Cointelegraph reports that Hirst burnt hundreds of his own “The Currency” artworks during a live webcast of his London gallery in October to ensure that they only exist as an NFT.
According to Cointelegraph, British artist Damien Hirst has apparently started burning millions of dollars worth of his pieces of art on fire in connection with his non-fungible token (NFT) project named “The Currency.”
According to Cointelegraph, Hirst destroyed hundreds of his own “The Currency” artworks during a live webcast at his London gallery in October to ensure that they only exist as an NFT. The first NFT collection by Hirst, which had 10,000 NFTs affixed to actual oil paintings and was shown last year, was reportedly dubbed “The Currency.”
According to information provided by Cointelegraph, the initiative has been linked to Hirst’s sociological experiment about the relative worth of digital and real art. One year was given to collectors who purchased one of the $2,000 floor-priced NFTs to decide whether they should keep the NFT or trade it for real artwork. The choice was made in July when it was decided that 4,851 artworks would be distributed digitally and 5,149 would be presented physically. The remaining oil paintings are reportedly still being burnt at the Newport Street Gallery up to the conclusion of the Currency show.
“A lot of people believe that I am destroying works of art worth millions of dollars, but I am really burning the physical representations of these works to finish their conversion into NFTs. Before the burn event, Hirst said, “The worth of art, digital or real, which is difficult to describe at the best of circumstances, will not be lost; it will be transferred to the NFT as soon as they are burned.
Furthermore, according to Cointelegraph, Hirst’s The Currency collection is listed on the NFT marketplace OpenSea with a floor price of 5.1 ether, which is worth $6,539 at the time of writing. V-Day of Consent, a recent work, just sold for 5.08 ETH.
