Swiss bank for digital assets Sygnum and art investing pioneer Artemundi have collaborated to tokenize Pablo Picasso’s 1964 painting “Fillette au béret.”
Investors can now purchase “shares” in fine art ownership on the blockchain.
Sygnum has stated that it has become the first bank to give tokenized ownership rights to a fine art piece through the use of blockchain technology, according to the bank’s announcement on Thursday.
Investors will be able to purchase “shares” in works of art known as Art Security Tokens (ASTs). The bank then broadcasts the ownership rights to a public blockchain, which are recognised under Swiss law.
Sygnum’s first offering in this manner will be Picasso’s 1964 artwork “Fillette au béret” (Little girl in beret).
The artwork will be divided into 4,000 NFT shares, each of which will be priced around $1,087. After acquiring the tokens, owners can exchange them on Sygnum’s digital asset trading platform, SygnEx. Though the press release made no mention of the blockchain, NFTs are most typically seen on Ethereum.
The bank believes that tokenizing fine art will lessen investment hurdles and broaden the market’s appeal to new investors. Mathias Imbach, Sygnum’s CEO and co-founder, expressed the following about the move:
“It has been Sygnum’s mission from the start to empower investors with more direct access to ownership and value. The tokenization of the Fillette au béret exemplifies how we bring our mission to reality, unlocking a universe of unique investment opportunities that can be made accessible to many. “
The bank thinks that by tokenizing works of fine art, it will be able to eliminate the need for expensive intermediaries and bring much-needed transparency to the market.
Picasso’s art has been on the blockchain before, and Sygnum’s offering is not the first time this has happened. A single NFT resembling a Picasso painting was created in 2018 as a result of a collaboration between the late John McAfee and cryptocurrency asset exchange Ethershift.io.
Earlier this year, NFT artwork made headlines when Beeple’s “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days” NFT sold at Christie’s for $69.34 million, the highest price ever paid for an NFT.
