Despite the Russian country maintaining a by and large unfriendly stance on cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), a major state-backed museum is benefiting from the manufacture by raising hundreds of thousands of dollars with nonfungible tokens, or NFTs.

The Russian Land Hermitage Museum, the largest museum in the world, has finished its get-go auction on the NFT platform by Binance — the world's largest crypto commutation — selling five tokenized collectibles depicting masterpieces from artists similar Leonardo da Vinci and Vincent van Gogh.

The sale included 5 NFT copies of Hermitage-hosted artworks, including Wassily Kandinsky'due south "Composition VI," Giorgione's "Judith," Da Vinci's "The Madonna and Child," Claude Monet'south "Corner of the Garden at Montgeron" and van Gogh's "Lilac Bush."

Co-ordinate to data from the Binance NFT platform, the Hermitage's auction has generated a total of more than $444,000 worth of Binance USD (BUSD), a U.South. dollar-denominated stablecoin operated by Binance.

The sale's highest bid went to "The Madonna and Kid,"with the winning applicant placing a 150,500 BUSD bid to buy the digital representation of the famous artwork.

Source: Binance NFT

A spokesperson for the Hermitage told Cointelegraph that all the NFT sale gain volition become to the museum, "except for the expenses agreed in the contract inside the framework of this project." "The Hermitage does non make whatever operations with cryptocurrency. All funds volition go to the Hermitage in Fiat currency — Russian rubles," the representative noted.

Announcing the NFT sale plans in July, the Hermitage said that its legal department was working with legal consulting company LFCS to create and sell NFTs using a model that "fully complies with Russian legislation."

Related: Master-pieces: Swiss banking company issuing NFT shares in Picasso painting for $6K each

Payments in cryptocurrencies similar Bitcoin are far from existence legally accepted in Russia. Earlier on Tuesday, Dmitry Peskov — the official representative of Russian President Vladimir Putin — reiterated that Russian federation has no reason to recognize Bitcoin as legal tender, as this would exist detrimental to the country'due south financial system. Russia officially prohibited residents from making payments in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin as part of its crypto police force, "On Digital Financial Assets," in January.