The Blockchain Art Market Is Here by Jason Bailey (Artnome)

After purchasing a CryptoKitty during the 2017 crypto bull run, Jason Bailey (Artnome) wrote, “The Blockchain Art Market Is Here.” The piece articulates Bailey’s prescient conviction that blockchains and NFTs would eventually have a big impact on artists and the art market, writing that he “strongly suggest[s] artists and art collectors take blockchain seriously and monitor the market.” While this idea had been expressed by artists at least back to 2014 with Kevin McCoy, Jonathan Monaghan, Nili Learner, Rhea Myers, Kevin Abosch and others, it took the popularity of CryptoKitties and its headlining grabbing numbers to actually initiate a rapid increase in adoption. The article lays out how blockchain could: revolutionize digital art sales through digital scarcity, democratize fine art investment, improve provenance and create a more ethical payment system for artists. By illustrating these points with examples like DADA.nyc’s decentralized art marketplace and CryptoKitties, Bailey leveraged the emerging attention on NFTs to increase awareness of the technology’s potential benefits—again, from an artist’s perspective. The piece, like many previous examples of writing, helped prime the public for the latest merging of art and—now blockchain—technology, foreshadowing the rise of NFTs and their impact on the art world.