The $60bn art world in general is warming to the potential of cryptocurrencies, partly because of blockchain’s dual ability to establish the provenance of works of art and thereby reduce the reliance on brokers and other middlemen.
Marcelo Garcia Casil, for example, is chief executive and co-founder of Maecenas, an online marketplace that will enable art owners to sell shares in their expensive works of art (worth more than $1m) and raise money far more cheaply than they could though a bank.
And the owners also get to keep possession of their artworks while sharing up to 49% of the ownership.
Investors, who ordinarily wouldn’t be able to afford multi-million-dollar works of art, will be able buy shares or units in the work using cryptocurrency. They will then be able to sell these units later in the marketplace. Each transaction is recorded cryptographically on the Ethereum blockchain.
“We want to make fine art accessible for everyone,” says Mr Casil, who was born in Argentina, now lives in Singapore, and has a background in investment banking.
“The old auction houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s have controlled the art market for centuries, so we think the opportunity for disruption is huge.”
Establishing the authenticity of works of art is critical to their value, and this will still need to be done by skilled professionals, admits Mr Casil.
“But once the provenance has been recorded in the blockchain, you never have to do it again,” he says. This takes a lot of cost out of the system.