Digital Artist Buys $40,000 CryptoPunk And Burned It

Robness burned a punk to make a Trash Art statement

A US-based artist has bought a CryptoPunk for $40,000 and immediately destroyed the NFT. He did this in support of the Trash Art movement, which is all about rehashing and mixing existing work. 

Robness has celebrated Trash Day, a celebration of the Trash Art movement, with a memorable action. He reduced the total supply of 10,000 CryptoPunks by burning Punk 2317. As a result, there are now 9,998 punks left, as one got destroyed by accident last year.

The punk-burning digital artist has immortalized his action on the blockchain. He created a new artwork of Punk 2317 burning in a fire and minted it on the Tezos blockchain on the NFT marketplace Hic et Nunc. He’s selling 300 copies for 45 TEZ each. If these sell out it would cover the costs of burning the punk. 

How to destroy an NFT?

An NFT is a digital asset, and deleting isn’t possible on the blockchain. However, users can send tokens to a burn address. A burn address is an address nobody has access to. Robness used ‘0x000000000000000000000000000000000000dead’, an address that contains billions of value in tokens and NFTs.

Because nobody has access to this particular address, it’s considered a burn address. Everything still exists on the blockchain, but nobody owns the private key. Therefore nobody has ownership. 

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