Euromoney’s eye is drawn to news of a digital artwork that only exists as a high-resolution file, and which showcases the parallel between traditional money and cryptocurrencies.
The Crypto Train, now in an online auction, fills an obvious gap. Forget non-fungible tokens representing basketball players or corporate titans: let’s see more art representing cash.
“Even before The Crypto Train went to auction, we received significant offers from serious crypto enthusiasts and Silicon Valley investors who are the ones who currently seem to most understand this exploding virtual investment trend,” says Stephen Howes, director of Thomas Crown Art, a leading independent international art agency handling the sale.
He describes NFTs as “an investment megatrend of the decade” and suggests that NFT sceptics “would have been those people who knocked the potential of the internet in the ‘90s and who would have said Amazon as an online retailer ‘won’t catch on’ in the 2000s”.
So true.
The creator of The Crypto Train, British artist Adrian Chesterman, explains his visual metaphor to bridge the distance between traditional monetary mechanisms and the new virtual world of Bitcoin and Ethereum: “I considered a locomotive to be the perfect vehicle to represent such a metaphysical journey, being as it is a land-based, fast-moving machine that relentlessly pushes in one direction… forwards. A mechanical beast that is powerful, unstoppable, magnificent, man-made but inherently beautiful.”
He points out that all forms of money, crypto and conventional, have value only thanks to society’s consent. “This is why the monetary representations contained within the image are semi-transparent and nebulous, here but not here, ethereal but real. For now, anyway.”
What most intrigues is that Chesterman made his name in more conventional art forms.
He worked on the promotional art for Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, the sets for Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Sunset Boulevard and the acclaimed album cover for Motörhead’s third studio album, Bomber, which gave us such classic songs as “Dead men tell no tales” and “Stone dead forever”.
Released in 1979, the album may lack the British heavy metal band’s rare delicate and tuneful efforts, such as “Metropolis”, that graced its predecessor, Overkill. But it certainly bears comparison with the more successful Ace of Spades album that followed.
The acclaimed Bomber cover has the three members of the band – including guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke and drummer Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor – firing from the cockpit of a Henkel III bomber.
Band leader, bass player and vocalist Lemmy apparently insisted on the artwork being a German plane, believing that “the bad guys make all the best shit.”
Like all poets, Lemmy was a prophet. He could have been talking about public blockchains, tokenization and the internet of value.
When Euromoney checks, The Crypto Train has not yet met its reserve price, though the bid is up to $142,000. Howes hopes it could fetch $275,000.
We gaze at the image, slip on our headphones and wonder if Lemmy was foretelling regulators’ efforts to shunt crypto into the sidings when he wrote the song “Lawman”.
“See you in the Crown Court,” he growled. “It seems to me it’s like a bloodsport.
“I know you live by the book of rules. But anyone who needs a book is a fool.”
