Sabah artist Hong Yi sells her artwork for RM320, 000

Kota Kinabalu: Sabah-born artist Red Hong Yi has sold her first non-fungible token (NFT) artwork for 36.3 ETH, which is currently valued at more than RM320,000.

ETH or Ether is the main token or cryptocurrency in the Ethereum network and acts as the primary “fuel” that powers all activity on it.

Elated with her first-ever NFT project, Hong Yi shared a video of the final seven minutes of the two-week auction on her Facebook, Sunday.

She put it up for auction on the Binance NFT Marketplace with the wining bid came in a few seconds before the auction ended.

NFTs are unique digital assets representing real-world objects and the transactions of NFTs are recorded on the blockchain – a decentralised digital ledger.

Each NFT can be bought and sold, just like physical assets, but the blockchain allows for ownership and validity of each to be tracked – which means only the NFT owner can claim ownership.

In the Facebook post, Hong Yi thanked everyone who materialised the project, including the bidders.

“I am speechless…thank you everybody, this is crazy,” she said in the video.

“When we start doing this, it kind of came up as a joke – we are going to start our own ‘bank’ and print our own money.

“But when we listed it (on the marketplace), that was when it get stressful…we put in a lot of effort and a lot of work to coordinate this whole thing.”

Hong Yi’s first NFT, “Doge to the Moon” is part of her “MemeBank” collection which comprises six redesigned banknotes from different countries.

The “MemeBank” series is a reflection of how meme assets, cryptocurrencies and NFTs have disrupted industries, including conventional banking and art galleries.

“Doge to the Moon” is a piece based on the Chinese Yuan featuring the popular Doge meme – an Internet meme that contains a picture of a Shiba Inu dog.

“Congrats ‘Anonymous_2la3’ (the handle used by the bidder in the online marketplace) for being the owner of my first NFT piece ‘Doge to the Moon’ – as well as the owner of the copper plate and silk print,” said Hong Yi in the same post, while asking the bidder to contact her for verification and delivery process.

She has previously stated that whoever owns the plate can print as many “Doge to the Moon” copies as they want.

In fact, she encourages them to do so as they will be emphasising her critique of central banks and fiat money as paper money can always be printed.

Hong Yi also said she would put the proceeds into good use.

“A portion of the proceeds will go to Mercy Malaysia to support the Covid-19 pandemic relief fund, while a portion will go into social and art projects that we are working on to support the local community.”

She also disclosed that her team is still working on the other five banknotes in the “MemeBank” collection.

The other “MemeBanknotes” in the series include a redesigned US Dollar, Euro, British Pound, Malaysian Ringgit and Japanese Yen, which be released soon.

“This has been a learning experience for me. It taught me a lot – how auction works, how crypto works, and how NFT works,” she said.

In April, Red created an image that was part sculpture, part performance art in Kuala Lumpur, which was featured on the cover of the April 26 ‘Climate Change’ issue of Time magazine.

She and her team constructed a 2.3m x 3m world map out of 50, 000 green-tipped matchsticks, and torched it.