Art on blockchain: What are the benefits for crypto investors?

Does the art market need ‘cleaning up’? That’s open to interpretation. At Maecenas, we believe the use of blockchain technology will certainly disrupt it, and we believe that art on blockchain will benefit art investors and crypto investors alike.

We mention that because an article published by the Financial Times at the end of May asked whether the blockchain can ‘clean up’ the art industry.

It talks about The Art Market 2.0 report, created by the University of Oxford, The Alan Turing Institute and the artists’ rights organisation DACS, and the cross-party support it received at government level.

The report states that “art is currently plagued by fraud, illicit business and tax evasion, all products of a fragmented physical market that is hard to follow. Enter blockchain, which on the surface appears a silver bullet.” Is that description accurate, though, and can blockchain really help to improve it?

How cryptocurrency blockchain technology can disrupt the art market

On the release of a related report at the end of May, the UK culture secretary Matt Hancock lent his weight to those who feel the need for the art market to modernise by saying: “We are right by your side and I will do my bit to make sure the art market thrives in this new digital age.”

Easier said than done, though. The term ‘cleaning up’ conjures up an awful lot of negative connotations. We think differently and believe that the art market should instead be ‘opened up’ in terms of transparency and democratisation.

So, how is blockchain technology helping, and why should crypto investors and the blockchain community take notice? Through blockchain technology, Maecenas is working to:

• Make the market more transparent with the incorruptible ‘ledger’ system the blockchain provides, which can also help improve issues surrounding provenance and others.
• Connect artists, art lovers, galleries, art investors and crypto investors together so they can communicate through the Maecenas platform.
• Ethically compete with the deeply-rooted auction house system, giving art lovers and artists more ways to buy and sell works.
• Allow accredited investors to own shares of world-famous artworks with digital shares through cryptocurrency, and more.

Cryptocurrency blockchain technology can help improve transparency

Those are just some of the benefits that we believe blockchain technology can bring to the market as a whole; we’ve also outlined a lot of other problems within the current art market that we believe Maecenas could solve in our briefing documents.

Beyond the art market, though, we think that moving aspects of the art industry over to the blockchain has benefits to the crypto community, too.

The Maecenas platform is powered by the ART token cryptocurrency. The ART token is critical to helping people purchase digital shares in artworks, improve transparency, connect artists and buyers, reinvent the auction process, provide better provenance, better value artworks and much more besides.

The art market is already a high-performing one. By opening up the market with Maecenas, reducing risks for buyers and improving other key areas such as provenance for artworks, we offer something unique and potentially valuable both to art lovers and to crypto investors.

Maecenas wants to bring the art market into the 21st century with modern blockchain technology that will help democratise the industry with cryptocurrency. Find out more by reading our briefing documents.

Originally published at blog.maecenas.co.