The scene took place in Las Vegas, during the Bitcoin Conference 2025. Among the most talked-about events in the cryptocurrency industry, the event featured a surreal moment: Justin Sun, an entrepreneur known for founding the blockchain platform Tron, handed over the sticky banana, Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian work, to former Silk Road digital marketplace founder Ross Ulbricht. It was a gesture that recalled both the universe of contemporary art and the often opaque universe of decentralized finance. The work in question is the famous banana taped to a wall, created by Cattelan in 2019. Sun bought it from Sotheby’s New York for $6.2 million, a figure well above the auction house’s highest estimate of $1.5 million. The piece, in its early editions, had sold for $120,000 and $150,000 during Art Basel Miami Beach 2017, at the Perrotin Gallery booth. Now it finds itself in the hands of Ross Ulbricht, an ex-convict and protagonist of one of the most emblematic court cases related to the use of cryptocurrency in the darknet.
A video posted on X by user Elizabeth Olson documents the moment of delivery. Sun offers Ulbricht a gift box with the banana glued to the cardboard inside, a direct homage to Cattelan’s conceptual installation. When a voiceover asks what will happen to the banana, given its inevitable perishability, Ulbricht replies, “In a week, I’ll have to replace it.” The joke is greeted by Sun with a comment that attempts to blend art and crypto lexicon “It’s a decentralized banana,” he says.
Cattelan’s work, after all, fits perfectly into the register of conceptual art. Indeed, the value lies not in the physical object, by its nature destined to rot, but in the idea it represents. Cattelan himself has repeatedly challenged the boundaries of the market and common sense, including perishable materials in his works and pushing the concept of ephemeral to its extreme consequences. The parallel with cryptocurrencies, which dematerialize value through codes and distributed networks, has been raised on several occasions by commentators and critics. In an earlier public speech, given during a press conference at Hong Kong’s Peninsula Hotel on Nov. 29, Sun had already made headlines for eating Cattelan’s banana. “It is much better than other bananas,” the entrepreneur had declared, according to reports in the Guardian.
The Las Vegas episode also provided the occasion for the return to the public stage of Ross Ulbricht, author of his first speech since his release from prison. Ten years ago, he had been sentenced to life in prison for running Silk Road, an online marketplace where illegal drugs including cocaine, heroin and LSD were sold. Described by prosecutors as “the kingpin of a global digital drug trafficking enterprise,” Ulbricht was pardoned by Donald Trump on Jan. 21, on the first full day of his new presidential term. Ulbricht, who spoke in a red tie in tribute to Trump himself, drew applause from supporters in the crypto world, where he is still regarded by some as a pioneer of economic freedom. He had also previously launched an NFT collection based on his own designs, aiming to raise money for his cause and to support family members of other prisoners. The meeting between Ulbricht and Sun is just one piece in a web of relationships between decentralized finance and politics, into which contemporary art seems to fit as a symbolic element. In fact, Sun is one of the largest investors in the financial enterprise linked to the Trump family, World Liberty Financial. It poured $30 million into the project in the same month that it purchased Cattelan’s banana. According to Bloomberg, that investment led directly to a minimum payment of $15 million to the Trump family, as stipulated in the “golden charter” governing the company’s terms.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Sun would later purchase additional tokens worth $45 million, thus becoming the coin’s main backer. Prior to his intervention, the venture was described as a large-scale failure. His arrival changed the perception of the project, bringing new liquidity and visibility. In parallel, Sun continues to be investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which filed a case against him in 2023. The charges are that it offered and sold cryptocurrency securities without authorization, manipulated the value of its asset through “wash trading” practices, and orchestrated a promotional campaign involving celebrities, including Lindsay Lohan and Jake Paul, without disclosing the paid nature of the promotion. Sun rejects all the allegations. According to further investigations by the Wall Street Journal, Tron, the platform founded by Sun, was allegedly frequently used by criminal entities for the transfer of illicit funds. Despite this, Sun continues to participate in official events. Last Thursday, it attended a dinner for Trump coin investors at the president’s golf club in Virginia. Trump was also in attendance, and the New York Times published a detailed list of attendees. Neither Justin Sun nor Ross Ulbricht responded to requests for comment from the trade press. Maurizio Cattelan also had no statement, although he was contacted through a spokesperson for the Gagosian gallery, where he held his most recent exhibition in New York.
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| "Decentralized" Cattelan's banana: given to a life sentence convict pardoned by Trump |
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