JSG Boggs’ artwork is now offered as part of the NFT project
His estate’s website calls JSG Boggs an “American artist whose playfully realistic drawings of banknotes catapulted him to worldwide fame—and landed him in jail more than once.”
It also states that he is widely regarded as the “patron saint of cryptocurrency.” This is because Boggs advised the creators of an “encrypted online currency”, thus leading many to consider him a philosophical ancestor of Bitcoin.
Boggs questioned the right of a government to have a monopoly on the issuance of currency. He argued that his own artistic currencies which, like government issues, “contained portraits, unique numerical markings and anti-counterfeiting measures – are allowed to serve as tenders for goods and services, as long as they were deemed valuable by the recipient.” He said in 1999: “It’s all an act of faith. No one knows what a dollar is, what the word means, what holds the thing up, what it stands for.”
Now, five years after the artist’s death in January 2017, the estate of JSG Boggs and laCollection have launched the first NFT (nonfungible token) project to continue his legacy of experimenting with the fundamental value of money.
The two entities announce “JSG Boggs: Money Talks” an exhibition and sale consisting of five limited digital edition banknotes based on his original artwork of European and American currency.
It will start with 50 issues of a 1990 British £50 note similar to those featured in the London exhibition that led to Boggs’ arrest and subsequent forgery acquittal. The note contains a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II as a young woman. Boggs first created the model for this note, hand-drawn on paper with colored pencil in 1990. The jury at his trial quickly and unanimously acquitted Boggs of all charges after his lawyer argued that “only an idiot in a hurry” would mistake his art for real bills. It was after this that the Bank of England started putting copyright notices on their paper currency.
The sale started on 17 October. A new digital note will be added to the sale every week. The £50 note will be followed by a 1989 French 100 franc note, a 1988 Swiss 100 franc note, a 2002 €1 note featuring a self-portrait of Boggs, and from 2001, a $5,000 Federal Reserve note also featuring a self-portrait.
Bogg’s property website is Orders can be placed at
Purchasers of one artwork receive the digital artwork (NFT), the banknote printed and shipped by The Archives of JSG Boggs, and a unique printed JSG Boggs Crypto Receipt. The receipt honors the central role transactions played in the artist’s process.
Buyers of two or more artworks also get access to a private conversation with Estate Curator and close friend of the artist, Craig Whitford, and Estate Advisor and NFT aficionado, Jeff Koyen, as well as a private online tour of the JSG Boggs Estate archives.
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