Most individuals only ever purchase a cheap poster from a gallery as their closest connection to owning a famous piece of art, but art dealers are keen to use technology to attract new collectors.
Anaida Schneider, a former banker who now resides in Switzerland, is one of those pushing new ownership models; for a nominal charge, investors can purchase a digital portion of a painting and split the proceeds when she sells it.
She explained that not everyone has $1 million to invest. So I had the notion to break it out and create it a blockchain-based mutual fund. An NFT, a special digital token created and kept on the blockchain, the computer code that powers cryptocurrencies, is given to each purchaser.
According to analyst company NonFungible, NFT artworks accounted for around $2.8 billion in sales last year, and the rate has only marginally decreased in the first half of this year.
The most eager users of the technology are collectors and artists, even if it means only being able to possess a portion of a digital reproduction of a painting.
In order to provide ownership of digital copies of masterworks, thirteen Italian institutions recently struck agreements with Cinello, a company that distributes limited-edition digital reproductions.
The purchaser receives a one-of-a-kind, high-resolution digital copy to display on a screen in addition to a certificate from the museum, which keeps half of the sales price. Customers can request an NFT to go along with their image, but the company claimed to have their own proprietary mechanism, which they refer to as DAW, to ensure ownership.