Britain’s artist Damien Hirst has reportedly started setting fire to millions of dollars valued of his artworks with regard to his non-fungible token (NFT) project called “The Currency,” as reported by Cointelegraph.
According to Cointelegraph, at the time of an October live stream of his London Gallery, Hirst burned hundreds of his own “The Currency” artworks to provide ensurance that they exist only in the form of an NFT. Reportedly, “The Currency” was the name assigned to Hirst’s first NFT collection which was unveiled last year, made up of 10,000 NFTs attached to physical oil painting.
On the basis of information by Cointelegraph, the project has been connected to Hirst’s social experiment for experimenting the value of digital art with regard to physical art. Collectors who made the purchase of one of the $2,000 floor-priced NFTs were allotted one year to take a decision on whether they should keep hold of the NFT or make trading of it for physical painting. In July, the decision was made as 5,149 paintings were to be delivered as physical pieces of art and 4,851 paintings in digital format. It is believed that the other oil paintings will continue to be burned at the Newport Street Gallery until The Currency exhibition concludes.
“A lot of people think I’m burning millions of dollars of art but I’m not, I’m completing the transformation of these physical artworks into NFTs by burning the physical versions. The value of art, digital or physical, which is hard to define at the best of times will not be lost, it will be transferred to the NFT as soon as they are burnt,” Hirst stated prior to the burn event.
Moreover, Cointelegraph noted that Hirst’s The Currency collection is listed on NFT marketplace OpenSea carrying a floor price of 5.1 Ether, valued $6,539 at the time of the publication’s writing. Recently, the piece called V-Day of consent was sold for 5.08 ETH.
(With insights from Cointelegraph)
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