A French street artist has just made what he claims to be a world first sale of a tokenised wall mural. Pascal Boyart specialises in crypto asset-inspired pieces of street art.
The portion of the overall piece cost the buyer 25 Ether (ETH). The second part of the mural is still listed as available for sale.
His murals have started to feature public addresses for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency addresses. The idea being that passers by could tip artists that they liked. Evidently, one fan of Boyart really liked one of his Paris murals. He discovered that someone donated an entire Bitcoin, worth $4,000 at the time (~$10,000 today) earlier this year.
Boyart’s exploration of the monetisation of artwork has continued since. His latest idea involves tokenising ownership of pieces of street art and using a blockchain to verify the legitimacy of any claims to that ownership.
The listing on the marketplace states:
Pascal Boyart Continues to Shakeup Art World with his Crypto-Inspired Projects
NewsBTC has reported on the cryptocurrency-influenced street artist, Pascal Boyart, on a number of previous occasions. The Parisian painter has been experimenting with monetising his work in different ways outside of the traditional art gallery.
🌍🥇 World 1st Digital Collectible just sold 25 ETH to on ! A crazy day for all street artist and ephemeral art, you can monetize your work without art dealers and galeries! The unique 2nd part is still available: — Pascal Boyart 🎨 (@pascalboyart)
The crypto-inspired artist posted to Twitter today that he has managed to sell the first ever StreetArt Digital Collectable. The buyer, who paid 25 ETH, or just under $5,000 at the time of writing, is the crypto entrepreneur and prominent commentator on the industry Alistair Milne.
The piece, of which Milne bought half, is titled “Daddy, What’s Money?”. It depicts a youngster with a look of wonder in their eyes, with its title written in the artist’s native language, French. The tokens representing ownership of the murals have been created on the Ethereum blockchain and the sale itself is taking place on the digital goods marketplace . The second half of the Boyart mural is still up for sale. It too is priced at 25 ETH.“Each part is one-of-a-kind. If you own all the parts, you own the entire fresco, even if the physical painting doesn’t exist anymore.”Unfortunately, there is no indication of where exactly Boyart painted his mural. The post gives no detail of its location or whether the artist had permission from the building’s owner prior to painting the piece. Alistair Milne, the buyer of the crypto-inspired mural also posted about his purchase earlier today. The entrepreneur wrote:
I just bought half of this piece of street art by as a NFT (non-fungible token) It was the first ever mural to carry a Bitcoin QR code. V. cool new way to collect art (or pieces of an artwork) The other half is still for sale … — Alistair Milne (@alistairmilne)As mentioned in the above post, the mural also features a Bitcoin QR code. However, NewsBTC does not know if Milne bought the private keys to the wallet associated with the code or if these remain in the control of the artist. It seems likely, given that the mural is designed to have two owners, that the donations to the wallet will go directly to the artist.
Related Reading: Blockchain for Art: DLT Makes Inroads into the Art Industry
Featured Image from Shutterstock.
