Briefly
- Banksy’s ‘Morons’ were destroyed on camera during a burning ceremony in Brooklyn this month.
- A digitized copy of it was sold as an NFT.
- Will the ash next be sold as an NFT?
A marked version of a now-destroyed Banksy painting called ‘Morons’ was sold to bidder ‘GALAXY’ at an NFT auction late this afternoon for 228.69 ETH or $ 382,336.
The enigmatic British street artist’s original painting was first sold for £ 16,250 in 2006. It depicts an overcrowded auction house. The plots for sale behind the auctioneer are a framed canvas that reads, “I CAN’T BUY YOUR MORONS THE SHIT.”
So far meta, but new low social comments have been added to the work when crypto-obsessed financial traders get their hands on it.
Buy it to burn it
Earlier this year, a group of blockchain investors and professionals ‘Morons’ bought for $ 95,000 after being verified by Banksy verification body Pest Control. This group included members of decentralized financing (DeFi) projects Injective Protocol and SuperFarm.
The pyro-loving anarchists then tormented art fans around the world when they uploaded a video of themselves burned the work in Brooklyn, New York. The page appears to be flame retardant during the most exciting three minutes that it was on fire, which the ardent arsonist on film tried to light it from different angles.
NFTs: a second life for artworks?
“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” reads the old saying, so what constructive purpose can such blatant vandalism serve? Well, before the painting was set on fire, an NFT copy of it was made.
Thanks to blockchain’s cryptographic coding, digitized tokens have the ability to vouch for physical art assets. The broader point that these lucky traders have made is that Banksy’s work still exists, and although it is no longer in a tangible form with us, it happily sits somewhere in a block of Ethereum’s blockchain, which is indelibly coded. as the property of GALAXY.
Art does not even need a physical existence to be an NFT. A new kind of exciting digital artist makes the NFT space just as valid in creating and announcing new work as any museum or gallery. Just look Refik Anadol’s Intricate Data Paintings, of FEWOCiOUS’s surrealistic illustrations.
And outside of the visual art space, there are also all sorts of collectibles entering the NFT space. MF Doom’s final creative project was a set augmented reality masks, while the NBA even licensed official blockchain goods in the form of digitized trading cards that $ 32 million trading volume in a day.
This exciting and often absurd world blurs the lines between currency, collectibles and art.