Cryptocurrency project will help to «rob» the world’s leading museums

Chidi Nwaubani, a resident of Nigeria, launched the Looty project to organize, as he puts it, «a robbery through digital art.» The word «Looty» itself is derived from «looting» (looting, robbery). However, Nwaubani’s goal is noble: he wants to return African artifacts taken by the colonizers to their homeland.

European museums are very reluctant to accept the return of authentic art objects, so Nwaubani came up with an alternative form of repatriation. He sends a photographer to the museum, where he takes a series of pictures of the exhibit, based on which an accurate three-dimensional model is created. It receives an NFT tag and is put up for auction. 20% of the proceeds from the sale are used to sponsor young African artists.

The first object in Looty’s collection was a set of Benin Bronze, which British soldiers took out of Nigeria in 1897. The originals are kept in the British Museum, but Nwaubani is proud to have been able to bring the Nigerian artifacts back home, even if only in a virtual form. This is the essence of the project — all the items in the Looty collection will be available for viewing for free and at the same time help to stimulate the development of contemporary African art.