Justin Sun Abandons Plan to Buy 100,000 Bananas After Art Auction Backlash

It turns out there’s not much money in the banana stand. 

After purchasing a duct-taped banana at auction for $6.24 million last week, crypto billionaire Justin Sun announced he would reward the banana’s original vendor—a Manhattan fruit merchant who parted ways with it for 25 cents—by offering to buy 100,000 additional bananas from the man’s sidewalk stand.

But shortly thereafter, the vendor dismissed the plan as nearly impossible to execute and said it would reap barely any profit—causing Sun to scrap the banana buyback today and reconsider his path forward.

On Thursday, Sun announced that as a gesture of gratitude to Shah Alam, the fruit vendor who “inadvertently became a crucial contributor” to a work of “profound cultural and artistic significance” by providing the banana in question, the Tron blockchain founder would purchase 100,000 bananas from Alam’s stand and distribute them “free worldwide” to eaters who presented valid I.D. 

“I hope this initiative will bring his story to a broader audience and, one day, I look forward to visiting his fruit stand in person to express my gratitude again,” Sun said of Alam on Thursday.

Shortly thereafter, Alam responded by explaining that it would be incredibly costly and logistically difficult to acquire so many bananas. He added that the profit margin on such a purchase would be almost negligible, according to a Friday report in The New York Times.  

“There’s not any profit in selling bananas,” Alam said.

The fruit stand’s owner, Mohammed Islam, added that no one from Sun’s team had reached out to contact him or vet the banana plan, per the report.

Decrypt reached out to Sun’s team on Friday regarding the quickly unpeeling “Bananagate.” And the billionaire’s team confirmed: the plan to buy 100,000 bananas from Alam’s fruit stand on East 72nd Street and York Avenue is officially off.

“We appreciate the feedback from the stand and will find a proper plan forward,” a Tron spokesperson told Decrypt. 

The spokesperson added that the Tron team is actively coordinating on the issue, but the Thanksgiving holiday has naturally caused some delays. 

Sun has not yet publicly commented on the undoing of his global fruit distribution scheme. But he did eat his newly acquired $6 million banana—artist Maurizio Cattelan’s “Comedian”—earlier Friday morning, during a filmed press conference.

Edited by Andrew Hayward