The 15th annual Art Dubai festival saw the birth of ‘Art Dubai Digital,’ a real-life marketplace for non-fungible tokens and digital art. The largest art expo in the United Arab Emirates, World Art Dubai, took place from March 16 to 19, and the event achieved record attendance and sales thanks to its debut NFT display platform this year.
Art Dubai 2022 attracted 30,000 visitors, with many foreign visitors traveling into the UAE to experience the 120 innovative displays spread across 104 galleries and other platforms from 44 nations.
The majority of NFTs are bought and sold on online NFT marketplaces such as Opensea, or on rare instances at physical auction houses such as Sotheby’s or Christie’s. Real-life NFT exhibits, in the sense of a gallery where the public can walk around and observe digital art and NFTs in physical form, are rare, but they’re becoming more popular.
Bybit was a key figure in the creation and growth of Art Dubai’s physical NFT marketplace. Many bitcoin traders, NFT investors, and other digital nomads have relocated to Dubai, which has a personal income tax rate of 0%.
Several cryptocurrency exchanges have created specific NFT marketplaces – Bybit and eToro recently announced an NFT patron program