Crypto boss eats banana artwork bought for $6.2m

A Chinese-born cryptocurrency entrepreneur has adopted by way of on his promise to eat the banana from a $6.2m (£4.9m) artwork he bought last week.

Justin Sun outbid six others to say Maurizio Cattelan’s notorious 2019 work Comedian – a banana duct-taped to a wall – at Sotheby’s public sale home in New York.

He ate the fruit throughout a information convention in Hong Kong the place he used the second to attract parallels between the paintings and cryptocurrency.

The banana is usually changed earlier than exhibitions, with Mr Sun shopping for the correct to show the set up together with a information on methods to exchange the fruit.

It has been eaten twice earlier than – first by a performance artist in 2019 and once more by a South Korean student in 2023 – however neither paid any cash to take action, not to mention $6.2m.

“Eating it at a press conference can also become a part of the artwork’s history,” Mr Sun mentioned.

“It’s much better than other bananas,” he added.

The 34-year-old mentioned he was intrigued by the work, admitting he had “dumb questions” about whether or not the banana rotted.

The New York Times reported a recent banana was purchased for 35 cents on the day of final week’s public sale, earlier than turning into probably one of the costly fruits on the planet.

Each attendee on the occasion on Friday was given a banana and a roll of duct tape as a memento.

“Everyone has a banana to eat,” Mr Sun mentioned.

Mr Sun runs the Tron blockchain community – a service the place customers can commerce in cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrencies are digital currencies that function unbiased of banks, providing the potential of very safe decentralised transactions.

Mr Sun in contrast the paintings, and different summary items prefer it, to NFTs.

These “non-fungible tokens” are items of digital paintings that don’t have any intrinsic worth, apart from that prescribed by folks.

NFTs may be traded on platforms like Mr Sun’s.

Last 12 months, he was charged by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for providing and promoting unregistered safety tokens. Mr Sun denies the costs and the case is ongoing.

This week, Mr Sun disclosed he made a $30m funding in a crypto undertaking backed by US President-elect Donald Trump.