You have to choose: Would you keep the NFT or the physical artwork that it represents?
A new NFT project by the renowned British artist Damien Hirst comes with a painstaking dilemma for those who make a purchase.
“The Currency” consists of 10,000 paintings. Although they may look alike, each features colored dots in different formations — complete with a signature, number, embedded hologram and distinctive watermark to ensure they are unique.
Each piece of artwork is attached to a non-fungible token, and all 10,000 have gone on sale today for the princely sum of $2,000 each.
However, there is a very important catch — and investors will be forced to make a decision: Keeping the NFT will mean the physical artwork it’s attached to will be destroyed. Conversely, choosing to claim the real-life painting will mean the NFT is deleted from the blockchain.
There isn’t any room to be indecisive either. Those who fail to make a choice by the set deadline will lose access to the physical artwork forever.
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What Will Happen?
All of this creates a rather interesting debate, and a fascinating story that will play out in the coming months.
We could end up with a collection of 10,000 NFTs, or all of them could be abandoned in favor of 10,000 paintings. Essentially, it’s a referendum on the whole concept of crypto art — and whether or not digitized versions of paintings can be seen as a more valuable investment than something you can hold in your hands.
Although Hirst has admitted that he hopes people will choose the artwork, he told the Financial Times that he would be “exciting” if they opted for the NFTs instead.
