Cryptocurrency investment firm Galaxy Digital announced the tokenization of a nearly 300-year-old vintage violin once owned by Russian royalty. The instrument will be used as collateral to back a loan.

What Happened: The firm owned by crypto billionaire and Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) bull Michael Novogratz, minted a non-fungible token of "Empress Caterina," an 18th-century Stradivarius violin, valued at roughly $9 million, according to a press release.

The NFT was created exclusively for the financing transaction between Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu and Galaxy. Siu purchased the iconic instrument in 2023.

The NFT was created on the Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) blockchain, and featured on the NFT marketplace OpenSea. Galaxy made it clear that NFT will not be available in the secondary market.

Why It Matters: Tokenization of real-world assets is emerging as one of the hottest narratives in Web3. As part of this, off-chain assets like bonds, real estate, commodities, and art can be brought on blockchain rails, unlocking a new set of use cases for both traditional and decentralized finance.

In the aforementioned case, the tokenization created an economic value of the precious asset without selling it. At the same time, it helped preserve the legacy by immortalizing it in the form of an NFT.

As of this writing, the real-world tokenization industry has more than $4 billion in investments, according to DeFiLlama.

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