9th May, Luxembourg — The Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) is the first European museum to tokenize a masterpiece to democratize art investment. In partnership with Rubey and Tokeny, KMSKA has leveraged the legal, marketing and technological expertise of both teams to launch its compliant ERC-3643 based security token offering on the Polygon blockchain, allowing fractional ownership of James Ensor (1860 – 1949)’s painting Carnaval de Binche, with investments starting at €150.
Traditionally, for investors, the art industry has been dominated by wealthy individuals with access to or the ability to purchase museum-quality art pieces. For museums, private investors have been the primary source of capital sought to help expand their collections. KMSKA aims to revolutionize the status quo by making masterpieces available to the masses.
By working with Rubey to tokenize the masterpiece on the blockchain, KMSKA lowers the investment barrier to entry, enabling everyone to become a “co-owner” of the masterpiece, while bringing together art lovers to become a new source of capital. The money raised in the Art Security Token Offering allows Carnaval de Binche to be purchased and ensures that the museum receives the piece on long-term loan. This means everyone finally gets to admire Ensor’s Carnaval de Binche – a painting that has spent years in private collections.
KMSKA will be more than a place that displays art. We are fully committed to engaging our visitors and token holders in our collection and operation. It is very special that anyone can become a ``co-owner`` of Carnaval de Binche by James Ensor. KMSKA already had the largest Ensor collection in the world. The addition of Carnaval de Binche puts our museum on the international map as an Ensor centre of excellence even more.
I am absolutely convinced that this is not a hype phenomenon, but the start of a revolution. Technologically, these Security Tokens are the ultimate innovation in the blockchain environment. However, the social element is just as important. Investing in Art Security Tokens is a true impact investment.
KMSKA’s Art Security Tokens, unlike Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), are backed by debt instruments, which legally fall under securities regulation and must comply with the law throughout their life cycle. To ensure compliance, the Rubey platform has chosen to integrate Tokeny’s tokenization APIs for issuing and managing security tokens due to its unique onchain compliance approach through permissioned ERC-3643 tokens and digital identity system ONCHAINID. As a result, token transfers can only occur if eligibility conditions are met, moreover, ownership of tokens is guaranteed by holders’ ONCHAINIDs (e.g. token holders can recover their tokens if they lose their wallets).
There is confusion in the market about NFT and security tokens, and we are pleased to see that KMSKA, an innovative traditional museum, fully understands the differences between these two types of digital assets. We share the same vision as our partners KMSKA and Rubey that security tokens will have a real impact on the art industry by allowing smaller investors to invest and engage in artworks that already have existing value. We are excited to provide a compliance infrastructure and user-friendly interfaces for them to reach these audiences. A new chapter in art investment has begun, and this is just the beginning, we can't wait to see what happens next.
The project uses Polygon network, the Ethereum-scaling solution, to achieve cost-effective operations while preparing for cheap, fast and compliant peer-to-peer transfers post-issuance for all investors – both initial private investors and investors in public sales. The team plans to provide a secondary market solution Billboard on the Rubey platform starting in 2023 to improve the liquidity of the assets.
The project is now live. Go to rubey.be for more information.
About Tokeny
Tokeny provides a compliance infrastructure for digital assets. It allows financial actors operating in private markets to compliantly and seamlessly issue, transfer, and manage real-world assets using distributed ledger technology. By applying trust, compliance, and control on a hyper-efficient infrastructure, Tokeny enables market participants to unlock significant advancements in the management and liquidity of financial instruments. The company is backed by strategic investors such as Apex Group and Inveniam.
About Rubey
Rubey is a collaboration between 3 parties:
- Untitled Workers Club, an advertising agency with a wide range of clients in the art world and finance. These clients noticed that many of their museum-loving customers did not have the financial capacity to buy important works of art to expand their collections, so they came up with the basic concept of tokenising works of art and they asked Untitled Workers Club to handle dealings with art, museums and communication. More information.
- 2140 Consulting, a team of consultants that helps organisations in a variety of sectors – from real estate to rainforest to art – to set up security token offerings.2140 Consulting takes care of the legal and technical aspects of the Security Token Offering. More information.
- Peter Hinssen, tech entrepreneur and author, gives talks all over the world on the impact of technology on society and the digital world which he calls the new normal. He is a popular keynote speaker at IT conferences across the globe.
Watch the interview with the Rubey-team here.
About KMSKA
The Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) is the largest art museum in Flanders. Its collection includes absolute masterpieces from the Flemish Primitives and Antwerp Baroque to an extensive range of modern art by Rik Wouters, Henri de Braekeleer and René Magritte. The jewel in its crown is the largest James Ensor collection in the world. The final touches are currently being added to the museum’s renovation. Its existing 19th-century building has been restored to its former glory and is complemented with a generous extension. KMSKA will be celebrating its reopening weekend on 24 and 25 September. The collection will finally be open to the public again and a grand opening festival is planned in and around the museum with several contemporary and interdisciplinary stages, dazzling performances, surprising crossovers and fun workshops for kids, young people and families.
About Polygon
Polygon is the leading platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development. Its growing suite of products offers developers easy access to all major scaling and infrastructure solutions: L2 solutions (ZK Rollups and Optimistic Rollups), sidechains, hybrid solutions, stand-alone and enterprise chains, data availability solutions, and more. Polygon’s scaling solutions have seen widespread adoption with 19,000+ decentralized applications hosted, 1.6B+ total transactions processed, ~142M+ unique user addresses, and $5B+ in assets secured.
If you’re an Ethereum Developer, you’re already a Polygon developer! Leverage Polygon’s fast and secure txns for your dApp, get started here.
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