A British artist Lincoln Townley accepted Bitcoin payment, close to worth five million dollars ($4.97 million), by selling his art forms to an investor in Singapore.
What do cryptocurrencies and art forms have in common? A love for abstract, a sophisticated approach that could only be mastered by the brightest of the brightest and perhaps, an obsession with out of the ordinary. And that’s why trading art forms with cryptocurrencies is no more a thing of the past.
Today, artists accept Bitcoin payment to extend their oeuvres to the technology savvy generation with unconventional tastes and out of the box thinking – someone who relates to their art forms. Moreover, the underlying technology behind the cryptocurrencies, blockchain, helps safeguard provenance and help raise funds from investors around the globe.
Bitcoin payment could be the way forward for the art industry
Along the same lines, a London-based acclaimed painter, Lincoln Townley, recently sold nineteen of his prized possessions to an investor from Singapore for four hundred and ninety Bitcoin – that’s close to a whopping five million dollars worth!
His thought-provoking Greed collection, which constitutes of several abstract figurative paintings that depict how greed and desire can drive people to success and why greed is necessarily not such a bad thing, were purchased by a Swiss agent prior to their scheduled display at the Saatchi gallery.
During a recent interview, Townley expressed that artists should always look for innovative ways to market and sell their art forms. A firm believer in technologies of the new generation, Townley often visits art and auction houses to raise awareness around cryptocurrencies and popularize the potential of blockchain in fields of art.
I believe that people who invest in cryptocurrencies are, by their very nature, risk-tolerant and unconventional, states Townley. These are the people who view art as an extension of their investment portfolio and consider investing in one as an alternative recourse.
According to Townley, Bitcoin has shown tremendous potential up until now and will continue to capture the imaginations of investors and creators from around the world. With Bitcoin payment, artists can widen their scope of reach, he believes.
Assessing blockchain’s potential in the art industry
Meanwhile, the existing art industry is rife with intermediaries and agencies that eat away at an artist’s earnings by charging substantial commission rates for promoting and selling their work. Thus, Townley’s interest in cryptocurrencies is not just limited to being distinctive but also shrink the need for go-betweens.
At the Miami’s Art Week last year, several blockchain and art industry enthusiasts got together under one roof to discuss how the futuristic technology could revive the extremely antiquated seventy billion dollars ($70 billion) worth art industry. Among many suggestions that were contributed, one advice that gained traction was tokenization of paintings which could eventually avoid art investors from shelling out the very high price at the auctions.
Moreover, CEO of ATO Gallery, Carrie Eldridge, was of the opinion that integration blockchain technology could genuinely help in assessing an art form’s worth and prevent its investors from getting duped. With blockchain’s decentralization and immutability features, an art form’s origin and subsequently, its exact value, can be traced.
