Alfred Presents · Artist Showcase The Currency (2021) — DAMIEN HIRST

DAMIEN HIRST

conceptual, painting · PALM (bridgeable to Ethereum) · x.com/hirst_official

In 2021, Hirst made 10,000 hand-painted spot works and gave collectors a single choice: keep the NFT, or burn it for the physical painting. 5,149 chose the painting. 4,851 chose to stay digital. The question was the artwork.

—
The Currency, total minted
10,000
Digital NFTs surviving
4,851
Physical paintings redeemed
5,149
On-chain since
2021
Supply of 10,000 and burn/keep split (4,851 digital / 5,149 physical) are published facts from HENI's project documentation and widely reported as of July 2022 (burn deadline). The Currency is on the PALM blockchain. OpenSea v2 API returned rate-limit or null responses for slugs 'the-currency' and 'damien-hirst-the-currency' on both 2026-08-18 and 2026-08-21. PALM is not reliably indexed by OpenSea. Live floor and volume are not available from this source and are not included.
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The Currency floor and sales — available if OpenSea PALM indexing is resolved.
The work · 2021

Physical or digital: collectors decided which mattered more

2021The Currency
Burn for the painting, or hold the NFT

The Currency

“Hirst's 2021 project 'The Currency' asking collectors to choose between the traditional medium of painting and the contemporary NFT, forcing them to put faith in where they see value.”

— HENI Artists biography, heni.com/artists/damien-hirst, accessed 2026-08-18
10,000 works minted4,851 digital survivors5,149 burned for physical

He spent thirty years asking what makes art valuable — through pickled sharks, spot paintings, and diamond skulls. Then he made the question literal: 10,000 identical works, each collector forced to choose between the physical and the digital, knowing one would be destroyed.

Follow this practice as it moves.

Alfred tracks The Currency — when a verified OpenSea slug becomes available.

Track Damien Hirst in Alfred