Online Art Valuations Solution ValueMyStuff Focuses in on Blockchain Technology

ValueMyStuff, the world's number one online valuations and appraisals service, is today announcing the launch of its API for blockchain art and asset management firms. The solution offers art, antique and collectable asset valuations within 48-hours and can help firms to ensure that the genesis block in a chain carries more accurate value and worth.

In the recent months, blockchain technology and its impacts on the art world have attracted a lot of attention, globally. With auction houses, collectors and private wealth management firms increasingly engaging with the technology, ValueMyStuff can now further assist in ensuring that each chain gets off to the right start. With art dealers and collectors continually looking to ensure authentication and provenance of their items, blockchain technology's decentralisation securities offer the perfect application in the art world. However, blockchain is only as strong as its first block in the chain - known as the genesis block.

Earlier in the year, ValueMyStuff announced the re-launch of their technology, along with a new customer interface, smartphone application and partnerships with auction houses too. Now the company has launched an API aimed at assisting blockchain technology businesses with accurately valuing and appraising artworks, antiques and collectable assets at the start of their chain.

Patrick van der Vorst, the company's founder and CEO, said of the concerns surrounding blockchain in the art market:

"Blockchain will only be as good as the very point of entry (genesis) of the item in the blockchain, so proper expertise and cataloguing is needed at the very beginning. There is a concern that unqualified people may be entering the descriptions into the blockchain at the very start, thus creating badly tagged items, which of course would defeat the whole purpose of blockchain. So, the better the expertise upfront, the better the whole blockchain technology will become. For contemporary art establishing blockchain will be relatively simple, as the catalogue entries can be made at the point of creation and when the works enter the market. For antiques, collectables and memorabilia the effort will have to be more focussed and will take years to build up substantial blockchain volumes, but overtime if the market decides that blockchain tagged items carry more weight and thus become more commercially attractive, collectors will want to ensure their items are blockchain tagged and thus build up further volumes." 

With a team of 62 valuations experts, 58 of whom are ex-Sotheby's and ex-Christie's valuers, the opportunities and potential scope of ValueMyStuff's support is vast. While machine learning and artificial intelligence are serious growth areas across all industries, this personal, human expertise is something that simply cannot be taken on by machines. The partnership between these experts and ValueMyStuff's API is, however, the perfect collaboration of technology and human intelligence. To explore more of ValueMyStuff's capabilities and services, visit https://www.valuemystuff.com .