Monegraph Uses Bitcoin Tech So Internet Artists Can Establish “Original” Copies Of Their Work

People don’t want to buy copies of art, they want the original. And that’s been a huge problem for artists who create digital works that are easily copied. No scarcity means no market, so artists

People don’t want to buy copies of art, they want the original. And that’s been a huge problem for artists who create digital works that are easily copied. No scarcity means no market, so artists can’t make ends meet. But Monegraph, short for “monetized graphics”, uses cryptography to bring meatspace scarcity to online art.

Here’s how Monegraph works. Artists can visit the Monegraph site and sign in with Twitter. Then They submit the URL of a digital image they’ve created. In return they receive a blockchain key and value they can store in a NameCoin wallet, similar to how they would store bitcoin. This is their digital deed, a unique claim of ownership to the piece of art. If someone else submits the same image, Monegraph detects that it’s already been claimed. Monegraph also tweets out an announcement of the ownership to commit it to public record.

Read the full article on TechCrunch.