Walked past one of his works on the upper west side of manhattan. I wouldn’t have known it was his except for the plaque put up next to the plastic barrier installed to protect it.

Kind of crazy that the art is likely worth as much as the entire building it’s on. Although, this is Manhattan so who knows.

If that’s the case, I guess Banksy will be laughing even harder...

since information cannot be destroyed (at least, according to quantum physics), i argue it's transformed. And it's just as valuable transformed, if not more so.

The art isn't just in the artifact per se, it's in the causal history of it (and surrounding it), and the messages that can be interpreted from those histories. I wish we actually had two separate words for this - one for "art as in, I look at it and it looks moving", another for "art as in, the whole causal context of this work is interesting". Works are usually a mix of the two. Banksy's work was good in both categories, and just gained a lot in the latter. Compare to e.g. Mona Lisa, which is crap in the first category (both absolutely and relative to much better works that can be produced by anyone with a smartphone camera), and its whole value stems from the latter category - the history and context of the work.