and people. For more information, visit www.wisekey.com.

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