"Wild West" digital art market - regulation is unavoidable

"There is no way around stronger cross-border regulation of trading in NFTs and crypto assets to prevent money laundering," says art law expert Dr. Pascal Decker in an interview with Kai Lange of manager magazin.

Investors put 44 billion dollars into NFTs in 2021. The number of crypto accounts trading NFTs has risen to almost 3 million since the beginning of 2021. The NFT hype creates opportunities for the art market, but also entails risks. The main problem is that, unlike share trading, for example, the major NFT trading platforms are currently barely regulated, making it easier to engage in sham transactions and so-called "wash trades", i.e. money laundering. In 2021 alone, crypto assets worth around 8.6 billion US dollars were laundered. The number of unreported cases is likely to be much higher. In this interview, Dr. Pascal Decker explains how auction houses, art dealers and art lovers can protect themselves from abuse by money launderers in the prevailing "Wild West" of the digital art market.

The LegalTech start-up legeARTIS Compliance offers support and guidance in this regard. The unique joint venture between dtb rechtsanwälte and the LegalTech company Kerberos Compliance provides a compliance platform to combat money laundering.

To the interview.