Tokenizing Picasso to democratize art investment

Art is always a good investment, but only a lucky few with enough money and connections in the art world can afford a Picasso. Or is it so?

What if ownership rights to a Picasso were split into many “shares”, tokenized, and broadcasted to a blockchain? This would allow an average Joe not only to easily invest in a highly valued artpiece, but to easily trade it afterwards.

Well, now this is possible. Swiss crypto bank Sygnum and art investment firm Artemundi issued the so-called Art Security Tokens to Picasso’s “Fillette au béret”, allowing anyone to invest as little as 5k CHF for a painting worth 4M CHF. Tokenizing ownership of the painting also made it liquid and eliminated endless intermediaries and siloes, so numerous in the art world. 

So, while the NFT hype is not ready to fade away, another type of token – the AST – may complete the crypto makeover of the art trade.