The “Savior of the World” is saving crypto wallets.

Arcade Futures
2 min readDec 8, 2024

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In the 16th century, legendary Italian artist and polymath Leonardo da Vinci painted Salvator Mundi, otherwise known as Savior of the World, a painting of Jesus Christ looking straight ahead at the observer with a hazy gaze. Da Vinci, the master draftsman, once again reveals his genius — or at least that’s who scholars mostly attribute the work to. The origin, authorship, and provenance of the piece have been points of serious contention among experts since it’s rediscovery in 2005.

The artwork depicts Jesus Christ as the Savior of the World. In his right hand, Jesus extends two fingers pointed upwards in a gesture, while his left hand holds a transparent crystal orb, said to symbolize mastery over the universe.

What an epic work of art! I can kind of see why it became the most expensive painting ever sold at auction for $450.3 million in 2017.

Where is the painting now? Reportedly, it is in storage in Saudi Arabia, patiently waiting to be displayed in a cultural center in Al-’Ula that has yet to be completed. While the art world continues to debate who should be credited for the work and how much Da Vinci actually contributed to it, that hasn’t stopped the crypto community from buying and selling a token based on this iconic piece.

The token is appropriately named $MUNDI and, at the time of writing, has a market cap of $27.5 million with about 6,000 holders.

The memecoin had a massive surge entering December, with a pump of over 200%, leading to early holders gaining massive profits in just a few days. Despite its steep decline in value over the past few days, an avid community of crypto/art enthusiasts remains bullish on the token’s rise, hoping that its symbolic significance in culture and art history warrants its listing on a major centralized exchange.

Its description on the Phantom app says the following:

“$MUNDI represents a paradigm shift in how cultural symbols are monetized in the digital age. By combining the memetic power of Salvator Mundi with the market dynamics of crypto, this project has the potential to redefine art’s role in the global digital economy. The painting’s mystique is not rooted solely in its religious subject matter but in the story behind it: a missing masterpiece, debates over its history, and its emergence as a symbol of art’s commodification in the modern age. The Salvator Mundi became an idea greater than the artwork itself — a meme tied to exclusivity, cultural capital, and the rising financial power of Saudi Arabia. This memetic resonance forms the foundation of $MUNDI, a meme-coin that captures the intrigue and symbolic weight of the Salvator Mundi painting in the digital age.”

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