Could this be the most expensive bite in human history? The Chinese entrepreneur Justin Sun ate a banana in front of an audience of journalists and influencers. Yes, but not just any banana. A fruit that he acquired a week earlier at auction for a whopping 5.9 million euros. The banana, originally taped to a wall, was in fact intended to be a clever work of art by the provocative Italian artist Maurizio Cattelantitled Comedian.
The “performance” was held this Friday in a luxury hotel in Hong Kong. “It’s much better than other bananas,” Justin Sun said after swallowing the first bite. Previously, he gave a speech calling the artwork “iconic” and drawing parallels between conceptual art and cryptocurrencies.
Triplicate
Skilled Justin Sun is a founding entrepreneur of the cryptocurrency platform Tron. He therefore took advantage of the platform offered to announce an investment of 30 million dollars (28.4 million euros) in World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency investment and borrowing platform, supported by the American president-elect Donald Trump. Participants at this Friday’s event each received a roll of duct tape and a banana as a souvenir.
Justin Sun also returned to the conditions in which he acquired the work. He said he felt “disbelief” in the first ten seconds after winning the sale. After the next ten seconds, he had decided that he would eat the banana. “Eating it during a press conference can also be part of the history of this work of art,” he stressed this Friday.
Despite the destruction of the work, Comedian still exists in two copies. Each owner receives a certificate of authenticity for the work as well as instructions on how to replace the fruit when it begins to rot. It remains to be seen whether the two still existing copies will see their popularity explode after Justin Sun’s coup.
