The founder of a famous cryptocurrency platform surprised everyone after making an unexpected purchase of a strange work of art.
Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun is now in possession of the controversial banana stuck on a piece of wall art that some analysts believe could be integrated into Sun’s digital assets platform using the APENFT.
Converting art to NFT
Maurizio Cattelan’s iconic masterpiece ‘Comedian’ was purchased by the TRON founder for a whopping $6.2 million. Like many people around the world, Sun seems to have been captivated by the “banana stuck on the wall” art.
Some observers said Sun saw something beyond the beauty of the artwork, suggesting the crypto entrepreneur might be interested in using the art in its blockchain ecosystem.
Analysts believe that Justin Sun is integrating the artworks he collects into the TRON network with the help of APENFT, saying that Sun’s real goal in art collecting is to convert these masterpieces work in non-fungible tokens (NFT).
Under the crypto platform, its TRC-721 NFT standard enables the creation and transaction of digital art.
The crypto platform is known to be the third largest chain in terms of total value locked (TVL). DeFiLlama estimates that the network dominates nearly 7% of the TVL market with its 34 protocols.
As of Thursday, the market cap of cryptocurrencies reached $3.18 trillion. Chart: TradingView
A symbolic gesture?
Reports indicate that the TRON executive purchasing the banana taped to a piece of wall art could be a “symbolic gesture” to incorporate the artwork into the digital NFT space.
The APENFT Foundation created by the crypto founder buys works of art. Then, he transforms these masterpieces into digitally visible pieces on the APENFT virtual museum in the Cryptovoxels metaverse.
TRON Founder Justin Sun. Image: Kryptomoney
Analysts said that the APENFT Marketplace, an NFT trading platform launched by APENFT on TRON, offers collections such as TPunks and TronMe. The crypto network also has TronVerse, a play-to-earn game that uses NFTs.
With the help of the TRC-721 standard of the APENFT platform and ecosystem, the crypto entrepreneur can create an art exhibition in the metaverse and place TRON as a major NFT player.
Other art collections
As an art collector, Justin Sun has invested in acquiring prominent works of art. Sun saw the “comedian” as more than a banana on duct tape.
“This represents a cultural phenomenon that connects the worlds of art, memes and the cryptocurrency community,” he said.
Reports indicate that the TRON founder managed to beat bids from six other people to win the contemporary artwork.
Besides “Comedian,” Sun previously purchased Alberto Giacometti’s “Le Nez” for $78.4 million at an auction in 2021. It also shelled out $20 million to acquire one of the heads -work of the famous painter Pablo Picasso.
The crypto founder is also the proud owner of the Three Self-Portraits of Andy Warhol which he purchased for $2 million at Christie’s 20th Century Art Evening Sale.
Featured image of Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images/AFP, TradingView chart
