NFT Market Blows Up as Artist Protests Get-Rich-Quick Schemes

The NFT art market is exploding right now. And in the case of one digital artist, quite literally.

Shl0ms, with the help of a pyrotechnician, has blown up a Lamborghini Huracan and turned it into a 999-piece NFT collection. All in the name of art, or, in his case, protest. 

The good, the, bad and the ugly of NFTs and digital art

“NFT technology is incredibly promising, there are so many good things we could do with it but there are so many terrible things being done with it,” Shl0ms told The Block.

“The Lambo is a pretty potent representation of people simply engaging with crypto because it’s a way for them to make money off other people as quickly as possible,” he added.

Shl0ms paid just shy of $250,000 for the Lamborghini, a brand he hates. “The Lambo is a pretty potent representation of people simply engaging with crypto because it’s a way for them to make money off other people as quickly as possible,” he said.

It took a team of technicians, including a federally-licensed explosives engineer, two weeks to set up the stunt.

The resultant pieces of supercar were then shot in 4k definition and the clips minted as NFTs.

The collection goes up for auction on Friday (Feb 25). Of the total number of NFTs, 888 will be sold and the remaining 111 reserved for the artist, his team, and the initial investor.

In a press release, the pseudonymous artist says blowing up the car marks the intersection between physical and digital worlds. “The destruction-as-creation motif is pretty common in the traditional art world. But not as common in the crypto art world.”

Would you like your Lambo chaotically destroyed or methodically disassembled?

Shl0ms originally mooted the idea on Twitter last Sept, asking his 24,000 followers if they would prefer the “Lambo chaotically destroyed or methodically disassembled?”

Of course, Shl0ms is not the first artist to “recycle” destroyed art. 

In March last year, an original Banksy print was burnt and live-streamed, and then sold as an NFT for $380,000.

Morons was a critique by the pseudonymous British street artist, depicting a Christie’s auctioneer.

Next to the auctioneer stands a framed painting containing the phrase: “I can’t believe you morons actually buy this.”

The reason for burning the work, according to a spokesman, was to move the value of the physical work to the NFT. But if the value of the work is in the physical piece, its destruction and replacement by a smart contract token will shift the value to the NFT.