Curatorial Recommendation

Luba Elliott

The Can as Currency

Zyborn's debut project FIRST CANNED BTC presents a physical embodiment of a fundamentally digital currency, transforming a mass-market household object into something both valuable and enigmatic. As global war narratives intensify, the can emerges as a symbol of durable, reliable, and psychologically reassuring food within an increasingly militarised, bloc-divided world. At once commodity and riddle, the can inspires a simple but charged question: what is inside? Bitcoin worth the equivalent of one million US dollars across a limited edition of 21 units. The amount contained within each can is variable, determined by AI rather than human decision-making, removing predictability and authorship from the act of valuation.

For me, this project marks a welcome return to the physical realm, encapsulating capitalism itself as a variable canned good. The can is conventionally associated with sameness: every unit identical, interchangeable, mass-produced. Here, that logic is quietly subverted. Each can looks the same, yet contains a different amount of Bitcoin. This gesture foregrounds a unique affordance of digital currency: weightlessness. Whether a can holds 0.01 or 1 BTC, it weighs exactly the same. With a physical currency, this would be impossible, as coins and banknotes betray value through mass. Instead, Zyborn's work masterfully stages a tension between weight and worth, visibility and value, using the immateriality of Bitcoin as its conceptual engine.