Bitchcoin
Bitchcoin is a non-fungible token on the Ethereum blockchain. The project was launched in early 2015 as a fork of Bitcoin, several months before the launch of Ethereum. Bitchcoin was originally backed by the artist Sarah Meyohas' photography at a fixed rate of one token to 25 square-inches of one of the artist's photographs. This was one of the first instances of a physical work of art being put on a blockchain.
Background
In 2014, the artist Sarah Meyohas created a series of photographs, titled Speculations, that would be fixed to tokens called Bitchcoin. The project began with researching ideas of value, valuation, and the nature of speculation. Photographs from the series were backed by Bitchcoin at a fixed rate of one Bitchcoin to 25 square-inches of a print effectively letting anyone in possession of 25 Bitchcoins to exchange them for an entire photograph.The artist printed eight editions of the first Speculation photograph, each of which measured, and thus produced 200 coins that were released at $100.00 each to back the prints. The prints were stored in a vault, and anyone who purchased Bitchcoin received a physical certificate called a "paper wallet" which recorded the relevant private and public keys for one's wallet.
In 2023, the Centre Pompidou announced the institution had acquired two Bitchcoins to join 17 other NFTs to add to the contemporary art museum's collection of new-media works.