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Lamborghini Huracan blown up to create 999 NFTs

The Internet continues to hone its ability to commercialize intangibles. In this case, the situation begins with a tangible, so we'll start there. According to cryptocurrency news outlet The Block, an investor purchased a real car, a 2015 Lamborghini Huracan, for real money. Then, an artist going by the handle Shl0ms led a team of about 100 people who worked together to blow up the Italian supercoupe and turn its bits into 999 non-fungible tokens, known as NFTs, and sell the tokens at auction. The artist, the team, the explosion, and the bits are materially real — every one of them can be touched and squeezed, were one to desire. After that, well, things get digital.  This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Shl0ms told Fortune that his crew experimented with explosives for two weeks, looking for the right bang to bring in the most bucks. When that was decided, they took the Huracan to the desert and put a "federally licensed explosives engineer" in charge of the boom, and used high-speed cameras to capture the detonation. The collective then gathered the Lamborghini pieces, choosing 999 of them to be filmed in short 4K clips of "exquisitely filmed fragments" rotating against a black background. These videos are the non-fungible tokens going up for sale. Of those 999 video segments, 111 are reserved for the people behind the project. The remaining 888, labeled the "$CAR" group, will be listed in a 24-hour auction starting February 25, bids beginning at .01 Etherium coin (ETH) — a cryptocurrency — which is about $26 USD at current exchange rates.   So the short story is: Guy blows up Lamborghini, makes 999 videos of 999 exploded bits, sells videos online. For anyone not clear on the exclusively digital nature of the NFT, none of the winning auction bidders will get a leftover piece of Lamborghini. In answer to a tweet asking about the shards, Shl0mo tweeted that "the fragments are either large, dangerous, greasy, or all 3 and will be kept in secure storage for the foreseeable future." We know that money is one of the reasons for this endeavor. Shl0ms — who's apparently made about $1 million from "NFT art experiments" — also has precedent for this work. He destroyed a urinal akin to the one made famous in 1917 by artist Marcel Duchamp, then sold 150 NFTs of video clips of the leftover bits in 2021. That NFT collection raised $500,000.

Lamborghini profiled on 60 Minutes for 50th anniversary

Even though we (meaning car enthusiasts as a whole) don't spend our days driving Lamborghinis, they're somehow a familiar, known quantity. We know we'll be wowed by a Lambo, and we have a pretty fair idea of what the sound and acceleration feel like. We know a Lamborghini is going to be wildly expensive, hopelessly impractical and eye-wateringly thirsty, but the charm that comes with the badge outweighs everything else.
We also recognize that we, as enthusiasts, are in the minority, and that the average joe is likely to be far more blown away by a Raging Bull than the average gearhead. That's what makes this an entertaining video. 60 Minutes explored Lamborghini right in the midst of its fiftieth anniversary, testing a Gallardo at Imola, tearing across the roads of Italy in an Aventador and exploring the Sant'Agata factory where all the magic happens. It's a bit of a long video, but it's a really fascinating look at how the mainstream views something extreme. Take a look below for the full, 12-minute clip.

Watch an Aventador, Viper and LFA play the songs of their people

Our friends at Road & Track recently stopped by Cars and Coffee in Irvine, California, with the 2013 SRT Viper and found themselves a place to park between a Lamborghini Aventador and a Lexus LFA. Those machines might as well be the three musketeers of ludicrous exhaust notes, and rather than keep those 24 raging cylinders muffled, R&T set about conducting an orchestra of internal combustion. On seeing these three lined up, we were more than prepared to call the Viper victorious when it came to tickling our ear drums, but the latest domestic V10 sounds down right civilized in this company.
If we're picking favorites, we have to say the LFA takes the cake. There's something about the noise of a street-legal V10 that can wrap it's tachometer all the way to 9,000 rpm that turns our knees to quivering dollops of jelly. Check out the clip below for a listen. We shouldn't need to tell you to get frisky with the volume.