The closest most people get to owning a world-famous artwork is buying a cheap poster from a gallery, but art dealers are determined to harness technology to draw in new collectors.
Anaida Schneider, a former banker living in Switzerland, is among those promoting new ownership schemes — for a small fee, investors can buy a digital chunk of a painting and share in the profits when she sells.
"Not everyone has $1 million to invest," she said. "So I came up with the idea to split, to make like a mutual fund but on the blockchain."
Each buyer gets an NFT, the unique digital tokens created and stored on the blockchain, the computer code that underpins cryptocurrencies.
Although crypto assets have been routed this year with plunging values, collapsing projects and widening scandals, the NFT art sector has weathered the storm better than other parts of the crypto world.
NFT artworks accounted for about $2.8 billion in sales last year and the rate has declined only slightly in the first half of this year, according to analyst firm NonFungible.
Collectors and artists are among the most eager experimenters with the technology, even if it means owning only a slice of a digital copy of a painting.
A fifth of 300 collectors surveyed by the website Art+Tech Report said they had already engaged in so-called fractional ownership.
Schneider's company in Liechtenstein, Artessere, offers squares of paintings by Soviet artists including Oleg Tselkov and Shimon Okshteyn for €100 or €200 ($100 or $200) a piece.
She is giving herself 10 years to resell them.
Schneider owns the paintings she sells, thus avoiding legal complications, but attempts to offer novel digital ownership schemes for publicly owned works are proving more tricky.
'Complex and unregulated'
Thirteen Italian museums recently signed deals with Cinello, a firm that sells limited-edition digital reproductions, to offer ownership of digital replicas of masterworks.
The buyer gets a unique, high-resolution digital copy to project on to a screen and a certificate from the museum, which gets half the proceeds.
The company held a splashy show in February, Eternalising Art History: From Da Vinci to Modigliani, at the Unit London gallery, displaying digitised works by Renaissance masters including Raphael, Leonardo and Caravaggio. It has since sold a handful of them.
But the Italian Ministry of Culture was reportedly irked that a replica of Michelangelo's Doni Tondo sold for around €240,000 ($240,888) but Florence's Uffizi Gallery got less than a third of the proceeds.
A representative for the ministry was quoted in several outlets last month as saying the issue was "complex and unregulated" and asked museums not to sign any new contracts around NFTs.
Cinello boss Francesco Losi was not pleased with the characterisation, telling AFP: "We don't sell NFTs."
Buyers can ask for an NFT to go with their image, but the firm said they had their own patented system to secure ownership, which they call DAW.
Mixed blessing
Cinello said it had digitised more than 200 works and its sales had generated €296,000 ($297,000) in extra revenue for Italian museums.
But the firm's difficulties in Italy underline the mixed blessing of NFTs — they bring publicity but also suspicion.
The NFT sector — which covers anything from avatars in computer games to million-dollar cartoon apes — is replete with scams, counterfeit works, thefts and wash trading.
Losi said he was well aware that NFTs could be used "in the wrong way" and was unsure what future they had in the art world.
Schneider stressed that her project was protected by law in Liechtenstein, the tiny principality being among the first jurisdictions to pass a law regulating blockchain companies in 2019.
Beyond that, she said her insurance would cover damage to the artworks and she had also factored in the possibility that the paintings would fall in value, though she declined to give exact details.
"I hope it never happens," she said. "For me, it's very important to put this idea in the market."
VEZEETA PROFILE
Date started: 2012
Founder: Amir Barsoum
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: HealthTech / MedTech
Size: 300 employees
Funding: $22.6 million (as of September 2018)
Investors: Technology Development Fund, Silicon Badia, Beco Capital, Vostok New Ventures, Endeavour Catalyst, Crescent Enterprises’ CE-Ventures, Saudi Technology Ventures and IFC
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
War 2
Director: Ayan Mukerji
Stars: Hrithik Roshan, NTR, Kiara Advani, Ashutosh Rana
Rating: 2/5
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Red flags
- Promises of high, fixed or 'guaranteed' returns.
- Unregulated structured products or complex investments often used to bypass traditional safeguards.
- Lack of clear information, vague language, no access to audited financials.
- Overseas companies targeting investors in other jurisdictions - this can make legal recovery difficult.
- Hard-selling tactics - creating urgency, offering 'exclusive' deals.
Courtesy: Carol Glynn, founder of Conscious Finance Coaching
Key findings of Jenkins report
- Founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al Banna, "accepted the political utility of violence"
- Views of key Muslim Brotherhood ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, have “consistently been understood” as permitting “the use of extreme violence in the pursuit of the perfect Islamic society” and “never been institutionally disowned” by the movement.
- Muslim Brotherhood at all levels has repeatedly defended Hamas attacks against Israel, including the use of suicide bombers and the killing of civilians.
- Laying out the report in the House of Commons, David Cameron told MPs: "The main findings of the review support the conclusion that membership of, association with, or influence by the Muslim Brotherhood should be considered as a possible indicator of extremism."
RESULTS
West Asia Premiership
Thursday
Jebel Ali Dragons 13-34 Dubai Exiles
Friday
Dubai Knights Eagles 16-27 Dubai Tigers
What is Reform?
Reform is a right-wing, populist party led by Nigel Farage, a former MEP who won a seat in the House of Commons last year at his eighth attempt and a prominent figure in the campaign for the UK to leave the European Union.
It was founded in 2018 and originally called the Brexit Party.
Many of its members previously belonged to UKIP or the mainstream Conservatives.
After Brexit took place, the party focused on the reformation of British democracy.
Former Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson became its first MP after defecting in March 2024.
The party gained support from Elon Musk, and had hoped the tech billionaire would make a £100m donation. However, Mr Musk changed his mind and called for Mr Farage to step down as leader in a row involving the US tycoon's support for far-right figurehead Tommy Robinson who is in prison for contempt of court.
Specs
Engine: 51.5kW electric motor
Range: 400km
Power: 134bhp
Torque: 175Nm
Price: From Dh98,800
Available: Now
Specs
Engine: Electric motor generating 54.2kWh (Cooper SE and Aceman SE), 64.6kW (Countryman All4 SE)
Power: 218hp (Cooper and Aceman), 313hp (Countryman)
Torque: 330Nm (Cooper and Aceman), 494Nm (Countryman)
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh158,000 (Cooper), Dh168,000 (Aceman), Dh190,000 (Countryman)
HIJRA
Starring: Lamar Faden, Khairiah Nathmy, Nawaf Al-Dhufairy
Director: Shahad Ameen
Rating: 3/5
Ferrari
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDirector%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Michael%20Mann%26nbsp%3B%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarring%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Adam%20Driver%2C%20Penelope%20Cruz%2C%20Shailene%20Woodley%2C%20Patrick%20Dempsey%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%203%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
RACE CARD
6.30pm: Handicap (TB) $68,000 (Dirt) 1,600m
7.05pm: Meydan Sprint – Group 2 (TB) $163,000 (Turf) 1,000m
7.40pm: Curlin Stakes – Listed Handicap (TB) $88,000 (D) 2,200m
8.15pm: UAE Oaks – Group 3 (TB) $125,000 (D) 1,900m
8.50pm: Zabeel Mile – Group 2 (TB) $163,000 (T) 1,600m
9.25pm: Balanchine – Group 2 (TB) $163,000 (T) 1,800m
10pm: Al Shindagha Sprint – Group 3 (TB) $130,000 (D) 1,200m
It's Monty Python's Crashing Rocket Circus
To the theme tune of the famous zany British comedy TV show, SpaceX has shown exactly what can go wrong when you try to land a rocket.
The two minute video posted on YouTube is a compilation of crashes and explosion as the company, created by billionaire Elon Musk, refined the technique of reusable space flight.
SpaceX is able to land its rockets on land once they have completed the first stage of their mission, and is able to resuse them multiple times - a first for space flight.
But as the video, How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster, demonstrates, it was a case if you fail, try and try again.
More on animal trafficking
