kena betancur / AFP
Justin Sun, a cryptocurrency entrepreneur who paid $6.2 million for a duct-taped banana art piece, says he wants to buy 100,000 more from the original fruit vendor.
The viral artwork, titled "Comedian," was first unveiled by Italian visual artist Maurizio Cattelan in 2019.
Speaking to The Art Newspaper in 2021, Cattelan said it was not intended to be a joke, but a "sincere commentary and a reflection on what we value."
Sum's bid at Sotheby's auction house was more than six times the artwork's pre-sale estimate of $1 million.
It's become a tradition for those who buy it to eat the banana, which Sun did at a press conference in Hong Kong this week.
The banana was sourced from a fruit stand in New York and sold for 35 cents by Shah Alam, a 74-year-old Bangladeshi employee.
Alam, who makes $12 an hour working at the fruit stand on Manhattan's Upper East Side, cried when he heard the staggering amount the banana had been auctioned for, according to an interview with The New York Times.
"I am a poor man," Alam told the outlet. "I have never had this kind of money; I have never seen this kind of money."
Alam told the Times that the sale felt like it was at his expense. "Those who bought it, what kind of people are they?" he asked. "Do they not know what a banana is?"
Sun, sharing Alam's interview on X, said he had decided to buy 100,000 from his fruit stand as a gesture of gratitude.
"To thank Mr. Shah Alam, I've decided to buy 100,000 bananas from his stand in New York's Upper East Side," Sun wrote.
"These bananas will be distributed free worldwide through his stand. Show a valid ID to claim one banana, while supplies last," he added.
However, in a new interview on Thursday, Alam told the Times that "there's not any profit in selling bananas."
The net profit from the 100,000 bananas would amount to $6,000, The Times reported.
Alam said it would cost thousands of dollars to source that many bananas from a Bronx wholesale market, and it would also be difficult to transport such a large quantity to the fruit stand.
The stand's owner, Mohammad R. Islam, told the Times that he would split any profit from the 100,000 bananas between himself, Alam, and six other employees. However, he said nobody had contacted him about Sun's proposed purchase.
Sun did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
