It’s the new gold standard for cringe.
A knee-high cube composed of 186 kilograms of pure 24-karat gold and surrounded by its own security detail sat on an icy patch of slush in Central Park for one day only Wednesday, according to a press release.
The art installation called “The Castello Cube” was also elaborately teased by the German artist who conceived it, Niclas Castello. Taking a page out of Taylor Swift’s hype book of project promotion, Castello plastered mysterious coordinates (which were to be the location of the cube) on the sides of trucks. The vehicles drove around Times Square for days before the slab of yellow precious metal — which has a hollow core, per The New York Times — was revealed.
Castello told the website Artnet that his cube is not for sale, but its material worth is around $11.7 million. He also shared the idea behind his work with the outlet saying he wanted to “create something that is beyond our world — that is intangible.”
But just like the very tangible 410-pound block of gold that had its materials literally derived from our world, the real meaning behind the piece is not that abstract. It’s essentially a very elaborate advertisement for Castello’s new cryptocurrency. Castello Coin will be available for purchase at an initial price of €0.39 ($0.44) each, with an accompanying NFT auction scheduled for Feb. 21, Artnet reported.
And if you’re wondering how Costello got the funds to pull off this weird advertising campaign, the Times reports that the artist privately presold enough of his digital currency to finance this project. Oh, and according to photos provided in the press release, the gold cube also made its way to a fancy-looking Wall Street party after it sat in the frigid cold of Central Park on Wednesday.
Yet, according to a report by Vice, there seems to be some aspects of the cryptocurrency campaign that remain somewhat cryptic — like Castello not being listed as part of the team behind the coin or even an adviser to the project on the Castello Coin website. Vice also pointed out that despite the the project debuting in New York City, U.S. citizens are not eligible to participate.
And due to the bizarro 2022 tech bro nature of the project and the excessiveness of the gold cube, people on social media couldn’t help but make fun of it. Read the best nuggets from Twitter below.