Turns out that crypto bros love “Comedian,” Maurizio Cattelan’s now-infamous work consisting of a banana with duct tape, a spoof of art-world capitalism.

A conceptual artwork by Maurizio Cattelan, “Comedian,” is just a fruit-stand banana taped on the wall. But 7 bidders were biting. It went to a crypto entrepreneur.

Comedian, Maurizio Cattelan’s instant classic, sold for more than quadruple some estimates at Sotheby’s this week. How one work, and its worth, both satirizes and explains the meme-y days ahead.

A banana duct-taped to a white wall — or an acclaimed piece of art, depending on how you look at it — sold at a Sotheby’s auction for $US6.24 ($A9.57) million on Wednesday. Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian is comprised simply of a banana stuck to the wall with a strip of silver duct tape and is hung exactly 160cm from the floor.

A piece of art that is little more than a banana duct-taped to a wall sold at auction for $6.2 million on Wednesday to cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun, Sotheby's said, furthering the universal conversation about what constitutes art.

It was a banana with a back story. The spectacle on Wednesday evening, when a Sotheby’s auctioneer in Manhattan warned potential bidders not to let Maurizio Cattelan’s fruity artwork “slip away,” ended with a duct-taped banana selling for an astonishing $6.

Why it matters: "Comedian" sold for $6.2 million at auction this week — a ludicrous price for a banana, but a perfectly normal price for a major piece of contemporary art. The big picture: Comedy has always struggled with being taken seriously,

A viral banana perpendicularly duct-taped to a wall, which stirred many conversations in the art world, was sold to a cryptocurrency executive for $6.2 million (nearly P350 million) at an auction house in New York.