The Internet continues to hone its ability to commercialize intangibles. In this case, the situation begins with a tangible, so weโll start there. According to cryptocurrency news outlet The Block, an investor purchased a real car, a 2015 Lamborghini Huracan, for real money. Then, an artist going by the handle Shl0ms led a team of about 100 people who worked together to blow up the Italian supercoupe and turn its bits into 999 non-fungible tokens, known as NFTs, and sell the tokens at auction. The artist, the team, the explosion, and the bits are materially real โ every one of them can be touched and squeezed, were one to desire. After that, well, things get digital.ย
๐ญ/๐ค๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ $CAR:๐ฟ๐ฟ๐ฟ ๐๐ก๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ข ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ป๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ท๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ก๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ +๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐ถ๐ธ.๐ธ๐ป.๐ธ๐ธ โ https://t.co/AV6YAO4wlP
อ pic.twitter.com/wRIFP2M4kpโ ๐ช๐ช๐ช ๐ช๐ช๐ช ๐ช๐ช๐ช ๐ช๐ช๐ช ๐ช๐ช๐ช ๐ช๐ช๐ช (@SHL0MS) February 17, 2022
Shl0ms told Fortune that his crew experimented with explosives for two weeks, looking for the right bang to bring in the most bucks. When that was decided, they took the Huracan to the desert and put a โfederally licensed explosives engineerโ in charge of the boom, and used high-speed cameras to capture the detonation. The collective then gathered the Lamborghini pieces, choosing 999 of them to be filmed in short 4K clips of โexquisitely filmed fragmentsโ rotating against a black background. These videos are the non-fungible tokens going up for sale. Of those 999 video segments, 111 are reserved for the people behind the project. The remaining 888, labeled the โ$CARโ group, will be listed in a 24-hour auction starting February 25, bids beginning at .01 Etherium coin (ETH) โ a cryptocurrency โ which is about $26 USD at current exchange rates.ย ย
So the short story is: Guy blows up Lamborghini, makes 999 videos of 999 exploded bits, sells videos online.
For anyone not clear on the exclusively digital nature of the NFT, none of the winning auction bidders will get a leftover piece of Lamborghini. In answer to a tweet asking about the shards, Shl0mo tweeted that โthe fragments are either large, dangerous, greasy, or all 3 and will be kept in secure storage for the foreseeable future.โ
We know that money is one of the reasons for this endeavor. Shl0ms โ whoโs apparently made about $1 million from โNFT art experimentsโ โ also has precedent for this work. He destroyed a urinal akin to the one made famous in 1917 by artist Marcel Duchamp, then sold 150 NFTs of video clips of the leftover bits in 2021. That NFT collection raised $500,000. And if you can get half a mil for YouTube vids of leftover porcelain, what price a Huracan?
Fortune reports being told โa majority of the proceeds will go to fund public art installations.โ Beyond that, well, who knows. Shl0mo also said this isnโt a protest against crypto, but โmore a general criticism of greed and short-termism in cryptoโ that has turned the technology into โzero-sum wealth extraction,โ perverting cryptoโs original aims and backers, those being โdecentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), blockchain enabled groups centered on a common goal, [utilizing] a positive technology that could be used to create art or for the public good.โ To that end, Shl0ms wants buyers to โappreciate the creation and the future art it funds, rather than simply accruing value.โ
Ahem. When someone can sell an NFT of a meme image of a Shiba Inu for more than $4.4 million and other people are reserving vehicles only to sell them on eBay with absurd asking prices immediately after delivery, we say good luck to the bit about โappreciating the creation.โย
And we say thatโs about enough jargon for today. If youโre keen to place a bid, head to Shl0msโ site tomorrow with your ETH account ready.ย ย
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Keyword: Lamborghini Huracan blown up to create 999 NFTs