Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Currencies myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.A cryptocurrency entrepreneur paid $6.24mn for a banana taped to a wall at a contemporary art auction in New York, more than four times its presale estimate. Maurizio Cattelan\u2019s \u201cComedian\u201d, a banana stuck to a wall with duct tape, was sold to Justin Sun, the founder of cryptocurrency platform Tron, on Wednesday evening. Sun outbid six others at a Sotheby\u2019s New York auction to purchase the banana at a much higher price than its presale estimate of $1mn to $1.5mn. The total price tag comprises a $5.2mn winning bid and $1mn in fees. The entrepreneur said on Wednesday that \u201cComedian\u201d was \u201cnot just an artwork; it represents a cultural phenomenon that bridges the worlds of art, memes and the cryptocurrency community\u201d.He added that he planned to eat the banana in the \u201ccoming days\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009as part of this unique artistic experience, honouring its place in both art history and popular culture\u201d.Sun\u2019s Tron blockchain network facilitates a large volume of the world\u2019s USDT stablecoin transactions. In March last year, the entrepreneur proposed buying collapsed Swiss investment bank Credit Suisse for $1.5bn to \u201cintegrate it into the Web3.0 world\u201d.The same month, he was sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for fraudulently inflating the trading volumes of TRX, Tron\u2019s crypto token. Sun denies the charges.In the packed auction room on Wednesday, a crowd of people craned their necks and tried to take photos of the banana, which a Sotheby\u2019s auctioneer described as \u201cdisruptive\u201d and urged the crowd not to let the opportunity \u201cslip away\u201d. The bidding lasted slightly longer than six minutes. The $6.24mn sale marked the first time that \u201cComedian\u201d had appeared at auction, after first making a splash at Miami\u2019s Art Basel fair in 2019 before travelling the world. The banana is one of an edition of three alongside two artist proofs.Sotheby\u2019s said the buyer would receive an accompanying certificate of authenticity signed by the artist. The banana sale comes as Sotheby\u2019s and other auction houses have tested demand this week for multimillion-dollar auctions, as a chill in the art market has hit brokers. In August, Sotheby\u2019s posted an 88 per cent drop in its core earnings for the first half and a 25 per cent decline in auction sales.Cryptocurrency prices have soared in recent weeks, as investors bet that the administration of US president-elect Donald Trump will be positive for the industry. Bitcoin alone has hit a series of record highs since the November 5 election and was trading at more than $94,000 on Wednesday evening in New York.Other pieces sold by Sotheby\u2019s this week include a $65.5mn Monet water lily painting. This year, the auction house also sold a 150mn-year-old stegosaurus fossil known as \u201cApex\u201d, which was bought by Citadel hedge fund founder Ken Griffin for $44.6mn.Letter in response to this report:Yellow now mellow in HK \/ From Tony SK Li, Hong Kong <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Currencies myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.A cryptocurrency entrepreneur paid $6.24mn for a banana taped to a wall at a contemporary art auction in New York, more than four times its presale estimate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":155894,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-155893","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":155895,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155893\/revisions\/155895"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}