The Miami Art Basel ATM that surprises everyone with its disconcerting ranking of millionaires

The artifact will only be in Miami for a few days, so if a billionaire wants everyone to know about his heritage, he must hurry.

The famous Art Basel contemporary art fair in Miami always surprises, especially with its most varied eccentricities.

A new sample of them was the presentation of an ATM that reveals to the public the bank balance of the users who use it. Thanks to a superior screen, the artifact displays the photos and fortunes of all those who insert their cards into its structure. At the top is the highest figure, which so far is $2.9 million.

The ATM is called the ATM Leaderboard and was created by the Brooklyn art collective MSCHF, in conjunction with Perrotin Gallery. “It was sold for $75,000 to a local collector who plans to place it in a public place where people can continue to interact with the work,” a representative for the gallery said in statements quoted by Artmajeur.

The purpose of the project was always to install it in an area whose inhabitants had great fortunes : “Since its conception, we had mentally destined this work to a point like Art Basel, where there is a large concentration of people who rent Lamborghinis and wear Rolexes. These are implicit gestures analogous to the explicit one on the ATM Leaderboard,” Daniel Greenberg, co-founder of MSCHF, told CNN.

The truth is that the device looks like any normal ATM. It has a medium-sized screen and buttons embedded on its sides. It also features a small number pad for users to enter their passwords. Of course, it has a point on the right side to insert the cards, as well as a larger one to remove the bills.

What makes it special is the vertical screen that it has on the operation screen. This is where viewers can see which person has the biggest bill. In addition, it is a dynamic tool, since, as people check their balances, the photos on the list move with an animation.

How does the ATM Leaderboard at Art Basel Miami work?

Anyone can go to the fair and check their balance as in any other bank teller. However, the difference with this is that when someone inserts their chip, they write down the number and take a photo of the person. It then saves the data and displays it in a list on its largest screen.

For now it will only be located in South Florida, but the manufacturers do not rule out that they can later move it to other sites : “Thanks to the camera, the ATM keeps a continuous record of each person who uses it and also of each location in the that is installed, so we hope that it will have the opportunity to move through more spaces, ”said Greenberg.

The highest scores will remain at the top of the list, even if the item changes ownership or moves to other parties. There is no data on how many people will be able to verify it in its useful life, but viewers are already waiting to know the most ostentatious figures in the entire United States.