The allegedly richest living artist in the UK, Damien Hirst is going to burn thousands of his paintings as part of a year-long non-fungible token (NFT) project called “The Currency”.
Starting in September, visitors to Hirst’s private museum in London will be able to see some of his 10,000 unique dotted oil paintings that he created in 2016 and linked to NFT in 2021..
Buyers of the $2,000 minimum price NFTs were given the option to keep the token or exchange it for the physical box. The original artwork will be burned for those who chose to keep the NFT version.
The deadline for the decision was July 27, and almost half of collectors, 4,851, wanted to burn their paintings for digital edition NFTs, while 5,149 collectors chose to exchange their NFTs for physical versions.
The Currency
The year is over boom that was quick! and we have all had to decide: NFT or physical? The final numbers are: 5,149 physicals and 4,851 NFTs (meaning I will have to burn 4,851 corresponding physical Tenders). pic.twitter.com/xCUJ0gviZ0
— Damien Hirst (@hirst_official) July 27, 2022
The Currency: The year is over, so fast! and we have all had to decide: NFT or physical? The final figures are: 5,149 physical and 4,851 NFT (which means I will have to burn 4,851 corresponding physical Tenders). pic.twitter.com/xCUJ0gviZ0
The artworks will be burned daily over the course of the event, which begins on September 9, and will culminate with its closing during London Frieze Week in mid-October., when the remaining paints will go up in smoke. On Wednesday, the 57-year-old artist commented on the result:
“I believe in art and art in all its forms, but in the end I thought damn it! This area is so fucking exciting and the least I know about, and I love this NFT community, it excites me.”
Hirst previously told The Art Newspaper that the project “touches on the idea of art as currency and store of wealth”.
The initial sale and subsequent second-hand resales have been managed by the NFT Heni market. According to Heni, sales skyrocketed in August and September 2021, when the project launched. The Currency became the first collection in the OpenSea NFT ranking on August 15. However, volumes have plummeted in recent months with the broader crypto market falling.
The maximum price of a piece was USD 176,779, and the average buyer spent USD 21,078. The most recent sale was on July 28 for 8,708 USDC, which brings the total sold of the collection to USD 89.3 million.
Hirst commented that “I still don’t know what I’m doing, and I have no idea what the future holds, whether NFTs or physical ones are going to be more or less valuable.”. adding that even after a year, she felt “the journey had just begun.”
Damien Hirst was declared the richest artist in the UK in 2020with assets of more than USD 380 million.
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