Why would anyone buy crypto art – let alone spend millions on what’s essentially a link to a JPEG file? March 15, 2021 8.58am EDT
Author
Aaron HertzmannAffiliate Faculty of Computer Science, University of Washington
Disclosure statement Aaron Hertzmann works for Adobe Research, however, opinions expressed here are solely his own.Partners University of Washington provides funding as a member of The Conversation US. View all partnersWe believe in the free flow of information Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under Creative Commons licence. Republish this article As an academic researcher, developer of artistic technology and amateur artist, I was quite skeptical about crypto art when I first read about it several years ago. However, I follow a community of artists on social media, and some of the artists there whom I respect, like Mario Klingemann and Jason Bailey, embraced and advocated for crypto art. Within the past few months, activity and prices seemed to snowball. I started thinking it deserves to be taken seriously. Then the Beeple sale happened. On March 11, Beeple, a computer science graduate whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, auctioned a piece of crypto art at Christie’s for US$69 million.
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