Cryptocurrency tycoon Justin Sun fulfilled his pledge after acquiring a $6.2 million piece of artwork showing a banana Art pinned to a wall. On Friday,
At one of the priciest hotels in Hong Kong, Sun kept his promise to eat the banana by chewing it in front of dozens of reporters and influential people.
Prior to the gesture, he also gave a statement in which he praised the piece of art as “iconic” and made analogies between cryptocurrencies and conceptual art.
“It’s really quite good,” he responded to AFP.
Sun was one of seven bidders for the conceptual piece “Comedian” by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan that was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in New York last week.
Sun made comparisons between NFT art and pieces such as Comedian on Friday. “Most of its objects and ideas exist as (intellectual property) and on the internet, as opposed to something physical,” he stated.
Additionally, Sun revealed a $30 million investment in World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency initiative backed by Donald Trump, the US president-elect.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused the cryptocurrency inventor last year for selling and promoting unregistered securities related to his Tron project. The case has not yet been resolved.
Sun joked that he had “dumb questions” about whether the banana had already deteriorated and how to assess the piece’s worth, adding that he had only lately decided to bid on the artwork.
In addition to instructions on how to replace the banana whenever it starts to deteriorate, the owner of the artwork was given a certificate of authenticity attesting to Cattelan’s creation.
Each person attending the Friday event was given a banana and a roll of duct tape as a memento.
