One of the most bizarre pieces of news doing the rounds relates to a certain crypto-entrepreneur who paid $6.2 million for a banana that was taped to a wall.
The entrepreneur in question is the Chinese-born founder of the cryptocurrency platform Tron, Justin Sun. Curiously, Justin Sun had been charged by the US Securities and Exchange Commission last year over fraud and other securities law violations.
Mr. Sun ate the banana on Friday, the 29th of November, at an event in Hong Kong. The event had happened amid the crypto boom that seems to have gathered pace with the coming of Donald Trump’s second term at the President of the United States of America. In less than a month from Trump’s election victory, the Bitcoin has already been surging to record highs.
Mr.Sun ate the banana to mark his purchase of Maurizio Catalan’s “Comediian”. Comedian is a 2019 artwork by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. Created in an edition of three, it appears as a fresh banana affixed to a wall with duct tape. As a work of conceptual art, it consists of a certificate of authenticity with detailed diagrams and instructions for its proper display. Number two of the limited edition of three was sold to cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun for $6.2 million. Mr. Sun used crypto to meet the $6.2 million payment for the artwork. Here’s where today’s world–crypto included–begins to get crazy. The $6.2 million bought Mr. Sun neither the banana nor the duct tape on display at the auction. All he was able to acquire was a ‘certificate of authenticity’ and a set of instructions for how to assemble the artwork after he bought his own banana and duct tape from the market.
Welcome to the crypto crazed world.
CRYPTO WORLD GONE BANANAS?
The new Bitcoin highs that are happening post the Trump triumph have come on the back of its halving earlier this year. Halving is simply the price of Bitcoin slashed down by half.
Halving is an event that happens every four years, something that was decided by an anonymous creator—alias Sakashi Nakamoto—over a decade ago.
Why four years, why at all, and why half, are questions the answers to which nobody knows, and going by the reporting available, nobody even wants to know.
Today the Bitcoin, which is the largest digital currency going by market capitalization, is valued at over four-hundred-and-seventy-billion dollars. And Bitcoin is just one in an ever growing ‘cryptospehere’.
DIGITAL CURRENCY GONE BANANAS
This is a world whose existence is detached from the real world—which dwells in the atmosphere—in a space it calls: the Cryptosphere.
This universe deals with things that aren’t tangible, that few understand, that nobody knows the origins of. A world whose system of controls, checks, and measures are obscure if not completely non-existent, and one which despite all its shortcomings trades in billions of dollars.
Crypto currencies are developed/produced, and managed with a source code—part of its cryptography—which is a result of extremely complex algorithms derived from extremely advanced mathematical and computer engineering principles. It’s not called ‘crypto’ for nothing, the word coming from ‘cryptic’, which means mysterious, and obscure. This is where the boondoggling begins.
Legally the bitcoin is not treated as a currency, but as an article of property. And as a property it is legal in most parts of the world. But with this property you can buy jewellery, air travel tickets, even landed property, to name a few. Deceived enough yet? There’s more…much.
Those who buy this currency are not asked for identity, they are identified with codes in order to maintain secrecy—the kind of thing that happens (used to happen) in banks located in places like Switzerland, and the Cayman Islands. Curiously, that was deemed criminal by most nations around the real globe. In order to understand this conundrum, you’ll have to begin by calling it legal deception of the hypocritical kind.
The cryptic terminologies continue throughout the crypospherical space. The guys who manage this system, and the trade that happens in it, are called ‘miners’. The register they maintain of the traders, and the goods traded, is called the ‘blockchain’, which in turn consists of ‘wallets’ and ‘private keys’: these are codes of whole numbers between 1 and 78 (The Riddler be damned!).
Even the limit to the number of bitcoins that can ever exist, or be produced, has been predetermined—yes, over a decade ago—and this is where the plot really begins to become cabalistic. It is twenty-one million (the logic to the figure would be algorithmic, therefore beyond understanding of any kind whatsoever).
If that wasn’t maddening enough, the death of the bitcoin has also been predetermined, and it will happen in the year 2140. After that miners will only earn in transaction fees. Ponder that and you’ll figure out what the etymologists meant when they coined ‘esoteric’.
Think of the movie, Hunger Games, and place it in the world of stocks and currencies, and what you may get is something that somewhat resembles the cryptosphere.
TRUTH OF THE BANANA CRYPTO-VERSE
1. Bitcoin mining emitted over 85.89 Mt of CO2 during the 2020–2021 period. The greenhouse gas emissions of Bitcoin mining alone could be sufficient to push global warming beyond the Paris Agreement’s goal of holding anthropogenic climate warming below 2 degrees Celsius.
2. Even after piling the system up with all the complex mathematics and computer engineering algorithms, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bitcoins have been stolen from it till date (google ‘Mt. Gox collapse of 2014’, and you’ll be introduced to another snare in this conspiracy of the arcane). This was accomplished by another sect of robbers in the cyber cabala: the hackers. Different from the more mysterious—on account of being legal, accepted, and snobbish—sect (in the same cabala) they miraculously managed to rob: the cryptographers.
While one world, today, is grappling with two wars, rising prices (bananas included), job losses, climate change…there is another that is oblivious of all realities relating to life and death. This one revels in its mystery, and anonymity, and worries over bananas of a completely different kind.
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