Art Market

WOW! With volatility missing in the financial markets lately where can a person go to make a buck or two (or much more)? How about flipping art? Maecenas, a blockchain based art investment platform, aims to let investors/traders "flip" (OK, invest) in the secondary fine art market. Art valued at more than $1M can be "fractionalized" and traded in liquid financial units. This is a very cool idea and may open a whole new asset class for the public. Sorry, your kids school drawings are probably NOT going to be included.

(Bill Taylor)

Blockchain-based art market will allow investors to trade shares in masterpieces..

Maecenas is using blockchain technology to create a secondary market in fine art for owners and investors.

Maecenas is an art investment platform aiming to bring the efficiency and liquidity of capital markets to the art market using a blockchain. The platform will provide live market feeds and a primary and secondary market in which investors will have fractional ownership of works art, which can be traded in real time.

Maecenas will match art owners with investors, creating a fair and open market, reducing costs and bringing transparency to a traditionally opaque world, said a release. It will allow any investor to have a fractional share of a masterpiece.

Its creators are using Blockchain technology to create an open exchange where works of art valued at more than $1m can be traded in real time as liquid financial units. Expensive and illiquid artworks can be now be converted into smaller and more liquid tradable financial units, very much like shares of a company, which could then be traded frequently through an open exchange. Portfolio managers could then price their positions more accurately, and could diversify their risk by investing in a range of different art assets as opposed to having their funds concentrated in a handful of pieces which can be hard to sell.

Co-founder and CEO Marcelo Garcia Casil said: "We want to create a fair and open marketplace where investors and art owners can meet without intermediaries. We are using technology to revolutionise the art finance market, reducing costs, introducing transparency and creating liquidity. We are creating a new way to invest in fine art. Our ambition is to make the art industry a better place for everyone…

Maecenas is currently running a crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs to raise additional finance for its launch, with a minimum target of £400,000, and is offering 12.4% of equity. It has already received £200,000 from a Swiss venture capital business, Polytech Investors. It has also attracted considerable interest from galleries and collectors who want to list pieces of art on the platform…

Source: International Business Times