The Casino and the Genie

The Generalist

Reflections on crypto and trying to make sense of a nonsensical week.

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Microsoft Co-Founder’s $1.5B+ Sale Highlights Real Asset Resilience

Last week, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s historic art collection shattered the record for largest ever sale in auction history.

The fact that the blue-chip art market is still setting records amid major drawdowns in financial markets, and macroeconomic turmoil, highlights why it can be such a strong alternative diversifier. In fact, the high-end art market also remained resilient through downturns like the dot-com bubble and Great Financial Crisis.

But this time around, it’s not just the ultra-wealthy benefitting, thanks to Masterworks.

This unicorn investment platform compiles the results of thousands of auctions like this, generating millions of data points, and builds custom indices to find artist markets with the most momentum. Then it acquires works from those artists, securitizes them, and allows everyday people to invest in shares.

So far, seven of Masterworks’ eight exits have realized a net return of +17.8%.

To invest in works by top-performing artists like Picasso and Bansky, skip the Masterworks waitlist with my referral link.

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To find the original piece, published Nov 13, 2022, follow this link.

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