Art Imitates Crypto

A drawn-out legal dispute between two New York artists and Amundi, Europe’s largest asset manager, over questions of ownership, value and what constitutes an artwork appears to have reached a resolution.

Artists Elliott Arkin and Marc Lafia are claiming victory, saying they can continue exhibiting and developing their Mundicoin project as a conceptual artwork. Amundi has yet to comment publicly, and did not respond to The Art Journal’s questions.

The pair created Mundicoin in 2018. The conceptual artwork was built around the idea of a cryptocurrency, where the name, concept, documentation and surrounding actions formed the work itself, rather than serving as a genuine digital currency. The controversy fired up when Paris-based Amundi, which manages over €2.4 trillion in assets, challenged the artist duo’s trademark application for the ‘Mundicoin’ name.

This dispute later mutated into a back-and-forth battle over what exactly had been transferred in a 2020 agreement between the artists and Amundi, which acquired the trademark from the artists.

Riffing on cryptocurrency
Mundicoin was conceived as part of Arkin and Lafia’s broader Real Salvator Mundi project. It satirises the hype surrounding Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi (circa 1500), which sold to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for a staggering US$450 million (£383m) at Sotheby’s New York in 2017, by delving into the themes of art, commerce and cultural obsessions. The Real Salvator Mundi includes a 45-square-foot museum in Brooklyn, which can only be viewed through a glass window, and branded merchandise such as pasta sauce and T-shirts. 

Arkin and Lafia focused on the painting’s financial and cultural mythology as the starting point for a series of conceptual works, examining authenticity, ownership and speculation. Mundicoin was part of that series. 

“Mundicoin is the ultimate post-digital readymade,” Arkin tells The Art Journal. “We took the most expensive object in human history and used its performative valuation as the launch pad for a virtual currency.”

Lafia describes the relationship between the concept and the object more directly: “The currency is the work, and vice versa.”

The project attracted attention during the early years of blockchain-based art. Back in 2018, art market writer Tim Schneider described Mundicoin in Artnet News as a project that ‘rattles the cage the loudest’ among artists exploring cryptocurrency.

The Amundi dispute begins
The conflict with Amundi kicked off after Arkin filed a US trademark application for ‘Mundicoin’ in 2018. The filing came after a separate cryptocurrency project, based in Bolivia, adopted the name in 2018, leading Arkin to seek trademark protection for his own artwork. However, Amundi challenged his application, arguing that Mundicoin’ was too similar to its own ‘Amundi’ trademark and could create confusion with the company’s financial services.

The parties eventually agreed that the best way to resolve the matter was for Amundi to buy the trademark, and they reached a settlement in June 2020. Arkin would not disclose how much Amundi paid for it. 

Arkin says he believed the transaction included not only the trademark application but also the conceptual artwork associated with it. After the agreement was signed, he says he sent Amundi a receipt documenting the transfer of the ‘Mundicoin artwork by Elliott Arkin and Marc Lafia’.

The asset manager then backtracked somewhat, saying the risk of confusion between Mundicoin and Amundi’s business appeared remote.

For several years, the arrangement appeared to stand without any disagreement. But in 2025, a collector who had previously bought Arkin’s work wrote to Amundi asking about the availability of Mundicoin. This is when things got sticky, because according to Arkin, the asset manager’s representatives told the collector that it had not purchased any artwork, and had only bought the trademark rights. This became the central disagreement between the two sides.

Two interpretations of the 2020 agreement
In a 7 November, 2025 letter seen by The Art Journal, Amundi’s lawyers at Dechert LLP argued that the 2020 settlement agreement prevented Arkin from using ‘Mundicoin’ in connection with artwork, exhibitions, documentation or other contexts.

‘Your proposed use of Mundicoin is directly contrary to the plain terms of the Agreement,’ wrote Jennifer Insley-Pruitt, a Dechert lawyer representing Amundi. The letter stated that Amundi ‘did not acquire any conceptual art project or meme’ from Arkin and argued that if such an acquisition had occurred, it would have been reflected in the settlement agreement.

Amundi also rejected Arkin’s argument that the trademark application itself formed part of the artwork. Arkin then countered, arguing that the trademark filing, the transfer process, and the surrounding legal events were all part of Mundicoin’s conceptual framework.

This dispute, for all its friction, has produced something that has enhanced the very ideas and questions that the artwork set out to pose.

Arkin tells The Art Journal that the dispute raised broader questions about how traditional legal agreements apply to conceptual art, where an artwork can consist of ideas, actions, documentation and systems rather than a single physical object.

A practical resolution
The disagreement shifted after a letter dated ‘December 21, 2025’ from Amundi’s legal representatives, also seen by The Art Journal.  In the letter, Amundi maintained its interpretation of the 2020 agreement but acknowledged that Arkin was using ‘Mundicoin’ as the title of an artwork. The asset manager then backtracked somewhat, saying the risk of confusion between Mundicoin and Amundi’s business appeared remote.

‘Given that your activities therefore present no discernible risk to Amundi, there is no reason for Amundi to continue discussions with you,’ Insley-Pruitt wrote. The letter stated that Amundi had decided ‘not to pursue this matter further at this time’, while reserving the company’s rights if Arkin’s use of ‘Mundicoin’ expanded in the future.

In his reply to Amundi, Arkin wrote that he only received the letter on 2 March, 2026 and responded the following day. He said he viewed the exchange as resolving the practical issues surrounding his ability to exhibit, publish, document and continue developing Mundicoin as an artwork.

‘Marc and I are completely happy to reiterate our reclaiming of all the Mundicoin artwork,’ Arkin wrote. ‘It is ours, and we are delighted to have it, ready to be seen, exhibited, contemplated, sold and celebrated… This dispute, for all its friction, has produced something that has enhanced the very ideas and questions that Mundicoin the artwork set out to pose. 

Naturally, satire was a part of its nature.

‘I hope in some small way that our long exchange has illuminated something useful – not just for the resolution of this particular matter, but as a small light for how such questions might be approached with greater wisdom and curiosity in the future. And should that curiosity ever lead any of you to discover more art, so much the better."

What next for Mundicoin?
Arkin says the conceptual artwork will continue as part of the Real Salvator Mundi project, with exhibitions planned. But the future of any cryptocurrency component remains less certain, with Arkin saying he and Lafia will reconsider how a digital currency concept fits into the project given the changes in the crypto landscape since 2020.

“The crypto world has changed a lot since 2020, so we’ll take a fresh look at it so that what we create will be meaningful,” Arkin says. “Marc is away until September, but when he gets back we'll sit down and discuss how a new cryptocurrency still makes sense under the Salvator Mundi name.”

Arkin adds that the dispute itself has now become part of the artwork’s history.

“The dispute only demonstrated the impact art can have in the real world,” he says. “Mundicoin was one small part of a much larger project about value, ownership, authenticity and belief. As a co-creator, naturally, satire was a part of its nature. What I never expected was to watch those ideas move beyond the studio and into the boardroom. The artwork didn't just ask questions about value, ownership and authenticity – it ended up forcing one of Europe's largest financial institutions to grapple with those same questions. I don't think either Marc or I could have imagined that when we started.”