Self Checkout puts the equipment of a shop inside an art fair. Visualize Value presented it in Zero 10 at Art Basel Miami Beach in December 2025, and X Museum, Beijing later acquired the physical installation. More than 5,000 people collected one of its 5,837 receipts: 3,475 onchain, 263 online and 2,099 in person.
For years the stock complaint about NFTs was that they were "just receipts". Self Checkout agrees and makes the receipt the artwork. The transaction is out in the open. So is the cost of showing at the fair, which Butcher carried himself.
A visitor walks up to a kiosk, picks an amount and gets a thermal receipt whose length depends on what they paid. Each dollar adds paper. A split-flap display on the wall clicks through the artist's running balance. It started at -$74k, the cost of being at the fair and building the work, and closed five days later at +$114,706.51. Remote buyers order through a transparent kiosk, and their receipts feed the same installation. Each receipt carries a printed seed phrase for a non-transferable digital companion.
Between 1959 and 1962 Yves Klein sold his Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility for gold and handed the buyer a receipt, the only physical trace of the sale. Hans Haacke's MoMA Poll of 1970 made visitors' choices visible inside the museum. Self Checkout sits between the two. The receipt is the object, and the public tally is the institutional critique, run as a retail till instead of a ballot box.
If the receipt is the work, what did the person who paid more actually get?
Making the transaction visible
The work takes the familiar criticism that an NFT is "just a receipt" literally. Instead of hiding the transaction behind an object, it brings payment, proof of participation and the cost of exhibiting into view. A wall display tracks the artist's changing financial position.2
What participants change
The studio's whitepaper describes three in-person kiosks and a transparent kiosk for remote orders. Each dollar adds to the receipt's length. A printed seed phrase provides access to a non-transferable digital companion. Online and in-person participation feed the same installation.
Participants choose their contribution. That changes their physical receipt and contributes to the public balance. They do not obtain control of the installation's rules. The online connection is a medium for participation across locations, while the fair booth and paper receipts remain integral to the work.1
Presentation and reception
Visualize Value presented Self Checkout in Zero 10 at Art Basel Miami Beach, 3-7 December 2025. Sarah Cascone's on-site report describes buyers asking for signatures and discusses Butcher's decision to bear the exhibition costs himself. Louis Jebb places the work within the fair's wider presentation of digital art.
The linked whitepaper is the studio's process record. The articles are published reporting and include attributed artist statements.3,2
The final receipt
The fair ran five days. The display opened at -$74,211. 00, the cost of being at the fair and building the work.
5,837 receipts. 3,475 onchain, 263 online, 2,099 in person.
Average receipt $11. 41. Closing balance $114,706. 51. Total income $188,917. 51.
The 1/1 is Token #0, the signed final PNL, with space for the buyer to cosign. It is the only transferable token in the Receipts collection. Bidding started at $1. X Museum, Beijing acquired the physical installation.
After the fair Receipts kept going online. Each holder can update their piece with the seed phrase on the paper receipt or the wallet they minted from.4,5
Development
Art Basel Miami Beach, 2025
Images
Notes on the record
Sources and further reading
Artist statements describe intention. Reporting and interviews record different perspectives; exhibition announcements establish specific presentations. How sources are classified.
1. Artist / studio · Project documentation
Self Checkout: Whitepaper
Describes the installation, receipt rules and contributors. Different sections give different opening cost totals; those figures need reconciliation.
2. Independent publication · Reporting with artist statements
Zero 10 | Digital Art Goes Mainstream at Art Basel
Places Self Checkout within the fair's Zero 10 presentation. Separates the writer's account from quotations drawn from Butcher's whitepaper and interviews.
3. Independent publication · On-site reporting with artist interview
This Artist's 'Self Checkout' Lets You Pay What You Wish at Art Basel Miami Beach
Reports from the installation and identifies Visualize Value as its presenter. Figures in the article are interim figures, not final totals.
4. Artist / studio · Posts on X
Self Checkout: final PNL and installation
6-18 December 2025. The signed final PNL receipt: 5,837 receipts (3,475 onchain, 263 online, 2,099 in person), average receipt $11.41, opening PNL -$74,211.00, closing PNL $114,706.51, total income $188,917.51. Also the acquisition by X Museum, Beijing, and the 1/1 auction of Token #0.
5. Artist / studio · Thread on X
Art Basel Hong Kong: how it came to be
28-29 March 2026. Zero 10 origin of Self Checkout, the 2020 Visualize Value piece Work vs. Luck, the rolling and trading rules, signed sets, and silver sets of Luck by Asprey Studio moving from $8,888 to a market price of 1,111 rolls.