At a time when the world is beginning to come to terms with the idea of digital money and successive bitcoin records are attracting the attention of even conservative investors, a new art market is being cultivated with blockchain technology further deepening this intangible universe. Digital works of art attract millions of dollars, further increasing the volume of transactions traded through blockchain technology.
The amounts raised in digital assets are indeed a big surprise. On Saturday, bitcoin reached a new record high. It momentarily surpassed $60.000 in New York at a time when positive expectations for the economy are generally being cultivated. The market for NFTs (Non-Fundable Tokens), as it is called the digital art market, is expanding into various art forms. A Beeple work by Mike Winkelmann’s was sold by Christie’s last week for $69.3 million, $15 million higher than the price paid for Monet’s “Nympheas” painting. The multi-talented Grimes, whose real name is Claire Elise Buscher, also sold a digital work for $6 million. The band Kings of Leon announced that they will release their new album as NFT. Experts in blockchain technology believe that copying works of art is more difficult digitally and easier to detect with blockchain technology. Every creation is encrypted and so cannot be read by anyone other than the legal recipient.
Sceptics, on the other hand, agree that NFTs as well as cryptocurrencies belong to a world that has not yet been fully regulated by the authorities. It is therefore difficult to ascertain whether these high values are the result of false multiple trades to raise the price. “Cryptocurrency exchanges are not subject to a regulatory framework as detailed as those governing stock markets,” Matthew Soul, head of BNP Paribas C.Lab Americas, the innovation division of the French banking group, told Bloomberg. Nifty Gateway, one of the largest NFTs based on trading volume, defended the industry and said that such fictitious transactions do not take place. Researchers at the Technical University of Berlin, however, point out how easy it is for one person to create multiple accounts, even though high commissions, as in the case of the Erthereum digital currency, prevent market abuse as it prevents adventurous practices.
