Rewriting the Art Market’s Value System with Digital Assets

In 2021, Beeple’s digital collage garnered attention not only because it cost $69 million, but also because of the unnerving finality with which a JPG that was accessible to everyone online rose in value beyond what most oil paintings would ever achieve. The sale was more than just a price change. The foundation of the art market was pulled out from under it.

Prior to blockchain, the physicality of art—brushstrokes, paper texture, the blue pencil signature—was what gave it value. Provenance was as much a mystery as it was a paper trail. To preserve that heritage, collectors turned to intermediaries and museums. However, in recent years, lines of code that are unquestionably public and permanently verifiable have taken the place of hushed promises in digital assets.

Once a physical attribute, scarcity has become abstract. Artists can use blockchain technology to produce one-of-a-kind digital works that would otherwise be infinitely replicable. Additionally, they are acting without the approval of gatekeepers or galleries. Even the phrase “1 of 1” feels lifted from the past and repurposed for a marketplace that operates around the clock on platforms such as Blur or OpenSea.

Ownership abruptly turned into a visibility exercise. Although a collector may have an anonymous wallet address, their holdings are obviously visible to the public. Bragging rights are now timestamped and validated in a ledger that anyone can access, rather than hanging in hallways.

Another complication was fractional ownership. Artworks that were previously only available to high-end buyers were divided by tokenization. Owning 0.001% of a Basquiat or the masterpiece of a budding crypto artist is now not only feasible, but also a viable investment strategy. Some people believe that this democratization is long overdue. Others see it as a dilution of intimacy.

And there’s the royalties issue. The artist was always left out of the resale profit in traditional art. Smart contracts, however, changed that. The original creator may automatically receive a portion of each tokenized piece that is transferred—sometimes 5%, sometimes more. It’s difficult to think that this enormous cultural and economic change was previously unattainable.

Not every change was greeted with cheers, of course. The NFT market had significantly cooled by 2023. After rampant speculation, it dried up. Many highly anticipated assets saw their prices plummet. It was worth less than lunch by the end of the year, but a friend of mine had minted a piece during the boom for a few thousand dollars.

I came to the realization that digital scarcity is only effective if the community accepts the asset’s story. Even though the artwork is preserved on a blockchain, the sentiment is still incredibly human.

The emotional impact of a canvas was questioned by some as to whether digital art could ever match it. Perhaps they overlooked the fact that emotion is frequently encoded into the circulation of the artwork—the way it is exchanged, discussed, and memed. Its legacy includes its virality. Discord servers and Twitter threads are now home to things that used to reside in museums.

However, volatility persists. Questions about sustainability also come up. Ethereum’s early minting used a lot of energy, which fueled criticism even among digital artists. Although there has been progress in switching to more effective proof-of-stake systems, environmental effects are still a concern.

Legal ambiguities have not been beneficial. Regulators are still catching up as of 2025. Does an NFT qualify as a security? A memento? A pass for membership? Depending on the jurisdiction and occasionally the intent, the answer frequently varies. This ambiguity can be liberating for artists. Investors frequently find it unsettling.

The removal of geography, however, is arguably the most drastic alteration. Both a young artist from Lagos and an experienced digital native from Berlin can reach collectors in São Paulo or Seoul by listing their work next to each other. Once concentrated in affluent urban areas, the art market has now spread out like a constellation, becoming disorganized, disorganized, and teeming with odd new stars.

Conventional establishments have not stagnated. Sotheby’s opened its own online store. For its permanent collection, MoMA started purchasing NFTs. This was adaptation, not surrender. When the winds shifted, even the most esteemed gatekeepers chose not to close the door.

Digital assets provide more than just revenue for artists, particularly those who have historically been excluded from the mainstream market. They provide independence. control over the cost. liberty from curators who fail to “get it.” a novel approach to address an audience directly and receive just compensation for that dialogue.

However, these advantages are not assured. The balance of power can quickly change when platforms alter their royalty enforcement practices, as OpenSea did in 2023. Decentralization is not a constant; it is an ideal. Additionally, platforms still have power even though code may be unchangeable.

Even collectors are changing. Some people miss the texture of canvas and the scent of linseed oil. Others welcome the gamification of digital collecting, which includes community benefits, drops, and leaderboards. Neither strategy is incorrect. They simply use different metrics to determine value.

In the end, the way art is purchased and sold isn’t the only thing being rewritten. That’s what art is when prestige is encoded in metadata and ownership doesn’t need a frame. It’s a confrontation with our long-held beliefs about value and the speed at which those beliefs can be tokenized, sold at auction, and resold.

There is still a thriving art market. It has been reprogrammed. And whether it’s for the better or worse might depend more on our willingness to give a file, a signature, or a series of numbers on a blockchain that read, “This is yours,” more weight than it does on the technology.