Blockchain Technology Set To Impact The Art Market
You may not know what blockchain technology is, or how it works, but you’ve certainly heard of it. Be it digital currency prices making headlines or the creation of online education exchanges, around the world, blockchain technology is disrupting markets by decentralizing power from third parties and redistributing trust amongst a peer group of users.
Now, via the new platform Fresco, blockchain technology is poised to disrupt the global art market by changing the way art is valued.
Art investment has ranked third of all kinds of financial investment, after real estate and stocks. The global art market is valued at $56.6 billion dollars.
Yet, there has never been a commodity whose value is as subjective to a third party for validation and valuation.
Auction houses and galleries, while lending expertise, can also obfuscate the true value of artwork as prices and minimums are set related to a complex set of factors ranging from provenance of a work to recouping marketing costs. This structure often puts artists, dealers and even institutions on uneven footing.
Fresco is a platform that will put the power of valuation into the hands of the entirety of the art community. Collectors, artists, institutions, and gallerists who join the platform will be able to upload images of works of art that they own, as well as digitized documents of provenance and condition and, through the purchase of FRESCO token, assign value to the work in their collection.
The FRESCO network will help sellers to identify optimized collectors, allow emerging and established artists a chance to set the market value of their work and as the network grows, will allow all the players in the marketplace to agree upon the market value of art works. All while building a searchable, digital database of artworks that allow their owners pseudonymity.
FRESCO is a ERC20 token-based art trust distribution system built with blockchain technology. Initially collectors, artists and even gallerists can purchase FRES, the tokens that will be issued by FRESCO. Those tokens can then be assigned as values to works of art, which will follow those works as they are traded or sold. The assigned value to the artwork is defined as FRES Trust. FRES Trust values reflect the strength and importance of the work relative to the marketplace and the owner’s collection as a whole.
Imagine a collector attends an art fair and purchases a Gerhard Richter painting and a Yayoi Kusama sculpture. The collector can then assign 50 percent of their FRES to the Richter and 40 percent to the Kusama, while leaving 10 percent of their FRES in his or her blockchain wallet. The allocated FRES Trust values will follow the artworks if they are ever traded or sold. Similarly, at the same art fair, the collector sees the work of an American artist, whose work they do not know, but like. The collector can go to FRESCO platform online, and sees artist’ work is held in a number of other collections on the FRESCO platform, as well as the current Art-Trust value of the work.
Similarly, the gallerist can go to FRESCO to vet the new collector based on their past purchase history and current collection. Finally, for the artist on the FRESCO platform, FRESCO allows them to assign value to their artworks and promote them within a platform of collectors without being beholden to the gallery system.
The Fresco team, comprised of both blockchain experts and experienced art market professionals, see the art trust distribution as a way of demystifying and democratizing not only the valuation of art, but also how collectors and artists can expand into markets around the globe with a secure sense of trust that the FRESCO platform provides.
The Initial Coin Offering (ICO) for FRESCO will start on March 15th.
For more information on FRESCO or about the ICO, please visit links below.
*Whitepaper: https://goo.gl/CWyp1p
*One Pager: https://goo.gl/U7adpf
*Explainer Video: https://goo.gl/R2jbmh
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