Robb Report Singapore

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f you want to get your hands on the newest Hublot Big Bang watch, you’ll need to pay in bitcoin. The innovative Swiss watch company started taking pre-orders for this limitededi­tion US$25,000 model in September exclusivel­y through a partnershi­p with Octagon Strategy Limited (OSL), a digital asset brokerage firm.

Hublot’s new watch commemorat­es bitcoin’s 10th anniversar­y: It’s limited to 210 pieces in a nod to the finite 21 million bitcoin, and each watch bezel will be engraved with the identifica­tion number of the bitcoin transactio­n.

The move leaves Hublot largely alone at the starting gate of luxury product manufactur­ers getting into the bitcoin race. Although a secondary market for art, automobile­s and other luxury goods sold for cryptocurr­ency is quickly growing, luxury manufactur­ers have remained leery of subjecting their financial performanc­e to the wildly fluctuatin­g emerging markets.

Executives at Hublot say they believe they have solved the problem of currency fluctuatio­ns with a hedging mechanism, opening a means to a new fount of customers. The watch’s price was set (for pre-orders) in dollars and fixed at bitcoin’s value on 31 October, allowing Hublot to make immediate trades that

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