Non-Fungible Tokens (NTFs) artworks attract relevant trading volume in the secondary market. Their prices, primarily denominated in Ethereum cryptocurrency, recently experienced a substantial increase. In this paper, we first investigate whether the market for crypto art is informationally efficient and, secondly, if crypto art can be considered as an alternative to real-world art rather than a haven for crypto-money speculative traders. We find evidence of market inefficiency with long-lasting autoregressive patterns in price discovery. As for the nature of crypto art as an asset class, our findings support the idea that crypto art is unrelated to real-world art. Crypto art prices are mostly determined by gains in the cryptocurrency of denomination, whereas real-world art is mostly unrelated to the financial markets. We conclude that crypto art is far from being another medium to express artistic content and is currently just a storing unit for crypto-money, in absence of relevant alternatives.
Anselmi, G., Petrella, G., Non-fungible token artworks: More crypto than art?, <<FINANCE RESEARCH LETTERS>>, 2023; 51 (January 2023): 103473-103483. [doi:10.1016/j.frl.2022.103473] [https://hdl.handle.net/10807/221665]
Non-fungible token artworks: More crypto than art?
Anselmi, Giulio;Petrella, Giovanni
2022
Abstract
Non-Fungible Tokens (NTFs) artworks attract relevant trading volume in the secondary market. Their prices, primarily denominated in Ethereum cryptocurrency, recently experienced a substantial increase. In this paper, we first investigate whether the market for crypto art is informationally efficient and, secondly, if crypto art can be considered as an alternative to real-world art rather than a haven for crypto-money speculative traders. We find evidence of market inefficiency with long-lasting autoregressive patterns in price discovery. As for the nature of crypto art as an asset class, our findings support the idea that crypto art is unrelated to real-world art. Crypto art prices are mostly determined by gains in the cryptocurrency of denomination, whereas real-world art is mostly unrelated to the financial markets. We conclude that crypto art is far from being another medium to express artistic content and is currently just a storing unit for crypto-money, in absence of relevant alternatives.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.