Art tokenization sounds like it is just turning the art industry into another field for speculative trading. What is the tangible benefit of owning a small piece of an artwork? I’m assuming you cannot claim it is yours, or request that you put it up in your living room? Art does not generate profits or pay dividends*, so the only benefit you can gain from owning a piece of an artwork is potentially selling it at a higher price — hence, it becomes another trading platform. Yes, there could potentially be benefits for the discoverability of artists due to the increased interest in their artwork by “investors”, but this interest isn’t really in the artwork or the artist — it’s in the potential for that artwork to be worth more than it is now after some time. It is an interesting concept for sure, and a creative use of technology, but like most new technologies that were hyped and then failed, I am struggling to see its value, or at least its advantage over other mediums for speculative trading.

*What would indeed be interesting is a model where shared ownership implied a share in the profits made from displaying an artwork. Imagine galleries having physical possession of artworks and exposing them, after which the profits made are shared between the owners of the artwork on the blockchain network. Now that’s something exciting.