We live in a digital world. No surprise therefore that digital art will soon surpass traditional art both in volume and value. We caught a small glimpse of the future back in 2021 when NFT’s became a thing for a short while and sales exceeded $17 billion. That’s more than 25% of the total traditional art sales for that whole year! Imagine sales volumes when collectors and traders can buy art other than ugly monkeys or pixelated punks.
Digital art will not replace traditional art or even end it. It’s simply the next chapter. The trends are clear. Overall art market revenues are shrinking and galleries are closing almost weekly. Traditional mega shows like Frieze and Art Basel open to smaller crowds and nervous exhibitors. Nothing in the traditional art world is the slam dunk it used to be.
Trad art sales data reinforces this declining trend indicating a movement away from traditional low volume, high value transactions to higher volume, lower value transactions. Translation: galleries are selling more but making less.
Meanwhile, buyer demographics are changing. Today’s grey haired, plodding, status seekers are being replaced. Tomorrow’s art buyers are young, hip, trendy, tech savvy Gen Alphabets with disposable income and side hustles trading crypto and betting on sports. To them, buying art is just as much about the trade and the profit as it is about the artwork or the artist.
All of this meshes perfectly with powerful trends in the creative world. Artificial Intelligence and other digital tools have given anyone with a smart phone the ability to create amazing works of art. Aspiring artists no longer need to be born with talent. They just need Midjourney. And to complete the new world transition, block chain technology has endowed every digital asset with completely verifiable provenance and certifiable ownership enabling fast, hassle free and trustworthy trading.
Digital art is the perfect fit in a digital world. Every screen a gallery, everyone a creator, a buyer, a seller or a trader. The slow, measured pace of traditional art sales will be replaced by frenetic digital exchanges. To compound this trend, digital artists are building their own networks and selling directly to their followers. Traditional art’s gatekeepers; the galleries, curators, agents and critics, are simply being sidelined.
Digital art will break the trad art elitist mold. The new art world will become a numbers game with verifiable ‘multi prints’ replacing one of ones and everything priced to sell almost on impulse. But by its nature there will never be enough good digital art to meet top end collector demand. We will see the rise of global super agents who specialize in securing access to highly sought-after drops by hot, dynamic creators world-wide. This is where the power will lie. Talented digital artists will become the new rock stars and secondary art transactions will boom.
But there’s an even bigger game in town that’s only just starting to take shape. Digital art and crypto assets are made for each other. Like gin and tonic. We will soon see the twinning of art assets with crypto assets such as tokens or meme coins. Buy one, get a bunch free. Indulge your passion for the arts while you take a punt on a crypto exchange. Two opportunities to profit from one purchase! This will be a game changer and a potential trillion dollar opportunity for those who understand the future of digital assets.
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