Why the art market has an eye for crypto

Andy Warhol captured the art market’s commercialism with his colourful silk-screen dollar signs. “Good business is the best art,” he quipped. Were he alive today, bitcoin symbols might be filling his works instead, as a sign of the times. The auction market has recently been embracing crypto with gusto in a bid to bring in younger, more tech-savvy clients.

In an auction of AI-generated art last month, Christie’s, the world’s second-largest auction house, accepted crypto on most lots. Sotheby’s, the largest, accepted crypto on all lots for the first time in February during an auction in Saudi Arabia. Crypto-holders are “adding up to a more significant share of the population than four years ago, when it was niche and poorly understood by the mainstream”, says Marcus Fox of Christie’s.

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