Having recently announced his Currency collection, Hirst is backing crypto.
Look, if I was a super famous artist about to drop my first collection of NFTs, would I go on national television to hype up digital art? You bet I would. And Damien Hirst, who is worth an estimated $400 million – $700 million, has done just that ahead of his debut NFT collection, the aptly titled Currency.
Labelling the collection and “experiment” Currency will see Hirst release 10,000 pieces – little spotty thangs – for $2K USD, offering buyers the chance to either keep the NFT or the physical version: “You can redeem your NFT for that actual artwork. If you do that, the NFT will be destroyed. And then after about a year, all the NFTs that aren’t redeemed, the corresponding artwork will be destroyed.” Hirst says. “The whole project is like an experiment, an experiment in belief.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEsVJJy1od4&t=11s
In a TV interview, Hirst said, “I think that digital art is going to last a lot longer than galleries. [In the future] we probably won’t be going into galleries, we’ll be sitting around bars showing people what we’ve bought on our phones.”
Hirst joins a number of high-profile artists, musos and celebrities such as Jay-Z, Mike Tyson, Steve Aoki and more who are championing NFTs and crypto. And, with that kind of profile and money behind them, it’s hard to imagine that NFTs are going anywhere anytime soon. Even Lionel Messi is getting in on the action:
