Banksy Spy Booth wall mural is placed as a hybrid NFT by Cosmic Wire. It was ready to be auctioned off, but due to torrential web traffic overloading and website and auction servers crashing, it was rescheduled to Oct. 8, from 12:00 PM Pacific Standard Time.
If you wish to make a bid or check out information about the auction, you can check out www.banksyspyboothnft.com.
Banksy Spy Booth's Auction Moved
Cosmic Wire CEO Jerad Finck stated the crash was equal parts exhilarating and anxiety-inducing to live through in real-time.
They knew that there was a lot of interest surrounding the piece and felt the energy, but they had no idea it would be like this.
The server CPU had hit 98% within two minutes of starting the auction, causing the site to go down, and it was followed by intermittent blips of life over the next several hours, with hundreds of millions of hits steadily rolling in.
They had to call it off because they didn't want legitimate bidders to miss out on this opportunity.
They are back up on a designated server, and they look forward to the auction. All week, Finck will be joined by Swan Sit, the "Queen of Clubhouse" and digital marketing guru, in numerous Clubhouse rooms to discuss the auction.
You can check them out on the app, or the Cosmic Wire Clubhouse for updates and scheduled events: https://www.clubhouse.com/club/cosmic-wire
The Appearance of the Mural
Banksy's famed Spy Booth mural appeared on a wall in Cheltenham, England, in 2014. The street art featured three spies with listening devices on either side of an actual telephone booth, and in 2016, it mysteriously vanished.
Two of the three eavesdropping spies are thought to be representations of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.
In 2016, Artnet, a worldwide art platform, published an article by Naomi Rea.
Artnet noted that Spy Booth was a demonstrably political work, appearing just a stone's throw away from the British Government Communications Headquarters a year after former NSA contractor and notorious whistle-blower Edward Snowden exposed the British intelligence and security organization for mining online and telephone data.
Artnet also noted that the Cheltenham Borough Council had granted the artwork retrospective planning permission and elevated the building to listed status.
Long suspected to have been destroyed, the heads of the three Spy Booth spies have been found and are included in Cosmic Wire's unique and exclusive auction.
The winning bidder will receive nine original brick pieces of the wall depicting all three spies' heads, along with the provenance documents of ownership, authenticity, and chain of custody, as well as a brand new original one-of-one NFT made from a photogrammetry file created from the remaining bricks.
Cosmic Wire has announced a partnership with Raiinmaker on the release of six additional Spy Booth-inspired NFTs in support of climate change charities.
It is said that 100% of the NFT royalty downstream proceeds from this partnership will be donated to Laudato Tree, American Forests, and the Coalition for Rainforest Nations, whose mission is to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) to stop deforestation.
If you wish to know more, you can visit www.banksyspyboothnft.com or www.cosmicwire.com.
