{"id":828,"date":"2021-03-16T12:25:57","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T12:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.luxurymarketreview.com\/?p=828"},"modified":"2022-07-06T18:49:09","modified_gmt":"2022-07-06T18:49:09","slug":"might-blockchain-technology-revitalize-the-art-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.luxurymarketreview.com\/de\/2021\/03\/16\/might-blockchain-technology-revitalize-the-art-market\/","title":{"rendered":"K\u00f6nnte die Blockchain-Technologie den Kunstmarkt neu beleben?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Victoria Stapley-Brown<\/a> – jingculturecommerce.com<\/a> – image: shutterstock<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The boom of the crypto art market in 2020 bodes well for the growing ties between art and blockchain technology. <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The intertwining of art and blockchain technology has been underway for years. But with a pandemic fallout that has dramatically impacted institutions<\/a> und decimated artists\u2019 income<\/a>, that relationship has grown and thrived in 2020 \u2014 providing digital artists a much-needed avenue to present and sell their creations, and collectors an innovative way to discover art. As our world grows increasingly virtual, this surge of the crypto art market should come as no surprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis year, we\u2019ve seen a lot more folks from the more traditional world start to get involved,\u201d says John Crain, the CEO of SuperRare<\/a>, a marketplace for single-edition digital works, which he co-founded in 2017. \u201cIt is probably a byproduct of the pandemic. People started to take digital more seriously.\u201d Sales on the platform jumped from $1 million total sales at the beginning of 2020 to more than $5 million towards the year\u2019s end, he adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SuperRare, along with other crypto marketplaces like OpenSea, MakersPlace, and KnownOrigin, sell art in primary and secondary transactions and function on blockchain networks \u2014 shared, decentralized cryptographic ledgers that track assets. Works, purchased in cryptocurrency like Ether (on the Ethereum blockchain), are sold as Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), unique digital tokens tied to blockchains that represent an asset, guaranteeing its value and scarcity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOnce artists start to learn more about cryptocurrencies, they\u2019re excited to accept them and often prefer them to dollar payments,\u201d Crain says. Cryptocurrency has weathered 2020 well: Ether, on the Ethereum blockchain, began the year at $130.27 and is now worth $627.69, while Bitcoin hit an all-time high in December \u2014 the equivalent of $23,527.10 in U.S. dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the artists who sell on SuperRare also have separate gallery representation, though due to in-person shows drying up,  they \u201cwere able to heavily supplement or switch over their income to purely digital,\u201d notes Crain. In December, the pseudonymous Pak became the first crypto creator to pocket more than $1 million (or 1,881 in Ethereum tokens)<\/a> from blockchain-based works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, institutions have been entering the blockchain ecosystem too. After the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts became the first museum<\/a> to fork over Bitcoin for an artwork in 2015, other cultural institutions from Cleveland\u2019s Great Lakes Science Center to Florida\u2019s St. Petersburg Museum of History have facilitated Bitcoin payments<\/a>to enhance visitor experience.\"Dutch<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dutch artist Harm van den Dorpel\u2019s limited-edition screensaver, Event Listeners<\/em>, was the first work of art to be purchased by a museum using Bitcoin. Image: Cointemporary<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Switzerland, Kate Vass Galerie has been working in both the physical and digital realms. Besides moving physical works in both in Fiat money and cryptocurrency at its Zurich space, it\u2019s been selling digital pieces as NFTs on blockchain marketplaces like SuperRare and MakersPlace since 2019. According to the gallery<\/a>, in the past year, \u201cwe\u2019ve been witnessing a remarkable growth of active collectors and bids, which led to a rise in the prices.\u201d Ten crypto works created by the Nigerian artist Osinachi for a solo show<\/a> in early 2020 sold out on SuperRare and tripled in value within two months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And artists see the benefits of this appreciation on crypto platforms with built-in resale royalties. \u201cOne of the huge advantages of NFTs is you get to track the value of the piece over time,\u201d said the New York-based artist Pearlyn Lii, who sells short video works from her ongoing project Real Girlfriend<\/em> (2020) on Foundation. The platform provides a 10 percent royalty each time fractions of works are resold, as do Ephimera, KnownOrigin, MakersPlace, and SuperRare. It\u2019s a cut that \u201cartists and collectors together, chatting online,\u201d says Crain, collectively negotiated for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"thumbnail\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Already, crypto has massively democratized the making and selling of works by cutting out the perennial middle men, with further implications that will bear out in the licensing, publishing, and distribution of art. The crypto art space is now crowded with not just artists and investors, but decentralized blockchain-based museums such as Wunder<\/a> und Museums Chain<\/a>, crypto art events like BitBasel<\/a>, und blockchain<\/a>\u2013focused<\/a> exhibitions. It remains to be seen how sizable a dent blockchain technology will make on the art market, but having galvanized the sector\u2019s digital transformation, it\u2019s likely to be a vital fixture in art and museum futures.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Victoria Stapley-Brown – jingculturecommerce.com – image: shutterstock The boom of the crypto art market in 2020 bodes well for the growing ties between art and blockchain technology. The intertwining of art and blockchain technology has been underway for years. But with a pandemic fallout that has dramatically impacted institutions and decimated artists\u2019 income, that relationship has grown and […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-828","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-luxury-market","8":"category-luxury-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.luxurymarketreview.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.luxurymarketreview.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.luxurymarketreview.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.luxurymarketreview.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.luxurymarketreview.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=828"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.luxurymarketreview.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1469,"href":"https:\/\/www.luxurymarketreview.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828\/revisions\/1469"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.luxurymarketreview.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.luxurymarketreview.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.luxurymarketreview.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.luxurymarketreview.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}