Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun on Friday, Nov. 29, ate the duct-taped banana he bought for $6.2 million.
Sun, 34, ate the fruit in front of reporters in Hong Kong in what he called an “iconic” stunt, fulfilling a promise he’d made after buying it from a New York art auction, according to Agence France-Press.
As he ate the banana art, he compared conceptual art and cryptocurrency.
“It’s much better than other bananas,” he said as he took a first bite. “It’s really quite good.”
Titled “Comedian”, the conceptual work created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in New York last week, with Sun among seven bidders
Sun said he felt “disbelief” in the first 10 seconds after he won the bid, before realising “this could become something big”.
In the 10 seconds after that, he decided he would eat the banana.
“Eating it at a press conference can also become a part of the artwork’s history,” he said Friday, Nov. 29.
The banana art first debuted at the 2019 Art Basel show in Miami Beach. At the time, it sparked controversy and raised questions about whether it should be considered art.
And Sun on Friday compared conceptual art like “Comedian” to NFT art and decentralised blockchain technology.
“Most of its objects and ideas exist as (intellectual property) and on the internet, as opposed to something physical,” he said.
The banana artwork owner is given a certificate of authenticity that the work was created by Cattelan as well as instructions about how to replace the banana when it goes bad.
Sun told AFP that his artwork may well benefit from the same kind of speculative craze usually associated with crypto.
“I think (the price) probably is going to go up even more in the future, just like Bitcoin,” he said.
Meanwhile, the mega-million-dollar banana had been bought from a New York street vendor for just 35 cents, then duct-taped to a wall by artist Maurizio Cattelan as part of his “Comedian” collection.
Sun ate the banana just hours after it emerged it had been bought for less than a dollar from 74-year-old New York City street vendor Shah Alam, who works for $12 an hour at his stand outside of Sotheby’s on the Upper East Side.
“I am a poor man,” the widower told the New York Times with tears in his eyes. “I have never had this kind of money; I have never seen this kind of money.”
Sun vowed to “buy 100,000 bananas from his stand in New York’s Upper East Side,” he tweeted Thursday afternoon, Nov. 28.
“These bananas will be distributed free worldwide through his stand,” Sun said, adding that he hoped to visit Alam in person.
