Art and crypto: NFT startup Bitski raises $19M

The cryptocurrency market has been making news in recent days. Some currencies are losing value, others are breaking records. Another interesting news is from the realm of NFT, non-interchangeable tokens. Startup Bitski has raised $19M in Series A financing to develop its ‘online storefront’ of NFT goods for brands and individuals. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz with contributions from celebrities Jay-Z and Serena Williams.

Bitski operates like its counterpart from the e-commerce world, Shopify. According to the platform, you can sell anything on the marketplace, as long as it’s digitized: from a designed filter in Snapchat to your own skin in Roblox. But the main object of sale is, of course, art.

Non-interchangeable token technology makes it possible to sell digital art and anchor the original source data. According to experts, they could revolutionize copyright control, because working with NFTs is more convenient than working with real objects.

The Bitski website promises that the experience of using the platform will be simple and not require knowledge of how blockchain works. This may put off old “connoisseurs” of the subject, but is likely to work to attract a new audience. The security of transactions and the storage of tokens in virtual wallets is also highlighted.

To date, the project has raised $23.4M. This is not the limit for NFT: recently, the Beeple artist sold his digital artwork “Everydays: the First 5 000 Days” for a record $69M. More recently, the auction house Sotheby’s, as part of its partnership with Coinbase, announced that it would allow the artist Banksy to pay for his work on sale in cryptocurrency.