Submission + - A "Bitcoin for GIFs" Aims to Make Net Art More Ownable (vice.com)
tedlistens writes: It's hard to put a price on a GIF if it can be copied with a keystroke. But maybe digital currency can change that. At Rhizome's Seven On Seven conference at the New Museum last Saturday, multimedia artist Kevin McCoy and entrepreneur Anil Dash suggested a way that a cryptographic block chain like the kind used to track bitcoin transactions could also be used to establish that a particular digital artwork is "original," confirm its author, and, they hope, develop a stronger market for net art, which tends to lie outside art market conventions. After a day of brainstorming and hacking, the pair took a GIF, authored by Kevin and his partner Jennifer McCoy, and registered it in a Namecoin wallet. "It was likely the first time anyone has given a work of art a place on the blockchain," Motherboard's Whitney Mallett reports. "Dash bought it for the four dollars he had in his pocket."