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The crypto entrepreneur who paid $6.2mn for a banana taped to a wall has eaten the art work in an onstage spectacle, declaring that, like a digital asset, “the real value is the concept itself”.
Justin Sun, the Chinese-born founder of cryptocurrency platform Tron, who was charged by the US Securities and Exchange Commission last year over fraud and other securities law violations, also hailed Donald Trump for his support of the crypto industry.
Sun ate the banana at an event in Hong Kong on Friday that came amid a crypto boom that has gathered pace since Trump’s election victory this month, with Bitcoin surging to record highs.
“After Trump became the president-elect, everybody [was] excited about the future of cryptocurrencies,” Sun said in an interview with the Financial Times. “I believe that definitely under his leadership the US would become one of the most important places for cryptocurrency development, and I’m looking forward to it.”
Sun was speaking at a press conference to mark his purchase of Maurizio Cattelan’s “Comedian”, a banana stuck to a wall with duct tape, at a Sotheby’s auction in New York last week. His bid of $5.2mn plus $1mn in fees was far higher than the presale estimate of $1mn to $1.5mn.
Sun used crypto for the $6.2mn payment, which bought him neither the banana nor the duct tape on display at the auction. He instead acquired a certificate of authenticity and a set of instructions for how to assemble the artwork after buying his own banana and tape.
Sun told the FT he was paying in stablecoin rather than fiat currency, and added: “I’m very excited [that] Sotheby’s takes crypto as payment.”
He said he had not spoken to Trump directly but had been in contact with his team after announcing a $30mn investment in World Liberty Financial, a digital assets venture the president-elect and his sons have been promoting. The company this week named Sun as an adviser.
Last year, after Sun and three of his companies were charged by the SEC, he said on the social media platform X that “we believe the complaint lacks merit”.
When Sun was asked about the charges at the event, his spokesperson stepped in to say he had no comment.
Sun founded and runs Tron, a blockchain platform with a native token, TRX, which has a market capitalisation of $17.4bn.
Tron facilitates a large proportion of the world’s transactions in Tether’s stablecoin, according to data from analytics website DefiLlama.
At the Hong Kong event, Sun stood on stage and removed a banana that had been stuck to a wall with duct tape and ate it in front of the crowd.
Gift bags containing bananas taped to plastic boards were handed out to the audience at the Peninsula hotel.
Sun, who has been spending time in Hong Kong, said the Chinese territory is “an important place for web3” and has a “friendly” attitude to the industry.
Policymakers have been keen to boost the territory’s status as a crypto hub, and are planning new crypto tax breaks for hedge funds and investment vehicles used by the super-rich to manage their money.
Sun founded Tron in 2017 and a year later bought decentralised software company BitTorrent. In 2022, he was appointed as an adviser to Huobi, a China-founded crypto exchange since renamed HTX.
Additional reporting by Nikou Asgari and William Langley
https://www.ft.com/content/76289406-300d-4e6c-8401-aa30d4a8f4c7
