A Chinese-born cryptocurrency entrepreneur has chaseed thcimpolite on his promise to eat the banana from a $6.2m (£4.9m) arttoil he bought last week.
Justin Sun outbid six others to claim Maurizio Cattelan’s inwell-understandn 2019 toil Comedian – a banana duct-taped to a wall – at Sotheby’s auction house in New York.
He ate the fruit during a news conference in Hong Kong where he used the moment to draw parallels between the arttoil and cryptocurrency.
The banana is normally replaced before showions, with Mr Sun buying the right to distake part the insloftyation alengthy with a direct on how to replace the fruit.
It has been eaten twice before – first by a carry outance artist in 2019 and aobtain by a South Korean student in 2023 – but neither phelp any money to do so, let alone $6.2m.
“Eating it at a press conference can also become a part of the arttoil’s history,” Mr Sun shelp.
“It’s much better than other bananas,” he inserted.
The 34-year-ageder shelp he was intrigued by the toil, acunderstandledgeting he had “stupid asks” about whether the banana rotted.
The New York Times inestablished a new banana was bought for 35 cents on the day of last week’s auction, before becoming possibly one of the most costly fruits in the world.
Each joinee at the event on Friday was donaten a banana and a roll of duct tape as a souvenir.
“Everyone has a banana to eat,” Mr Sun shelp.
Mr Sun runs the Tron blockchain nettoil – a service where users can trade in cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrencies are digital currencies that run self-reliant of banks, proposeing the potential of very protected decentralised transactions.
Mr Sun appraised the arttoil, and other abstract pieces enjoy it, to NFTs.
These “non-fungible tokens” are pieces of digital arttoil that have no intrinsic appreciate, other than that prescribed by people.
NFTs can be traded on platestablishs enjoy Mr Sun’s.
Last year, he was accused by the US Securities and Exalter Cotransferrlookion for proposeing and selling unsign uped security tokens. Mr Sun denies the accuses and the case is ongoing.
This week, Mr Sun disseald he made a $30m spendment in a crypto project backed by US Plivent-elect Donald Trump.
