Of all the trash that makes it through the bullshit screen at the NY Times, this is impressive bullshit. Highfalutin language that fails to show the potential (and very cool) relationship between cryptocoins & art & scarcity [of both]. It is true, that product-based blockchains are nigh on the horizon, it is a space ripe with innovation and potential. The possibilities to include physical products [works of art] and pair them with nonphysical tokens [Ready Made Token is what it's called in this project] is stunning and complex and rich with both benefit and controversy. For the very fact that a cryptocoin labeled anything near "art" has the possibility to stray into "utterly a shill" range, and also the distinct possibility to trade as a market commodity backed by Art itself! Imagine taking the dollar off the floating point nonstandard and tying it back to gold; impossible. However, in creating a cryptocoin/ledger that is backed by a physical product, or in this case the ambiguous notion of "Art," our society steadily makes its march of progress toward self-automated machina with full open source plumbing and machinery that will forward our progress exponentially.