Damien Hirst Burns $10 Million In “The Currency” Paintings

The Damien Hirst NFT experiment can now be deemed to have been finished now that the artist has begun burning the remaining artwork, which has a value of $10 million and was a part of the experiment when it was first conducted. A whole year was spent by the contemporary artist at the National Film Theatre working on the collection that was given the title The Currency. In this, he contrasted the advantages of making art with physical mediums with those of making art with digital mediums. The owners of NFTs had to decide over the course of one year whether they wanted to keep the NFT art or trade it in for a genuine work of art that had been produced by one of the most well-known artists in the world. Yesterday, he torched many of the unclaimed physical paintings that were left at his gallery in London while a live stream of the event was being broadcast.

The Damien Hirst NFT experiment has been a complete and resounding success from start to finish!

Damien Hirst is widely considered to be among the most well-known and respected contemporary artists in the entirety of the world. His extravagant and one-of-a-kind pieces of modern art have fetched prices in the tens of millions of pounds. His works have also been shown in museums across the world.

In July 2021, Hirst presented the general public with The Currency, which consisted of a collection of 10,000 NFTs with a unique twist. The idea was incredibly successful, and at one time, each one was selling for more than $12,000 despite having a mint price of only $2,000 when it was first introduced. All of the people who took part in the experiment were given exactly one year to think about whether or not they wanted to keep the NFT or trade it in for a copy of an actual oil painting.

On the other side, when we reached the conclusion of the year, there were some fascinating data. To everyone’s surprise, almost half of those who held NFTs decided to hold on to them, bringing the total number of people who owned NFTs to 4,851. 5,149 owners of NFTs were able to redeem their NFTs for a physical piece of Damien Hirst’s artwork by exchanging their NFTs.

As a direct consequence of the fact that the 4,851 NFT holders chose not to trade in their tangible works, there are now close to 5,000 unique examples of physical art. Yesterday, Damien Hirst torched a piece of this extensive collection, which consisted of a wide variety of things to burn.

Ashes are all that are left of the artworks that were used for the Remaining Currency.

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Yesterday, Damien Hirst started carrying out his promise to complete a vow to destroy the leftover artwork from his NFT experiment by lighting it on fire and setting it ablaze. This was the first step in the process. While he was burning hundreds of artworks by The Currency at the Newport Street Gallery in London, he streamed the action live on Instagram. The artworks were shown there.

“Many individuals are under the mistaken assumption that I am destroying works of art that are worth millions of dollars; however, this is not the case”. Hirst indicated that he was in the process of completing the transformation of these physical artworks into NFTs and that he was doing it by burning the physical artworks.

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