HONG KONG, August 4, 2025 — As Bitcoin reshapes world finance, it’s additionally remodeling tradition. This 12 months, Bitcoin Asia debuts a museum-scale gallery that includes digital and bodily works exploring worth, code, and possession—from bytes to brushstrokes.
Headlining the exhibition is Robert Alice, the UK-based artist and creator whose artwork and books examine blockchain’s philosophical and historic roots. Two works from his landmark sequence Portraits of a Thoughts—a 40-piece physique of labor encoding the primary 12.3 million digits of Bitcoin’s code—can be on view in Hong Kong. Not too long ago exhibited at Christie’s Artwork + Tech Summit and included of their upcoming Bitcoin-themed public sale this September—an occasion that can even characteristic a uncommon early-edition copy of Bitcoin Journal—Alice’s work bridge conceptual artwork with cryptographic methods and the mythos of early Bitcoin. His work is held within the everlasting collections of the Centre Pompidou, LACMA, and Monnaie de Paris.
In parallel, Bitcoin Asia will host a hearth chat between former Sotheby’s CEO Tad Smith and Dr. Uli Sigg, the Swiss diplomat, enterprise chief, and preeminent collector of Chinese language up to date artwork. Their dialog will discover the way forward for gathering, cultural diplomacy, and the rise of recent valuation fashions. Days after Bitcoin Asia, Sigg can be awarding the distinguished Sigg Prize at M+ Museum—dwelling to over 1,400 works he personally donated to town’s visible arts panorama.
“In a second when the top-tier of the standard artwork market is contracting, Bitcoin-native exhibitions are gaining momentum—spanning each bodily works priced in BTC and digital creations formed by the logic of the community itself. We’re constructing one thing essentially completely different—not simply in medium or market, however in ethos. It’s about transparency, sovereignty, and worth—for each collectors and artists pursuing what we name inventive power priced in sats“,
stated Dennis Koch, Curator of the Bitcoin Asia Artwork Gallery.
Staged in Hong Kong—Asia’s gateway for each finance and tradition—the exhibition alerts a rising urge for food for Bitcoin-native inventive codecs throughout worldwide markets.
The Bitcoin Asia Artwork Gallery will embody works by over a dozen worldwide artists—together with contributors from Hong Kong, Japan, Spain, Germany, the UK, and the US. For the primary time in Asia, the exhibit options each a large-scale digital LED wall and a bodily gallery house, with a spread of fixed-price and public sale works. All gross sales can be priced and transacted in Bitcoin.
Since 2019, over 100 BTC in gross sales have been facilitated by means of the Bitcoin Convention artwork program, reinforcing a bigger market pattern: as Bitcoin climbs previous $120,000, conventional public sale home fashions are faltering. In 2024, world high-quality artwork gross sales dropped 27% to $10.2 billion, with blue-chip works over $10 million accounting for a $2 billion shortfall. The contraction has continued into 2025, with public sale totals down one other 16% year-over-year. On the identical time, 72% of collectors now purchase by means of digital platforms, and the fastest-growing sector is galleries incomes underneath $250K yearly.
Main artwork festivals are additionally in retreat. Each New York’s The Artwork Present (ADAA) and Taipei Dangdai have introduced strategic pauses—New York in 2025 and Taipei in 2026—as rising prices and mushy demand immediate a sector-wide reassessment. Fairly than a collapse, this alerts a paradigm shift in how worth, viewers, and sustainability are being recalibrated throughout the worldwide artwork ecosystem.
Amid this recalibration, Bitcoin affords a radically completely different basis. As Michael Saylor notes, “the one shortage on the earth is Bitcoin”—not like fiat, actual property, or the standard store-of-value logic lengthy related to artwork gathering. Public sale homes are scrambling to adapt by means of superficial instruments like precedence bidding, however the deeper shift is already underway: the cash itself is altering. Bitcoin-denominated gross sales provide higher transparency, fewer intermediaries, and a extra aligned incentive construction for a brand new technology of collectors.
In opposition to this backdrop, Bitcoin Asia is greater than a convention; it’s a cultural sign. From uncommon digital artwork to generative code-based installations, the exhibition invitations collectors, technologists, and curators to reimagine what worth appears like in an open-source world.
Among the many standout LED wall contributions is a brand new work by Harvard professor Scott Kominers, whose generative artwork sequence Pidentities explores arithmetic, id, and provenance. Initially launched on Ethereum, the undertaking now makes its Ordinals debut in collaboration with main developer Ordinally, inscribing the infinite digits of π onto Bitcoin. The ensuing set up presents an on-chain, layered puzzle—inviting attendees to decipher hidden clues encoded inside the art work.
The exhibition can even characteristic contributions from two of essentially the most iconic Ordinals collections: OnChainMonkey and Bitcoin Puppets, every bringing their distinctive voice to this evolving cultural motion.
Curatorial Staff
Dennis Koch is the Artwork Gallery Director for the Bitcoin Convention, the place he has curated Bitcoin-focused exhibitions since 2022, serving to form a cultural economic system grounded in sound cash. Beforehand with Gagosian and Blum & Poe, his work facilities on artists exploring methods, sovereignty, and worth—bringing Bitcoin’s ideas into dialogue with up to date artwork.
Guoying Stacy Zhang is an artwork historian specializing in Buddhist artwork and cultural heritage, with expertise at Sotheby’s London and Christie’s Shanghai. She brings a cross-cultural and religious perspective to the exhibition, connecting conventional types of which means with up to date expressions of worth.
About The Bitcoin Convention
The Bitcoin Convention, organized by BTC Media, the mother or father firm of Bitcoin Journal, is a worldwide occasion sequence that includes notable trade audio system, workshops, exhibitions, and leisure. These occasions function very important platforms for Bitcoin trade leaders, builders, buyers, and lovers to collect, community, and alternate concepts. The flagship occasion befell in 2025 in Las Vegas. Bitcoin 2026 is scheduled to return to Las Vegas in April 2026. Worldwide occasions embody Bitcoin Asia (Hong Kong, August 2025), Bitcoin Amsterdam (Amsterdam, November 2025), and Bitcoin MENA (Abu Dhabi, December 2025).