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The advent of cryptocurrency has upended the way art is priced and sold.

- Victoria Burrows

The world of cryptocurrency may be an esoteric, unregulated and tempestuously fluctuating virtual Wild West, but it is giving the staid and lofty luxury art world a run for its money.

Last August, a USD1.7 million fraction of Andy Warhol’s 14 Small Electric Chairs (1980) was auctioned in cryptocurrency through a new digital art investment platform, called Maecenas. The 31.5 per cent of the artwork (the rest is owned by a single private individual) was sold in four weeks to 100 investors who bought digital certificates in cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, Ethereum and Maecenas’ own ART Token, as well as traditional fiat currencies (pounds, dollars and yen).

The sale took place through a partnership with Dadiani Fine Art, an art gallery in London’s exclusive Mayfair district, which was probably the world’s first to accept multicryptocurrency.

The gallery is part of a bigger crypto brokerage, Dadiani Syndicate, that founder Eleesa Dadiani set up in 2017 to allow the virtually wealthy to buy real-world things: gems, bullion, racehorses, private jets and yachts. One mysterious Chinese client bought four Formula 1 cars, collectively valued at GBP4 million, in cryptocurrency Litecoin.

The Maecenas auction was a test run, a private beta launch of the platform aiming to prove that blockchain-based asset tokenisation is both viable and efficient. “We wanted our first artwork to be from an iconic, instantly recognisable artist who is known for producing good returns, but also is popular enough so that non-art experts can still relate to it,” says Marcelo Garcia Casil, founder and CEO of Maecenas Fine Art, which has offices in London and Singapore.