Galloire Art Gallery to accept Crypto via tie-up with MidChains
Galloire, the innovative contemporary art gallery continues to push forward with the use of technology to enable collectors to connect with its artists and their work. Joining a list of major international galleries such as Pace, Lehmann Maupin and recently Gagosian, Galloire will now accept Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDC for artwork sales globally.
Galloire becomes first major art gallery in Middle East to accept cryptocurrency payment via tie-up with Abu Dhabi’s MidChains, the fully licensed virtual asset multilateral trading facility and custodian based in in the UAE and regulated by the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM). Basil Al Askari, CEO of Midchains said; “We are a company which prides itself on innovation and being able to provide safe and regulated ways to transact and invest with cryptocurrency, so working with Galloire to enable collectors to invest in art using their preferred cryptocurrency made perfect sense to us. Enabling people to pay securely for a physical asset with a digital asset, especially something as impactful as art, is a huge step forward in the UAE and we have been able to power that today, not in months or years time.”
Speaking about the gallery and the principles behind the move, founder Edward Gallagher said;
“We have an absolute belief in the use of technology to bring art to as wide an audience as possible, so by using photorealistic VR and AR you’ve already seen us bring exhibitions from world-famous artists to tens of thousands more people than could have ever seen it in the gallery.
We want more people to connect with contemporary art and also believe in an egalitarian approach to how people want to pay for that art: Why should we force a crypto-native person to pay in traditional (fiat) currency to acquire a beautiful painting, and vice-versa, why should a traditional collector looking to venture into NFTs have to pay in crypto-currency just to access some digital art they fall in love with?”
