Diplo Is No Longer #1 on Art Basel Miami Beach’s Viral ATM – ARTnews.com

“i just won art basel” Diplo posted on Instagram Saturday, with a video of him at this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach art fair sliding his debit card into art collective MSCHF‘s clever ATM machine that is designed to announce users’ bank account balances on a leaderboard.

But, oh, how the mighty have fallen.

As of Monday, Diplo is now #3 on ATM Leaderboard (2022). Second place has been taken by someone with $5 million in their bank account, while the new winner is a man with a whopping $9.5 million.

During Art Basel’s preview days, a young man with a pink t-shirt held the number one spot on the leaderboard, with about $2 million in his checking account. As the days wore on, more and more millionaires began lining up to get their photo taken by ATM Leaderboard alongside their impressive account balances. When Diplo, the much loved DJ, rolled up to the ATM machine, he seemed to have it in the bag. The ATM flashed “High Score!” as a picture of the Monopoly man floated in the background. Diplo had around $3 million in his bank account.

The art collective MSCHF developed ATM Leaderboard for their presentation at Perrotin’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach. As the fair progressed from the VIP days to the public opening, people grew less hesitant to use the machine.

“It’s really interesting, because whether or not people end up putting their card in, everyone has their moment with it,” Liz Ryan, a MSCHF artist told ARTnews in a previous interview. “You can see them going through this introspective pause where they’re asking themselves if they can go through with it.”

Kevin Weisner, another MSCHF member, was similarly confounded. “We figured, people would be really flashy, want to show off, but that hasn’t totally been the case,” Weisener told ARTnews.

But those VIP days are defined by a certain class of people who tend to be quite private. When Art Basel Miami Beach opened to the broader public, the piece went viral, and people crowded the machine with their phones in the air, trying to get their own proof that they too were in contact with what turned out to be the biggest story at Art Basel Miami Beach.

However, ATM Leaderboard was far from the highest selling work of art at the fair. A savvy, Miami collector scooped up the work on the First Choice preview day for $75,000, pre-virality.