Digital art gallery Async Art sold Matt Kane’s programmable crypto art ‘Right Place & Right Time’ for a record amount of more than 101 thousand dollars. An investor or collector called TokenAngels paid 262 ETH to get his hands on the crypto artwork that consists out of 24 hand-crafted layers. “This is the McLaren of programmable art”, Async Art tweeted in response to the sale.
The record amount of money paid for the programmable artwork is the highest ever received for a digital artwork by Async Art. Even though it’s not the most expensive digital artwork ever created. That honor still goes to Kevin Abosch’s Forever Rose, which sold for 1 million dollars to a group of investors back in 2018.
The works on Async Art do have an advantage over crypto art from two years ago: They are programmable. Programmable art can change the way it looks based on different factors. In some works there are multiple owners, each owning and changing a certain layer of the artwork. However ‘Right Place & Right Time’ changes based on the last 24 hours of bitcoin value.
Alongside the sale of this original work, Matt Kane will periodically mint unique editions based on this work. The royalties of these creations will be shared with the owner, which is TokenAngels. This partnership between the artist and the art collector will remain for the next ten years.
What is crypto art?
Crypto art or digital art has been around for many years. However, without the existence of blockchain technology it was impossible to verify authenticity and rarity. Now digital art connects directly with an unique token on the Ethereum blockchain. That way buyers can see how many copies of a certain artwork there are, and whether the product is original.
The concept of seeing a digital image as art, is one thing. However, for many people it will be a challenge to consider digital images as valuable. Consider this: The Mona Lisa is worth many millions of dollars. If I would paint the Mona Lisa in an exact copy, it would be worth only 50 dollars. Because we all know where the original version is. Being able to verify the authenticity and rarity of a piece of art is crucial.
Some people don’t care about the Mona Lisa. It’s just a painting. They are happy to download an image for Google Images, print it on canvas and hang it in their living room. Others want the real deal. The same rules go up for digital crypto art. Some people want to original one, others are happy with a copy on their phone.
Crypto art is gaining popularity. Platforms like Rarible, Superrare and Knownorigins are thriving. The introduction of blockchain technology allowed digital artists to create unique artworks. Ownership and rarity are now verifiable through the blockchain, creating true value. Last year the crypto art market was good for 559 thousand dollars in trading volume. The market grew 115 percent compared with the year before.
In addition several artists from ‘outside’ the blockchain space have been showing interest. MakersPlace has already partnered with comic book artist José Delbo, while NiftyGateway sold some original Vandal Gummy artworks. Even Paris Hilton sold a drawing!
