Hong Kong, August 4, 2025 —As Bitcoin reshapes the global financial system, it is also profoundly altering the cultural landscape. This year, Bitcoin Asia will present its first museum-quality art exhibition, bringing together digital and physical artworks to explore value, code, and ownership, from bits to brushstrokes.

The exhibition centers on British artist and writer Robert Alice , whose works and writings delve into the philosophical and historical roots of blockchain. Two works from his signature series, "Portraits of a Mind," will be on display in Hong Kong. The series, comprised of 40 works, encodes the first 12.3 million characters of Bitcoin. The series was previously exhibited at Christie's Art + Tech Summit and will be included in Christie's Bitcoin-themed auction this September, along with a rare early edition of "Bitcoin Magazine." Alice's work is held in permanent collections including the Centre Pompidou, LACMA, and the Musée des Monuments in Paris.

In conjunction with Bitcoin Asia, a fireside chat will feature former Sotheby's CEO Tad Smith , Swiss diplomat Dr. Uli Sigg , businesspeople, and collectors of contemporary Chinese art. The conversation will explore topics such as the future of collecting, cultural diplomacy, and the rise of emerging value systems. A few days after Bitcoin Asia, Dr. Sigg will present the prestigious Sigg Prize at the M+ Museum, home to his personal collection of over 1,400 works of art.

“While the top traditional art market is shrinking, Bitcoin-native art exhibitions are rapidly developing—including physical works priced in Bitcoin and digital art created using network logic,” said Dennis Koch, curator of Bitcoin Art Asia. “We are building a fundamentally different model, not just in terms of the medium or market, but also in its core spirit—about transparency, sovereignty, and value. This has profound implications for artists and collectors who pursue creative energy and value it in sats.”

The exhibition will be held in Hong Kong, a crossroads of finance and culture in Asia, and reflects the growing global interest in Bitcoin-native creative forms.

Bitcoin Asia Art Museum will feature works by artists from over ten countries and regions, including Hong Kong, Japan, Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The exhibition, a first in Asia, will feature both a large-scale digital LED wall and a physical gallery space. The works will include both fixed-price sales and auction items, all priced and traded in Bitcoin .

Since 2019, the Bitcoin Conference Art section has facilitated over 100 BTC worth of art sales, reflecting a broader market trend: as Bitcoin surpasses $120,000, the traditional auction house model is collapsing. In 2024, global art sales fell 27% to just $10.2 billion, leaving a $2 billion shortfall in blue-chip art priced over $10 million. The market continued its downward trend in 2025, declining another 16% year-over-year. Meanwhile, 72% of collectors already purchase art through digital platforms, and the fastest-growing galleries have annual revenues of less than $250,000.

Major art fairs are also putting on the brakes. New York's The Art Show (ADAA) and Taipei Dangdai have announced they will suspend events in 2025 and 2026, respectively. Rising costs and weakening demand are prompting the entire industry to reassess its sustainability. This isn't a collapse, but rather a paradigm shift in value, audience, and market logic.

In this restructuring, Bitcoin provides a fundamentally different infrastructure . As Michael Saylor puts it, "The only thing scarce in the world is Bitcoin"—a fundamentally different value proposition from fiat currency, real estate, or traditional art. Auction houses are attempting to adapt through tools like preferred bidding, but a deeper shift is already underway: money itself is changing . Bitcoin-denominated sales offer greater transparency, reduce intermediaries, and better align with the incentive structure of a new generation of collectors.

Against this backdrop, Bitcoin Asia is more than just a conference; it's a cultural signal. From rare digital art to generative code installations, the exhibition invites collectors, technologists, and curators to reimagine what "value" looks like in an open-source world .

One of the exhibition's highlights is a new work by Harvard University professor Scott Kominers , displayed on a large LED wall. His generative art series, "Pidentities," explores mathematics, identity, and provenance. Originally released on Ethereum, the series debuts on the Bitcoin Ordinals ecosystem, collaborating with Ordinally to inscribe the infinite digits of π (pi) onto the Bitcoin blockchain. Presented as an on-chain puzzle, the work invites viewers to decode the hidden clues live.

The exhibition will also feature two of the most representative projects from the Bitcoin Ordinals series: OnChainMonkey and Bitcoin Puppets , each injecting their own unique expression into this cultural movement.

Introduction to the curatorial team

Dennis Koch is the Artistic Director of the Bitcoin Conference. He has been curating Bitcoin-themed exhibitions since 2022, promoting a cultural economy centered on the concept of "hard money." Previously working at Gagosian and Blum & Poe, he specializes in artworks that explore systems, sovereignty, and value, and connects Bitcoin principles with contemporary art.

Guoying Stacy Zhang , a specialist in Buddhist art and cultural heritage who previously worked at Sotheby's London and Christie's Shanghai, brings a cross-cultural and spiritual perspective to this exhibition, bridging traditional meanings with contemporary expressions.

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