Amundi Asset Management (Europe's largest asset manager) buys Mundicoin (cryptocurrency/artwork) from Real Salvator Mundi

    NEW YORK, NY, July 03, 2020 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Created by artists Elliott Arkin and Marc Lafia in 2017, Mundicoin represents a unique approach to "using the blockchain to reset the art market's perception of what a new ephemeral work of art might be in the age of social and computational media," according to Artnet art market analyst Tim Schneider. As both a work of art and cryptocurrency, Mundicoin is "rattling the cage loudest," Schneider said.

Arkin and Lafia launched their Mundicoin project following the record-setting sale of Leonardo's "Salvator Mundi" for $450 million in 2017. The themed currency was introduced via Arkin's Real Salvator Mundi, an online store that offers an array of products featuring the public-domain image of Leonardo's now-celebrated painting, from t-shirts and panties to playing cards and a "DIY restoration kit."

Lafia, a conceptual artist specializing in new technologies and participatory art, immediately saw the potential for a Salvator Mundi-themed blockchain artwork. The Mundicoin "is an artwork that is its own value," Lafia said, "able to transcend the art world's closed system."

Soon after Arkin and Lafia initiated the Mundicoin project, leading blockchain developers like crypto thinker and consultant Daniel Coffen and other financial investors in the blockchain space expressed interest in potential partnerships that could indeed galvanize continued dialogues on value creation and the issuance of fiat currency.

According to Arkin, "Marc and I quickly realized that growing a cryptocurrency to the potential as a valuable financial and art vehicle that Mundicoin presented could be best facilitated by handing the reins over to a powerhouse company like Amundi Asset Management. With its enormous monetary expertise, the firm is exactly what is needed to actualize the project beyond our wildest dreams. The sale will now allow Marc to continue developing new computational platforms, while I can focus on developing the Salvator Mundi brand."

Arkin concluded, "Selling Mundicoin to Amundi at this time has left us with a feeling of great success as artists." Lafia added, "We wish Amundi Asset Management the best in the future with Mundicoin and hope they are able to grow its value to beyond the Leonardo painting from which it was inspired."

Arkin has trademarked Salvator Mundi in several different trademark classes, thus owning the "brand" and will be launching new products this Fall. Meanwhile, he and Lafia are considering other art cryptocurrencies (after a period to not compete with Mundicoin) and participatory arts projects in the future. Although the terms and conditions of the Mundicoin sale are under a confidentiality clause in the agreement, the artists are free to re-enter the crypto field as long as any future works do not cause any confusion with Mundicoin or Amundi Asset Management.

For More Information Email: [email protected] phone: 929-365-9680

Reference:
1. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/cryptocurrencies-artwork-explainer-part-two-1215707

Real Salvator Mundi is the nom de guerre project of artist Elliott Arkin. Created on November 17, 2017, two days after the historic auctioning of the painting attributed to the Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci for just over $450 million dollars. Real Salvator Mundi is a work of art, a conceptual practice in the exploration of value and worth. Real Salvator Mundi creates Salvator Mundi (TM) products inspired by and as a lasting reflection on the Salvator Mundi story.

Arkin's work has been exhibited widely throughout the US and Europe and is included in the permanent collections of museums such as the Louvre's Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, MAMAC museum in Nice, the New York Public Library and the New York Historical Society, The Flint Institute of the Arts in Michigan and Mead Art Museum at Amherst College. In 2014, Arkin's work was the subject of a major solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MAMAC) in Nice, France.

www.RealSalvatorMundi.com, www.SalvatorMundiMuseum.org

Amundi Asset Management is a French asset management company. With 1,653 trillion euros of assets under management (AUM) at the end of 2019, it is the largest asset manager in Europe and one of the 10 biggest investment managers by AUM in the world.

Founded on January 1, 2010, the company is the result of the merger between the asset management activities of Crédit Agricole (Crédit Agricole Asset Management, CAAM) and Société Générale (Société Générale Asset Management, SGAM).Amundi Group has been listed on the Euronext stock exchange since November 2015. In legal terms, Amundi Group owns Amundi Asset Management, as well as several other subsidiaries in the asset management sector, notably CPR Asset Management (CPR AM)[ and BFT Investment Managers (BFT IM) in France. In 2016, Amundi Group announced the acquisition of Pioneer Investments, UniCredit's asset management subsidiary.[7] The two entities merged in 2017.

Amundi is involved in a range of investment management activities

Marc Lafia is an American artist and filmmaker whose work emerges with network culture as it changes our relationship to knowledge, ourselves, our memories, and our bodies, from one of representation to presentation, and from contemplation to new modes of embodiment, producing new subjectivities and new ways of going in the world. He has been exhibited at the Walker Art Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Tate Online, the ZKM, the Centre Pompidou, Anthology Film Archives, International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Minsheng Museum of Art in Shanghai, The Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale 2014 and again at the Whitney 2018. He has taught at Stanford University, the San Francisco Art Institute, Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Pratt Institute and Columbia University. His books Image Photograph (2015) and Everyday Cinema (2017) are published by punctum.

Real Salvator Mundi LLC
On November 15, 2017, history was made when a painting titled Salvator Mundi, attributed to the great renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, completely shattered all records by selling at Christie's auction house in NYC for just over 450 million dollars. The painting, dated from around 1500 and lost for many years, was thought to be rediscovered in 2005 underneath multiple layers of overpainting, torn and decayed by worm holes. Over the next 6 years it was meticulously reworked and restored led by conservation expert Diane Dwyer Modestini at New York University.

The museum is dedicated to the Salvator Mundi and is the largest collection of artwork and ephemera on the subject. It is also part of the art project and company that goes by the name Real Salvator Mundi.

The Salvator Mundi will forever be the subject of much interest, intrigue and debate regarding quality and authenticity. However, there is only one Real Salvator Mundi (TM).

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