At the intersection of traditional art collecting and cutting-edge technology, Christie’s auction house has pushed the boundaries of what it means to own art. In two separate but significant events this month, auction houses adopted both Bitcoin’s Ordinals protocol and blockchain-backed ownership tools such as the Kresus wallet. These developments strengthen the promise that blockchain will shape the future of art ownership, both in authenticating physical art and refining digital art offered at auction, offering collectors around the world new ownership opportunities. provides a path.
On October 2nd, Christie’s New York held an auction titled “Eyes on Reality: Photographs from the Collection of Ambassador Trevor Traina, former U.S. Ambassador to Austria and founder of Cresus, a Web3 wallet provider.” The sale generated more than $3 million in sales, but what made the event stand out was that it not only featured photo ops with celebrities like Diane Arbus and Cindy Sherman, but also included a digital certificate of ownership with each lot. It was the fact that the documents were included and their certificates were preserved. blockchain. Through our partnership with Kresus, we provided collectors with the integration of physical and digital ownership, ensuring that each transaction is transparent, secure, and permanently recorded.
The integration of the Kresus wallet and other technologies is starting to change the way art businesses handle provenance. This is part of a transformative period for the art world, one that many are still only beginning to accept. According to Sebastian Sanchez, digital art sales manager at Christie’s, the potential use of blockchain technology will allow art ownership to be better protected and traced. “Blockchain provides a level of transparency and security that has not been possible before in the art world,” he said. Art newspaper. Now, he says, “we can … vouch for the provenance and authenticity of the work indefinitely.”
These certificates of ownership act like digital passports, giving collectors peace of mind that their purchases are verifiable. It’s no longer just about owning a work, it’s about owning a piece of its history in a way that is permanent and globally accessible.
Meanwhile, on October 10, Christie’s in London sold Ryan Koopmans and Alice Wessell’s ground-breaking digital artwork “Ascend” for £44,100, against an estimated price of £30,000 to £50,000. I put it on. This is the first time a work inscribed in Bitcoin’s Ordinal Protocol has been sold at a Christie’s live auction. Ascend, part of Koopmans and Wessel’s The Wild Within series, is not only a stunning artistic exploration of decaying Soviet architecture, but also a technical marvel. The piece changes from day to night in real time, reflecting the passage of time in a real-world location in Georgia.
Ascend uses recursive coding to overcome Bitcoin’s file size limitations, making it one of the most sophisticated digital artifacts ever tokenized on the Bitcoin blockchain. Koopmans calls Ordinals a “game changer” for digital artists, allowing them to create larger-scale, more dynamic works.
While Koopmans’ auction was a milestone for Bitcoin-based digital art, Cresus’ sale on October 2nd represents a quieter, but equally important step forward. By adopting blockchain for traditional physical assets such as photographs, Christie’s believes the promise offered by new blockchain platforms is that the technology will no longer just apply to digital art, but to all forms of art. is being strengthened. As these two disparate sales demonstrate, blockchain is moving beyond novelty into the mainstream art market, offering new levels of security, provenance, and ownership.
