Metaverse or NFT are concepts that until a few years ago were associated with the distant future. Today, it is a market whose global value exceeds USD 300 billion. No wonder that the largest entities see the potential of the young market, as recently Bank Pekao SA, which was the first universal financial institution in the world tokenized art and was one of the first to enter the world of NFT.
Blockchain has laid the foundations of the digital economy
Blockchain technology may soon be more important for the economy than the Internet, and although this statement sounds lofty, such a distributed database is a tool that takes the world to a new level of digitization. Each individual blockchain, or otherwise a block chain, is nothing more than a database distributed among all its users, which contains an ever-growing amount of information grouped into blocks. Each of these blocks connects to the next, having an individual time stamp when it was created and a link to the previous block, which is an encrypted “summary” of its content. Thus, it is impossible to make changes that would not be visible throughout the network. What’s so special about it? Well, the Internet we know is a global, highly centralized network, built on the DNS infrastructure. It is based on 13 main servers located around the world that communicate with downstream servers on a hierarchy of importance basis. In simple terms, nothing stands in the way of changing the settings of these servers and modifying the content that we find on the Internet. Blockchain is therefore a gateway to data security, but also to the creation of crypto-assets and thus to building secure systems for exchanging both data and digital assets. After a short theoretical introduction, it is worth looking at the current trends in the decentralized finance sector.
Art, Metaverse, tokenization – The world craves authenticity
Why is Tamara Łempicka’s painting worth over PLN 80 million on the auction market today? Because it is unique and unrepeatable, created by an artist whose hand will not produce any other similar work. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are based on this principle in the digital world. Damien Hirst offers his customers a choice – painting on canvas or NFT. When they decide to go NFT, the work on the canvas is destroyed. The artist thus guarantees that there is no other than digital version of the painting. Recognizing this trend, Bank Pekao SA, together with Mastercard, launched 440 unique credit cards from the UNIQUE collection. Customers have a card associated with NFT, which in turn is a digital representation of a particle of Rafał Bujnowski’s image.
Work “Wall of the studio” and its author Rafał Bujnowski Bujnowski for the needs of the project “Unique” created the painting “Wall of the studio”, the fragments of which he then photographed. From the digital photographs, he selected 440, which are the foundation of the collection and have been immortalized both on cards and in the digital space.
One of 440 credit cards from the UNIQUE collection Source: Media.pekao.com.pl SmartVerum, a company dealing with tokenization of works of art, is responsible for the digital side of the NFT collection, and the project itself is promoted with the slogan “When art creates business”. This is one of the elements of art branding activities of Bank Pekao SA, which goes back to several decades of tradition of cooperation with recognized artists. – Pekao Private Banking has been offering exceptional service and financial solutions for affluent clients for a quarter of a century. We change along with their needs and market trends, giving access to the entire range of investment products and more. In accordance with our strategy, we follow modern technologies, innovations and market trends, because that’s what our customers expect from us. One of them is the widely understood blockchain, without which there would be no UNIQUE project. By offering a completely unique credit card linked to the NFT token, we are becoming the undisputed leader of modern solutions for Private Banking customers – explains Jarosław Fuchs, Vice-President of Bank Pekao. Importantly, a tokenized fragment of the work is available on the Polish platform dedicated to art mintiq.io
Pekao sets trends
However, this is not the end of Pekao’s battle for authenticity in the digital world. Therefore, for the 25th anniversary of Private Banking, Pekao SA made available the PeoPay gallery located in the first Polish space of the Metaverse – ESKA WORLD, where tokens with the works of Kai Renkas – a recognized artist creating posters, book covers and animations – were presented.
PeoPay Gallery in Metaversie Source: Media.pekao.com.pl The virtual exhibition features numerous works from the “Żubr na Wall Street” series, animations created by the artist based on them, or play the interactive game “Forgotten Creatures”. As for the Metaverse itself, it is a virtual universe where users can engage in lively social interactions such as shopping, education, sports, and cultural events. In other words, it is a combination of social media and gaming reality, transferring social interactions to the virtual world using technology. That is why Bank Pekao SA is already boldly paving the way in a new environment.
The interior of the PeoPay gallery in the Metaverse Source: Media.pekao.com.pl The presence in the metaverse or tokenization is a global phenomenon and practically everything that has any value will be subject to it, and this is a great opportunity for the emergence of new business models. The opportunities created by the development of artificial intelligence provide opportunities for dynamic technological progress in both these areas. In turn, the dissemination of quantum computers is also a harbinger of the development of all models based on cryptoassets. If you are interested in the subject, please refer to the official announcements of Bank Pekao SA, which provide details of the initiatives described above: https://media.pekao.com.pl/pr/775010/bank-pekao-sa-pokaz-stokenizator-sztuke-w-swiecie -metaverse https://media.pekao.com.pl/pr/773227/kiedy-sztuka-kreuje-biznes-bank-pekao-sa-wchodzi-w-swiat-nft-wspolnie-z-mastercard-wdajeja-na- market-unique-credit-cards-unique Follow us on Google News. Search for what is important and stay up to date with the market! Follow us >>
