The Doomed

Six years ago, on October 20th 2018, the artist known as XCOPY released The Doomed on the KnownOrigin minting contract as an edition of 100. It was XCOPY’s first mint on KnownOrigin.

One day later, on October 21st 2018, the first edition sold for 0.075 ETH, which was worth $16 at the time.

Over the next 434 days, The Doomed would slowly mint out.

Just as the first cases of COVID-19 were being reported out of China, XCOPY sold the 100th and final edition of The Doomed on December 29th, 2019 for 0.06 ETH, which was worth $8 at the time.

The description included with The Doomed is just one sentence:

“Tech won't save us.”

Six years later, The Doomed ranks among the most iconic and storied works in all of cryptoart.

Recent sales of common Doomed editions have ranged from $50,000 - $90,000. Edition #1 of 100 sold in August for ~$140,000 to the collector known as Artifaction. In the words of the prominent cryptoart collector known as Cozomo de’ Medici, The Doomed is “a piece of the bedrock of the cryptoart movement.”

Adding to the value of each edition is the fact that some of the editions may be permanently lost. According to one XCOPY collector, “We think there are only around 85 available to collectors as some sit in wallets with no activity for four or more years.”

The Origin

The Doomed is officially six years old, but it’s story begins much earlier.

The very first incarnation of what would become The Doomed first appeared on XCOPY’s Tumblr in January 2013 as a stroboscopic, noisy spasm.

Various incarnations made it to XCOPY’s Tumblr between 2013 and 2018, a couple of which are posted below.

The best account of XCOPY’s Doomed progression on Tumblr can be found in this fantastic essay about The Doomed by maxand98, which I recommend in its entirety.

Via XCOPY’s Tumblr we can see his progression as an artist. The version of The Doomed that was ultimately minted is less chaotic, more technically complex, more refined, and more solemn than the earlier versions.

The very fact that we have access to XCOPY’s tumblr going back many year before the rise of blockchains, ownable digital objects, and “cryptoart” movement is special. It’s the 21st century equivalent of getting access to the private journals and sketchbooks of artists past.

The Variants

Following the release of the original Doomed, XCOPY minted four other subsequent variants.

The Doomed (mono) was minted as a 1 of 1 on Superrare on May 3rd 2019 and purchased 20 days later by collector Martin Lukas Ostachowski for 0.3 ETH ($73.68 at the time)

When I reached out to Ostachowski to ask about The Doomed, he wrote “The several-year evolution of his skull artworks and the continuous repetition of the different The Doomed series across feeds and galleries have rendered them recognizable as the Campbell soup cans of Crypto Art.”

In October 2020, on the second anniversary of the original Doomed mint, XCOPY minted three more limited edition palettes on Known Origin.

In the XCOPY tradition, many of these editions were given away via raffle, this time to holders of the original Doomed, holders of other XCOPY pieces on the Known Origin contract, and even to holders of the $DOOM token. Here’s one of XCOPY’s tweets about it at the time.

And here’s an announcement from XCOPY’s Discord at that time:

Were any of the original Doomed holders upset about those surprise variants being released? I couldn’t find any evidence of it, but if they were, XCOPY had this to say to them at the time:

Tech Won’t Save Us

What is The Doomed all about? Why does it move people?

I think, at its core, The Doomed resonates with so many art collectors for the most obvious of reasons: Because it reminds us, in a visceral way, that we too are doomed.

When I stare into those hollow, hopeless eye sockets and get lost in the matrix-like trance of digital dust I feel both the weight and weightlessness of my existence. We are all temporary glitches in this shared universal fabric.

The cryptoart collector known as Benji, who helms The Pella Collection and holds 5 copies of the Doomed (3 original, 1 Red variant, and 1 Red & Black variant), told me that they were drawn to the work in part because of the description: "Tech won't save us.” In their words:

“Tech won’t save us” is a memento mori that really got me thinking about both the inevitability of death but also the fragility of us as humans - we place our faith in future technology being able to solve our problems, whether they be medical, environmental or societal - and I believe The Doomed is a powerful reminder of the futility of this way of thinking. With the growing expectation that emerging AGI will solve all our human problems, The Doomed says to us "watch out!!"!

The XCOPY collector known as Jediwolf shared a similar sentiment with me:

For me, The Doomed is an extremely important conceptual work initiated by XCOPY back in 2013 and released in its final form only in 2018, when major topics such as AI’s influence on our world were not yet widely discussed. The work explores the convergence of the matrix, machines, and a dystopian vision of our future. 'P(doom)' is a term in AI safety that refers to the probability of catastrophic outcomes resulting from AI, and it became widespread only in 2023, ten years after the first version of the artwork was published. What will be the actual value of P(doom)? XCOPY is saying - tech won't save us.”

The cold hard truth is that it will be lights off for you and for me and for everyone we know soon enough. Tech won’t save us.

But ironically, tech might just save The Doomed.

Thanks to technologies such as the Ethereum Blockchain and the InterPlanetary File System, there is a fairly decent chance that The Doomed will persist in its oceanic blinks for many generations to come.

The editions will pass on from steward to steward, until eventually they are all lost, housed in institutions, or secured in the most diamond-handed of vaults.

When I ponder that future, I feel some warmth in the knowledge that over the years, millions and perhaps even billions of our fellow human beings will share in the experience of looking at The Doomed, and being looked at by The Doomed.

The Future

From a market perspective what will happen to The Doomed in the years ahead?

In the past six years it has gone from $8 to $80,000, a 10,000X increase in market value.

Six years from now, in the fall of 2030, how will the art world value The Doomed?

How many more editions will be lost?

How easy or difficult will it be to acquire the remaining editions?

What will be the state of the Ethereum blockchain and crypto more broadly?

What will XCOPYs status be in the contemporary art world?

The collector Benji told me that they think The Doomed “will emerge over the next decade as the world's most iconic work of digital art, similar to Warhol's soup cans or Marilyn prints or Banksy's Girl with Balloon in the traditional art world. It will ultimately be held in the top art museums and collections globally and there will come a time where you simply will not be able to buy one no matter what the price - as prized as a Da Vinci codex.”

Whatever happens, there is little doubt that The Doomed will always hold a special place in the history of the Cryptoart movement.

Post Script

The collector known as Artifaction, told me that one of the reasons he loves The Doomed is because to him “The Doomed represents ‘risk.’ The risk an artist takes to put him or herself out there to the world in a more grand way. The risk a collector takes early in an artist’s career.”

XCOPY was producing glitchy digital art for years and years before anyone gave him a dime for his work.

When the blockchain enabled him to mint and sell his work, he took the leap and persisted even when it took him 433 days to sell 100 pieces for the price of a beer. He was taking a risk, and it paid off.

Those early collectors, such as Martin Ostachowski, also took a risk by spending their money buying work from an unknown anonymous artist minting work on a (then) low-value blockchain as part of an art movement that was ignored by most of the world.

Right now, each of us knows in our heart of hearts that two things are true:

1. I am doomed

2. There are things I want to do that I am not doing out of fear.

The antidote to #2 is #1.

When you stare your fate directly in the face without blinking, it is strangely relaxing.

The stakes are lower than you think.

The risk is not as high as you might imagine.

Tech won’t save you, but you can save yourself.

Acknowledgements

Huge shout out to maxand98, whose essay about The Doomed was hugely helpful in informing this piece. I recommend you read it in its entirety.

Thank you to XCOPY/Doomed collectors Artifaction, Benji, Cozomo de’ Medici, Jediwolf, Martin Lukas Ostachowski, and Pravijn for contributing their thoughts and quotes to this piece.

I have a story to share.

It’s kind of embarrassing (for me).

The first time I met Ian C. Rogers, he had just logged into the virtual conference room for this interview.

Ian is the Chief Experience Officer at Ledger and an avid art collector. Despite his busy schedule, Ian agreed to sit down for a two hour interview with me. Mind you, this is someone who is sought out for interviews with much larger publications than The Monty Report, so I was aware that getting two hours of his time was not something to take for granted.

Despite never having met before, Ian immediately put me at ease with his casual demeanor. Ian’s brain seems to race almost faster than he can talk.

By the end of our time together I had learned a ton. I felt great about the interview. As I left my office to head to breakfast, I thought to myself - I think this might be one of my best interviews yet.

Back at my office after breakfast, I went to open the audio file for transcription and… it wasn’t there.

I had forgotten to click “record.”

###

If you’ve ever done anything like that, you know it is a terrible feeling. Like, really bad. I just wasted two hours of this guy’s time.

I thought through my options: I could just try to work up an article about Ian based on my memory of our conversation. I could scrap the whole thing. Or…I could see if he would be game to do it again.

So I reached out, owned up to my mistake, apologized, and proposed another conversation (while giving him a wide open out).

He replied four minutes (!) after my email:

###

While this story was embarrassing for me, I decided to share it because I think it does a good job illustrating the kind of person Ian is.

He thinks about serious things and he does serious work, but he doesn’t take himself too seriously.

He is professional, but also personable, generous, and kind.

He is busy, but not too busy to spread the good word about this unique and important moment in history, and the implications for all of us who are along for the ride.

Somehow, our second conversation, though different, managed to go just as well as our first. Throughout, I was struck by Ian’s ability to connect dots and reference obscure books, authors, and ideas to help tie his points together.

We covered a lot of ground during this (second) conversation, including:

• Ian’s career, such as his time at Beats/Apple and LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton)

• Bitcoin and why it is one of the “most important inventions of [his] lifetime”

• The power of brand

• What makes a good board member

• Ledger’s strategy

• Ian’s digital art collection

• Ian’s book and music recommendations, plus his reading habits

• How Ian is able to be so productive

• …and much more.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did (twice!).

Monty

p.s. Please press the ❤ button at the top of this post and share it with your friends. If you have questions or feedback, please comment on this post. (If you’re reading this in your email, you can view the browser or app version here.)

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A Conversation with Ledger Chief Experience Office, Ian C. Rogers

I think of you as a futurist. Throughout your career you always seems to be one step ahead of the crowd. When you let your brain wander to 10 years in the future, what's going on?

I'm super excited about what's going on professionally and in technology right now. Last year I wrote a long tweet about how I think that in the world of crypto, we're in the year 2000 or 2001 relative to the timeline of the internet.

In other words, there are many ideas that we've known are inevitable for a very long time. What happens is you get overexcited about them and think it's all going to come true tomorrow. Then you realize it's not going to happen immediately, and that's when the bubble bursts.

But then you enter a period of sustained growth—which I believe we're in right now—and it is even more incredibly exciting.

I think that AI and blockchains are two sides of the same coin. They represent digital abundance and digital scarcity. We're at a pivotal moment for both technology and society.

There are a ton of things going on globally, many of which are uncertain and have potentially scary consequences depending on your perspective. At the same time, this means we are in a time of significant change.

I think about how I would like to position myself relative to these technological and societal changes.

I know you’re a big reader. Are there any books that you’ve read that have informed your thinking on these topics?

One of the books I enjoyed last year is The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization by Peter Zeihan. Despite its doomsday-sounding title, the book, recommended to me by a member of Congress, provides an interesting lens on the macro factors at play in the world today. Zeihan is famously not a fan of crypto, but his conclusions made me think about the role crypto could play if many of the scenarios he describes come true.

There are already things happening in the world that, when pushed to their boiling points or conclusions, could have significant implications. I think about where I want to push things relative to these bigger changes and the role that technology plays within that.

Authors like Yuval Harari (Sapiens) and Ray Dalio (Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order) offer interesting historical perspectives on current events but lack the precise technological lens that someone like Balaji Srinivasan or Benedict Evans brings to the table.

Another great book I recommend is Chip War, which provides a lens to look at the period I've lived through with a completely different eye. Nearly everything we do is influenced by the silicon chip and how it has been leveraged over the last 50 years.

I find it interesting to think about the future with history as a guide while considering how technology changes that shape. As Balaji says, Starlink has repriced the earth. I certainly don't want to live in a city the same way I did in 1995. These are the kinds of things I think about when looking out at the next 10 years.

I hadn't heard that quote before about Starlink repricing the earth. What he means is that now living anywhere is the same as living anywhere else in terms of connectivity?

Correct. If you can do your job equally well in New York City at a certain price versus basically anywhere on earth…well there are many places on earth where the lifestyle is good and the real estate is cheap. I think COVID was a big wake up call for a lot of people.

I feel lucky. I had a bit of a wake up call myself earlier in life. In 1999 I was at a company called Nullsoft and we made Winamp [one of the first widely used music players on Windows] and we sold the company to AOL in May of 1999. AOL wanted to move everyone to San Francisco. I had a kid in grade school at the time and I was a single dad.

I said, I'm sorry, I can't move from L.A. to San Francisco. I was living in Topanga Canyon, which is this hippie canyon between the Pacific Palisades and Malibu and I actually had a fiber connection in 1999 and I was working at home. I was living the COVID life before COVID.

I was working for a virtual company, Nullsoft, where there were only three other employees. Justin Frankel, the head of Nullsoft at the time said don't move, man - stay where you are and fly up once or twice a month. I was like, wait, what? I could live in LA and work in San Francisco? And I did that for the next 15 years.

We started another company which sold to Yahoo where I worked for awhile, and then on to Topspin, then to Beats and a company they owned called Mog, and then onto Apple Music. Through all of that, I was working at home and going back and forth as needed to other California cities.

COVID made remote work not fringe, and something that was viable for lots of people. It's about connectivity, but also about lifestyle and how much you like adventure. For me, that was part of leaving California and coming to Paris. I wouldn't say lifestyle is better in either Paris or Los Angeles. They're different, and I really love both cities. But while some people like sameness, I like adventure.

Now that you've been in Paris for a bit, do you think you are a Parisian indefinitely or do you have plans to return to the States? 

I don't have any plans to return to the States. But I don't think I'll be a Parisian forever.

I was just having a conversation this morning with someone who works at a crypto foundation, which is completely remote. And he made the comment that they actually get the most done every quarter when they're all in the same room and can make decisions really quickly.

In person work is the thing that's impossible to replace. When we had a security incident with Ledger in December we dealt with it really quickly because we were all in the same room. Pascal, the CEO, was there. Charles, our CTO was in the room. Our general counsel was in the room. So we could make decisions really quickly.

I don't think we could have responded as quickly and as productively as we did if we weren't together. There's really no replacement for human beings sitting next to each other and clickin' like Golden State, as Pusha T says. So that's why I'm in Paris. Because being in the same room with colleagues building things is irreplaceable. That is exactly what I'll be doing for the foreseeable future.

In the future, I don't really want to go backwards to something I've done before. It's nice to always have that backup so you can always go back to the familiar. But as long as it's fun and comfortable, I'd like to keep moving forward.

I think ultimately for me, I won't be in a city. I'll be somewhere more remote and hopefully still using my brain and working with amazing people like I get to do every day today. I will just be further away. That would be a nice way to retire without retiring.

I've been able to do some board positions over the years. I'm still on the board at Dr. Martens. I'm still consulting for LVMH [Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton]. I'm a board observer at a fashion search engine called Lyst. I've done a couple of smaller startup boards and advisory things. I love that.

As you just mentioned, you are a board member, and as an executive, you’ve dealt with your fair share of board members. What do you think makes a good board member? 

Great board members work hard for the company. I have to say at Dr. Martens, I think it took me some time to figure out what made me a good board member there. I think part of it is realizing why they wanted you to begin with, and then understanding how you deliver on that.

I think that there are a lot of things that board members do. And not all board members should do the same thing. If you've got a good, rounded, well-balanced board, they probably chose each board member for a particular reason.

My advice is don't try to spread yourself too thin. You're not in the company day-to-day. But there is something particular that you bring. For example, for me at Dr. Martens it's my technical experience combined with my LVMH experience and my belief in the power o good brand.

So I think for any board member, it's, what's your version of that? What's your flavor of that? Why were you chosen as a board member? Why do you round out this board relative to the other people and how do you bring your unique experience to the table? 

Understand the answers to those questions and then double or triple down on that.

Say more about the power of a brand.

I grew up with skateboarding and punk rock and really learned about quote unquote marketing from the Beastie Boys. I’ve learned that building brands takes a very long time.

There are no great brands that are less than 15 years old. They are not yet great. I think in that sense, the only great brand we have in crypto is Bitcoin. We will have more over time. There will even be such a thing as heritage brands.

But that takes a very long time. And, once you have that status, it's something that you can't buy. You do not put a great brand on sale. When was the last time you saw Apple or Louis Vuitton have a blowout sale where everything's discounted? Once you have a brand, you need to really protect it.

Tell me about your time at LVMH

I feel quite fortunate to have had the LVMH experience because LVMH is like a degree that you can't buy. I was there for five years at the group level, looking over a hundred different brands, seeing the strategic plans and the budgets of those brands.

Every year there's a strategic planning process and a budgeting process and just simply ingesting those plans is like a business school degree that's not available on the market. 

I was also there at a time when there was a big transformation in terms of consumer behavior. LVMH customers really turned toward the internet. Not in a novel way, but in an almost utilitarian way. It used to be “oh, look, you can go browse this website.” Now it’s, “I actually have more money than time.” 

These customers expect the brands that they interact with to have incredible experiences. But the desired experience has changed. The meaning of luxury went from, “let's spend three hours in the store and have a glass of champagne” to “how do I get exactly what I want really quickly and have excellent customer support when I want it.” Being able to see that play out across the 75+ brands at LVMH gave me a particular experience set. 

Bitcoin has been in the news a lot right now because of the approval of the Bitcoin ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) by the SEC. This ETF will give a lot of people who've never invested in Bitcoin the chance to buy it easily and directly from their brokerage account.

So what's your pitch to them? Why does Bitcoin matter? Why does it have value? And why will value continue to accrue to Bitcoin? 

The first thing I would recommend that someone do if they'd like to know more about this is not to necessarily listen to me. Also, don't go read a bunch of people on Twitter.

Read Lynn Alden's book, Broken Money. I really think that's the place to start. I think that she makes an incredibly compelling case that even someone who's quite skeptical will find interesting.

I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that there were so many things in that book that I learned that I didn't really fully understand before. 

I also recently read a book about the Fed, and it was a similar thing – I can't believe that I'm just now understanding how this stuff works. I don’t think the average person should be required to understand how the Fed works, but I do think that having a historical perspective and some idea of how this international currency game works will help.

I think that Lynn makes a very, salient point in Broken Money that money has had a challenge over the past hundred plus years because once we developed technology that allowed communication to move basically at the speed of light, starting with the telegraph, we were able to communicate faster than we were able to move hard money. This technological shift moved us into a different kind of monetary world which she describes quite well in the book.

In this world, having a decentralized, global, “always on” form of money, which is not able to be inflated by anyone and that moves at the speed of contemporary technology has a tremendous amount of value.

Bitcoin has proven itself in the market. It's been around for a long time now with so many people trying to kill it. Think about the fire that it has been under - the philosophical fire, the technical security, et cetera. 

There is a great quote in Broken Money about how Bitcoin exists in a very narrow design space where pretty much anything you try to do to it actually makes it worse. It’s already stood a substantial test of time. And not only time, but the volume of people who have been staring at it, talking about it, thinking about it, coding with it, coding on it, trying to break it, et cetera is significant. And despite all that it's been the best performing asset of the last 10 years.

I think that doesn't go unnoticed by people who are looking to hold assets, which, in some ways we all are. 

So I think that if you have a sense of what's happening in the world, what's happening with the dollar, what's happening with the debt to GDP ratio, and these kinds of things in our lifetimes and why they are different from what happened in our parents' generation, you get good perspective on it.

I think one of the great things that Lyn does in the book that was really helpful for me is understanding how the world that I grew up in is different than the world my parents grew up in and how it's different from the one my kids are growing up in.

You're looking at Bitcoin as the best performing asset of the last 10 years. I can't see why you wouldn't have a piece of it in your portfolio. Honestly, that would make zero sense to me why you would have zero exposure. Unless you just have some ideological problem with it. And that's called religion, which is not something I'm interested in. 

Now you mentioned the ETFs. They always say technology is overestimated in the short term and underestimated in the long term.

I think the ETF could very easily be a “sell the news” event. I sincerely hope it is because I personally will buy the dip…again. I’d say when you look at the long term implications, you're crazy not to have some kind of an allocation to Bitcoin. And even if that allocation is as low as 1 to 5%, when many people begin allocating at that level, we're in a completely different world in terms of the social acceptance and value of Bitcoin. 

It's going to be incredibly interesting to see how this plays out. There's no question we're at another one of these precipices. Everybody wants to say what's on the other side and no one really knows. As a rule, I don't listen to podcasts or read things which are just about speculation. I'm more interested in the history and the fundamentals, and I think that the fundamentals for Bitcoin are incredibly strong. 

I think Bitcoin might be the most interesting invention of my lifetime, and it might be one of the most significant inventions in all of humanity.

Also, the story of Bitcoin is just incredible. We human beings are story consuming creatures and the story of Satoshi Nakamoto, who may or may not be a time traveler who created this at exactly the right moment in the wake of the 2008 debt crisis, when all of the puzzle pieces fit together, both technologically and philosophically to put this into the world, and then to just have the foresight to disappear and the patience to do nothing afterwards.

If you put it in a movie, nobody would believe it.  Yet, here we are. 

In regard to the ETF, do you have any concerns about the centralization of so much Bitcoin with a handful of custodial entities.

Definitely. At the end of the day, self custody matters, whether you are an enterprise or an individual.

If you're an individual and you prefer to custody your Bitcoin with someone else, then exactly how they are securing and custodying those Bitcoins matters. 

I'd say there's two separate things here. First, will Bitcoin itself become centralized? I don't think so because it's really the miners who secure the network. Lyn [Alden] does a great job in Broken Money of asking, is there a centralization risk or a 51 percent attack risk with Bitcoin and what are those risks? So you can explore that more there. 

My other concern is more around how people and institutions are holding their crypto. Are they putting trust in people who might turn out to be Sam Bankman Fried? Remember there were both retail investors and institutions who were swept up in the FTX fallout. 

FTX really looked legit. There are many people who say, oh no, it looked like a fraud all the way. Come on. They were buying super bowl ads. They were talking with policymakers. They clearly had an air of legitimacy. Like you wouldn't have been considered crazy to think they're doing things like good security.

One problem is, there are many people at high levels of these companies that think about the business but they don't think about the technology or the security. There are solutions on the marketplace, which look like self custody more or less, but they don’t really have an answer to “What happens to that shard that you hold if you go out of business, right?” 

There are companies that say they're focused on security, but when you push deeper, it's security theater, it's a door behind a door. And if I say door enough times, then, you're supposed to feel secure. 

This is what I worry about, because people who believe in this space might lose their money. And that's horrible for all of us, but also it really hurts the legitimacy of the asset class.

I actually think the ETF is probably quite good for the asset class overall because you will have regulated custodians who are in the business of custody and security who are looking after those coins. It allows somebody who is an average investor who is willing to take a risk on the value of the asset, but who might not be willing to take a risk on other things, whether it's regulatory or technological or security or losing their recovery phrase or choosing the wrong custodian, et cetera. The ETF can remove those risks from the equation and allow you to simply pay a small fee to bet on the asset class.

The ETF also probably puts many people on a slippery slope, like so many of us have been on. You start with a little bit of exposure and then you get more educated and then you get more exposure and then you become interested in things like self custody and security. And then you become a Ledger customer. 

The slope is slippery because it's real. Because the fundamentals are good. The deeper you look the more convinced you get, and the further you go. That’s why they call it down the rabbit hole.

So to summarize: I think the ETF is incredibly positive all the way around. You're going to onboard a lot of new people who want exposure to the asset class. And I do believe that many of those people will go further down the rabbit hole. 

If these new participants go further down the rabbit hole and they say, okay, I want to get into self custody, then tell them about Ledger.

What's Ledger's core strategy and how does Ledger differentiate itself from other providers in this space? When I look at my options, why would I choose to go with Ledger? 

Ledger is a company that's turning 10 years old this year and has really always been about exactly the same thing: allowing people to secure their crypto. 

Let me be more specific: It's a hardware wallet with a service layer on top so that you can do whatever it is you would like.

It’s the only programmable environment on top of a secure element on the planet. 

So what is a secure element? A secure element is a special chip that is difficult to program that brings security in the way that a more broad functioning chip, like the ones that are in your cell phone, do not.

These chips have been in use for tens of years. It's the same chip that's in your passport or in your credit card. But where the credit card protects the secrets of the bank and the passport protects the secrets of the government, a Ledger protects your secrets.

On top of that, we have a lightweight operating system so you can install whichever plugin you would like to support the type of crypto that you like and use - Bitcoin and Ethereum and a couple hundred other plugins amounting to thousands of different types of crypto across chains.

You can use your Ledger just for cold storage, if that’s what you want - get a Ledger, load up Bitcoin, and put it in the closet and wait 10 years.

That’s a fine use case, but there are other things you can do too. Using Ledger Live you have access to services, whether you'd like to stake your coins or swap them or buy them or have them deposited directly into your Ledger. We have a credit card that we offer so that you can off ramp your crypto. You can trade, you can collect NFTs. You can even use your Ledger as your second factor passkey. For example, my Ledger is my second factor on my Twitter account, my government account, et cetera. So I've got an extremely secure second factor in these places that I need. 

We are always trying to bring the best user experience possible to the table in crypto, but we never compromise on security or self custody. User experience is actually really tricky when you want to be secure and when you want to hold your own coins.

In this cycle, just like in every cycle, you'll see many people who are willing to compromise on either security or self custody or both. Every time it ends the same way: in a crash. From Mt. Gox to FTX. 

When FTX went down, I had zero concern about the safety of my crypto because I knew exactly where it was. I had even done swaps within FTX, but I had swapped from self custody to self custody and I just didn't have any concern. Fundamentally, that security and that freedom is what we provide at Ledger. 

Let's talk about Ledger Recover for listeners and readers who are not familiar. Can you tell us what it is and also why it was so controversial when you announced it? 

When you have a self custody wallet, you have a recovery phrase. That recovery phrase allows you to recreate the wallet. So it's actually one of the superpowers of the wallet.

If you buy a Ledger device, you can buy more than one to experience this yourself. When you set up your Ledger you write down your recovery phrase. Those 24 words now can be put back into any Ledger and they will recreate your wallet, and you'll be able to recover those accounts on that wallet.

For example you could set up a Ledger, write down that recovery phrase, use it as a bookmark in a book, take the Ledger, throw it into the fire, cross the border, buy a new Ledger and input those 24 words into the new Ledger and boom, you're back in action.

I think that's truly a superpower of carrying value around with you. You can store value cryptographically and recover those accounts with those 24 words.

The challenge of those 24 words, of course, is that new users don't really understand what they are. They're used to an environment where if they need to recover their password, they just go to the company's website and put in their email address and reset the password.

Realizing the importance of these 24 words is not something a brand new user understands. Unfortunately at Ledger, we hear the horror stories every day of people who can’t find their recovery phrase. They reach out and ask can you help me? The fact is we can't. Part of being secure is there are no backdoors.

We have no way to get your value back for you if you have lost it. You are in charge of your value when it comes to a self custody wallet. So you get this recovery phrase and now you are supposed to do something smart with it. And regardless of the amount of value you have in that device, we can't help you if you lose it. 

Ledger Recover is something we worked on for three years to help you securely recover your accounts while keeping with the principles of self-custody.

Here's how it works: Your private key is encrypted, cut into three pieces, and given to three different custodians in the UK, Central Europe, and the US. At least two of those shards are needed to recover your wallet. When you sign up, you use a government ID for identity verification. In case you ever need to recover, you go through two identity checks, and those shards are sent back to a Ledger device, where they are reassembled. No one who isn't you ever has your complete private key.

It's a $10 per month optional feature aimed at newer users. If you're a crypto OG comfortable protecting your recovery phrase, this product isn't for you. Ledger Recover also comes with a $50,000 guarantee from our partner Coincover, which tells you something about the target audience.

Our belief is that Ledger Recover will help bring a completely different class of people into self-custody. Around 450 million people own crypto, but only about 10 million are using hardware wallets for self-custody. We've got a job to do to bring more people to self-custody, which I believe is the way, the truth, and the light.

In trying to do this, we’ve learned a big lesson at Ledger in just how to talk to the community. We were trying to build something targeted to new crypto users and we took a lot of fire from experienced crypto users. We screwed up on not getting the correct messaging out before the release notes. It's extremely difficult to talk to both audiences at the same time, particularly in the middle of a bull market. 

So people weren't able to fully understand that this was an optional service, but not a change to their service. We hadn't expected this. We were fully prepared to have the conversation about whether this product is good, secure and what is its architecture. We were also prepared to have the conversation about who is this product for. Maybe this product isn't for you. 

Our naiveté was not expecting to have a conversation beyond that. Where people said, wait, how can you even do this? The reality is that if we can sign a transaction using the device, then we can also do what Ledger Recover does. They are technically the same.

We had an assumption that the hardcore crypto community fully understood the way hardware wallets and software wallets work. I think it crossed a line for people that revealed their lack of understanding of the way that wallets work.

So if there's a silver lining here, maybe it's that many people realize that if your threat attacker is your wallet, you're screwed. Unless you are literally building your own wallet you are trusting someone in this chain. Then comes the  question of who do you trust? And again, we are not excited that we disappointed or pissed off people from the community, but we also know that, at the end of the day, we are a trustable entity. 

We've been in this space doing the same thing and saying the same thing for 10 years. We've been through many boom and bust cycles, and we keep doing the same thing and saying the same thing. And I think that that will prove itself over time.

As you look at the next two years and you look at Ledger's position and you think about Ledger’s strategic plan, what do you see as some of the biggest challenges that you face as a company? 

We're thinking super practically about all of the vectors on which we need to succeed.

One is building the best hardware with the best user interface and the best form factor. That's something that we set out to do with Stax. We've had this challenge with the screen yield on Stax, but the project itself is actually incredible.

It's heartbreaking that we've had this challenge with the screen yield because the product itself, and the usability, is something that we just think the market is going to love. We're desperate to get that out and we have a very strong roadmap behind that initial release.

The second priority is to show people the astounding number of things you can do with Ledger in addition to cold storage. Through Ledger Live, you can earn yield by staking, you can swap, buy, or do a weekly DCA using using one of our partners. You can use the Ledger credit card for off ramping your crypto.

We threw down the gauntlet in December by saying that blind signing is not something we're going to let people do with our hardware anymore. We had an issue where a hacker changed a file that allowed web3 apps to connect to Ledger, and for about 90 minutes, it was draining wallets of people who blind signed on third-party sites. Nobody using Ledger Live, clear signing, or with blind signing turned off was impacted.

Blind signing is a terrible behavior. I've been saying it's like unsafe sex—it's fine until it's not. We're always at risk. It's the '80s, and we're having unsafe sex several times a day. You're going to catch something.

We've been trying to push dApps to implement clear signing for years, but everyone thinks it's not their problem. It is. If you can't handle people's value securely, you shouldn't be handling it at all.

We're going to spend the first half of this year working with the dApp community to make it much easier for people to see what they're signing at all times and eradicate blind signing, which will wreck people if we don't fix the root problem.

What happened to Ledger in December will happen to another wallet or part of the chain tomorrow if we don't address this.

Another thing we need to focus on is the dev platform. We have 200 different applications that run on Ledger there, and they all go through security review. It's a huge challenge but super important to the communities. If you look at what the Pokla Dot community achieved on Ledger platform last year it's incredible, and that's just one community. If you multiply that across every community in the space - Solana, Cardano, et cetera, you've got incredibly interesting applications that are being written for Ledger. Supporting all of those communities is a huge priority for us.

We want to partner with all the best services in the space to give people the best user experience around whatever they would like to do with their crypto.

The other big focus for us is Ledger Enterprise, because we know the world tomorrow will be heterogeneous. You will have self custody hardware wallets, smart contract wallets, and enterprise level custodians. The security around all of those places should be important to you.

You should have a piece of hardware connected to your smart contract wallet. If you are using a custodian, then the security of that custodian should be as important to you as the collateralization of that custodian, right? We know that there are exchanges that are using Ledger Nanos as their security on the back end, and that should scare you because that means that there is a recovery phrase somewhere. Our goal is to have Ledger Enterprise be the solution that powers the industry, and that builds services that the industry needs.

Last year we announced a Ledger Enterprise trade link, which is a trading network that allows you to have more trading volume without necessarily taking the custody risk and being the marketplace between asset managers who would like to trade and exchanges who would like to trade.

These things will continue to be the focus for this year. There are some other interesting things I mentioned earlier: pass keys. I think we are moving into a password-less environment. As our CTO Charles Guillaume says, biometrics are interesting, but they are not passwords.

Passwords are secrets which can be rotated. Biometrics are neither secrets, nor can they be rotated. Using your Ledger as your passkey, if you are interested in security, is a much better solution than your face ID or your fingerprint. 

Separate from the security side you're doing some fun stuff at Ledger. For example, you have been doing these artist collaborations, like the one with Grant Yun designing a limited edition Ledger based on his iconic cow in the field piece. I'm extrapolating here, but you have a background in luxury, having worked at LVMH. Is part of the motivation of these artist collaborations to to make Ledger more of an object of desire and not just a security tool?

We live in this combinatorial digital physical world. We're physical beings. We live in physical dwellings. And yet we generally care more about the opinions of our network neighbors than our physical neighbors. We spend all of our time with people online, yet our human carcasses live in the physical world.

Ledger is the physical representation of digital value, and having it be something fun and cool and desirable is better than having it be something that looks like medical equipment.

That was fundamentally what Jimmy Iovine realized with Beats. He looked at the iPhone and the extrapolation he made was headphones will be like sneakers — everybody will have a pair and the ones that you have will say something about who you are. I think the revelation was that simple. And it was true.

I think Ledger can be that kind of object. If you are using a Ledger, you're a particular kind of person. I don't know if you're a Bitcoin person or a Doge person or an mfer or a Bored Ape or a Punk or whatever, and that is what I love.

Not everybody who's into crypto is into the same crypto. I always say, there's no such thing as “Crypto.” Crypto is a collection of communities the same way that there's no such thing as music. Music is a collection of communities.

In music, you can make a player like Winamp or an iPod that can be adopted across all the different communities. Similarly, crypto is a collection of communities, and Ledger is the iPod of crypto, broadly. 

Last fall we did a Bitcoin Orange Ledger Nano, where 5% from every sale went to Bitcoin core development through a group called Brink. It was a huge success and I don't think I'm giving away anything too early here by saying we're going to keep it going and make it just evergreen.

There should be a Ledger Nano for the Bitcoin community. But there should also be a Nano for the Grant Yun community. And those are at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of size, right?

But to me, both are relevant. Bitcoiners and Grant Yun collectors are both ultimately on the same mission. I want to hold something in my hand that's meaningful to me. 

You came from music and then luxury and lots of people who are not in this world have varying opinions about crypto and NFTs. Some people think it's all a scam. Some people think it's just weird. Some people think you're going to lose all your money.

Have any of your peers or friends or colleagues from your previous lives and careers been confused or scratched their heads about your pivot over to crypto?

Definitely. And I would say it depends on the market. They have a different opinion depending on what they've read in the news that week. But it's not universal: I've had some very nuanced conversations with everyone from Mike D of the Beastie Boys to Bernard Arnault of LVMH about not only the asset class but also digital art.

After I joined Ledger, I went to every executive committee member of LVMH. I gave them a copy of "The Bitcoin Standard" in their preferred language - many copies in French - and had a conversation about it. I was surprised by the many nuanced conversations I had when the market was raging.

Overall, there is an openness to the obvious point that the internet will have its own money. The problem comes when you, as an individual, become associated with an industry that puts itself on display, with everything from the Do Kwon situation to SBF, and so on. That's when I get calls from friends asking me to sort it out for them.

It's like it's 1998, and I'm sitting here telling you this internet thing is going to be big. You may not be ready for what's happening, but when you are, give me a call and say, "Hey, Ian, now I'm ready to learn about it." I'm here when you want to know more.

I'll tell you what I have no patience for is people who understand why someone would spend $50,000 on a watch but doesn't understand why someone would spend $5,000 on an NFT.

People in the luxury business should be exceedingly well-placed to understand why somebody would buy something that has digital scarcity and cultural relevance. I'm holding up my watch to you right now, which has a Martin Grasser NFT on it. Why would I spend $15,000 on that? Because I appreciate the craft, the inherent artistic value, and that it's made by a talented and well-known creator. I think the value will go sideways, if not up, and I want to be a member of that small community who appreciates this exceptional item.

If you think the value of a Basquiat painting is in the paint and wood, or the value of a Louis Vuitton bag is in the leather, you are mistaken. You're not understanding how human beings actually work.

I collected punk rock seven inches when I was in high school. Now go on to discogs.com and try to buy Misfits' "Cough Cool" on seven-inch. How the hell can a punk rock seven-inch from the late seventies or early eighties cost 15,000 pounds, dollars, or euros? It is not the value of the shellac it is pressed upon. It is cultural value. It's value created by scarcity. It's value created by you. There is always worth to someone.

And when we live in a networked world, value between supply and demand is all that matters. Whether everyone thinks it has value is irrelevant.

Speaking of cultural objects that have value: You own a lot of NFTs, and you've been updating your Gallery, which looks great. You have a very eclectic, diverse collection, a lot of generative art, AI, art, photography, and more.

How do you decide what to buy? 

That's a good question. Digital art is a rabbit hole. I always say, I think I was built for this. If you grew up collecting records and studying computer science and all the things that I've done, you definitely pop out as an NFT collector.

I've been going through my Gallery, through every Art Blocks season and collection, augmenting what I've already bought with new things that I like. What I like is based on aesthetics, but oftentimes it's even more about the storytelling.

Human beings are story-consuming creatures and we all fall for it. Context matters a lot. That context might be something like, "Hey, this is an Art Blocks Curated release. Therefore there must be something interesting there." Just like an album that comes out on Matador or Sub Pop records. You're like, "Look, Matador and Sub Pop believe in this. I want to take a listen."

Some of that might be editorial, right? If something is reviewed by Pitchfork or Mojo, I'll listen to it. It doesn't mean I'm going to like it, but it has at least gone through their filter. And I'm curious.

If something's at Bright Moments, Art Blocks, or Proof, those are filters which are meaningful to me. So I pay attention to those.

It's also what I love about the space. You can find something that you really like aesthetically, buy it maybe on Tezos for not very much, and then create a relationship with that artist. There are many artists who I have been really fortunate to build relationships with over the past few years.

Human beings love patronage and giving. We noticed that even at Winamp. You got nothing for giving us $10 for Winamp and you had an option to give more. We cashed hundred-dollar checks all day long. People got nothing for giving us that money, except a warm feeling that they were contributing to a project they believed in and that they were helping us live another day so that we could keep doing what we're doing. That's patronage.

Personally, I love that with artists. I do it on Bandcamp when I buy vinyl and I do it on FX Hash, object.com, and other platforms because I think art makes the world a better place. I think artists make the world a better place. That's the world that I want to live in.

If you look at my collection it's eclectic. Some of it's obvious - you've got music and hip hop. And if you look at the photos, you'd know that's Ian, because that's a photo of his wife. And that's a photo of Adam from the Beastie Boys. I love, love, love so much of what has happened in the generative art world; it's just mind blowing. And to me, like Bitcoin, the more I stare at it, the more I love it. I also think that I had this realization since my trade skill that I went to college for is computer science.

I spent 20 years of my career as an engineer and an engineering manager, so I actually understand creative coding more than I do painting. That's just a reality for me. If I'm looking at generative art, I'm more amazed by it because of my background. If I'm looking at an abstract painting, I'm like, "I don't know. Is that amazing? I don't know. I like the way it looks."

These are the things that go into it for me. I love the FX Hash gallery that I just posted. There's so much amazing stuff in there that people don't fully understand yet. Also, our ability to consume these works is really limited. Looking at it on your phone is a joke, looking at it as a flat image is a joke.

I can't wait until we have displays where you can fully experience a piece by someone like Andreas Gysin, who just did a thing in Berlin where he tried to put them on gigantic screens. Incredible. Self-referential where the code itself is the piece.

Experiencing generative art on your phone or even in a web browser is a joke. You have to turn your sound on and click, right? People are just scrolling through and glancing. You're not going to get the joke. You really do have to dive into it and be curious. How was this done? Who did this?

I'm starting to write a column for Rick Rubin's upcoming magazine. My goal through that is to talk about art and artists and to never use the word NFT and to not talk about digital. The only reason you ever talk about technology is because you're talking about how an artist expresses themselves using technology.

I think that it's one of these things where once you poke your head in there, it's impossible not to find something interesting. These are the stories that, when the New York Times, Rolling Stone, or Wall Street Journal writes a story about monkey JPEGs, what they're not telling you about is mpkoz creating the first still life expressed through code, the way that Chimera does, which also just happens to have this Easter egg thrown in that it's 3D and never really static.

That particular project, Chimera, contributed millions of dollars to cancer research at Northwestern University. This isn't the story that Rolling Stone or Wall Street Journal are telling you. But these are the stories that I think are genuinely beautiful and I know when I tell them to people that they've got a different picture of what this space is and can be than maybe what they had in their head before. So I hope that my collecting and my gallery will lead other people to simply say, "Oh, wow, this isn't what I thought it was," and to find beauty in it.

Let’s talk Ordinals. They're all the rage right now. Do you have any in your collection? 

I do. I have an On Chain Monkey. That has been a great lens through which to look at Ordinals. Danny, the CEO, is in my view, the most well spoken on the subject.

I think it was Bitcoin Magazine that published his article about Ordinals, which is incredibly worth reading if you want to understand the potential of Ordinals. It's pretty compelling to read Broken Money [the book by Lyn Alden mentioned earlier in this interview] and then read Danny's article. Because if you read Broken Money, you may come away with a sense of why Bitcoin is special. Then thinking about Ordinals in that context is incredibly interesting.

I think it's true that artists don't really care about the chain. Artists are going to go wherever the audience is. There will be gold rushes in every direction. For me, I will just stick with artists I believe in and we'll see where it lands. When I buy art, I know that the likelihood that I will sell that art, whether it's for a profit or a loss, is very slim. I don't think of it as a quote unquote investment. I really think of it as patronage and building something which is an expression of my aesthetic.

What is an album or musical artist that you've recently fallen in love with?

I published my 2023 playlist and I linked to all of my lists for the last seven years. You get a pretty good sense of my music taste if you look through that.

An artist that I would really love to mention who is a love of ours for the past four or five years is Alex Cameron. He's an Australian artist. I think he is the ultimate meta modern artist.

The idea is that the meta modern generation is one that can be both sincere and ironic at the same time. And that is Alex Cameron. You might listen to Alex Cameron and think, Oh God, this is novelty. It's like Weird Al Yankovic or something. (Aside: there's a great book by probably my favorite contemporary author, John Higgs. Everything John has written is worth reading, but there’s one about the KLF where he dives into this notion).

I think the songwriting is as good as Bruce Springsteen or any pop songwriter of the past 50 years. And it's also both sincere and ironic all the time. The songs themselves bring me so much joy in the same way that Pulp did in the nineties. Although Pulp was darker, more serious, more social commentary. Alex Cameron is much lighter, more frivolous. The first time you hear it, you're not sure if you like it. By the 10th time you just want to put it on over and over and over. That is Alex Cameron. 

I listen to a lot of different things. If you play my playlist, you'll see, I love metal. I love jazz. I started my career at 16 years old at a jazz radio station. I was an on air announcer for a jazz radio station in Elkhart, Indiana - WVPE 88.1. If you happen to drive through northern Indiana, you can turn it on. There is much amazing stuff happening in the world of jazz right now. Jazz is more exciting now than ever in my life.

Tell me a few jazz artists you love

Shabaka Hutchinngs is an interesting character and probably the greatest living saxophone player who retired from the saxophone on December 31st. And now he's only playing flute. His love of flute is probably why he was the greatest living sax player because he had chops unlike anyone else because he was playing sax professionally but practicing flute four hours a day. He’s had four bands, releasing under Shabaka Hutchings, The Comet is Coming, Sons of Kemet, and Shabaka and the Ancestors. All of those are super worth pursuing. 

This year there’s a great album, Clap!, by this French trumpeter named Erik Truffaz. It is such a cool record. It sounds it could be a classic Miles Davis album. I think track three on there is just an incredible piece of music. 

On the other end of the spectrum, there's this guy, Matthew Halsall, who I think made one of the most beautiful albums of the year - An Ever Changing View. I was sending it to friends saying do you like this as much as I do? Because I feel like maybe it's too easy listening or something. It's really pleasant. It's not outside, not challenging, not heavy. It's almost pedestrian. But it's not. It's deep and beautiful. I love that record. I've played it so many times this year. 

I normally listen to things that are more challenging. I think that's what happens, right? If you start listening to heavy metal when you're five years old, like I did, by the time you're 50 you're going to be at the fringe, right? The brain wants familiar-with-a-twist. If you just do that over and over and over and over and over, you get pretty twisted, and so I think that's why if someone listens to my 2023 roundup playlist, they’ll probably be like I've never heard of any of these bands.

I had the privilege of sitting with Rick Rubin and RZA from The Wu Tang Clan this summer, just playing each other's songs. One of the songs I played them was the first song on that playlist, which is Sliver of Ice by ANOHNI, who used to be Antony and the Johnsons. And wow, if that song doesn't move you then just delete the playlist because you're not going to like anything else. It’s just gorgeous, soulful. 

What's your sound set up at home? 

I have Sonos throughout the house, and I would say that 75 percent of the listening time is done with Sonos. We're always listening to music in our house. So Sonos can be on throughout all the different rooms.

Then I have a lot of vinyl and I have a separate setup for that. So that other 25 percent of the time, if you're sitting at the dining table or in the living room reading a book, then the vinyl is on. There are two turntables and a mixer and two studio monitors. It is full analog. You don’t need to touch your phone.

You've referenced a ton of books during this conversation. When do you do your reading?

I move pretty slowly through books, but I do read consistently and chip away at it. 

I mostly read at night but I've also tried to get in the habit of reading any time I would have looked at something else on my phone. I don't have Instagram anymore. I deleted my Facebook account a long time ago. I do still look at Twitter more than I would like. But I've tried to be in the habit of moving that time I would have spent scrolling social media to reading book on my phone in the Kindle app.

If you're standing in a line, you could be scrolling Twitter or you could be reading a book. Where is the better ROI? The book for sure.

In addition to reading, other thing I'm trying to do now is practicing French and learning Italian, and that takes time. I devote somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour to language learning every day.

Tyler Cowen has this question he asks his guests on his podcast Conversations with Tyler, which I want to ask you: What is the Ian Rogers production function? In other words, what makes you able to do what you do? Some people just seem to have more than 24 hours in a day and it seems like you're one of those people. What's your secret?

I don't watch moving pictures. I don't have a Netflix account, I don’t watch TV.

People say “have you seen....” and I'm like, no, you don't even need to finish a sentence because I haven't seen it. I've never seen Seinfeld. I've never seen Game of Thrones. I've never seen fill-in-the-blank. I couldn't even name more contemporary shows. When I'm on a plane, I don't touch the screen except to turn it off.

If you look at my app usage on my phone, it'd be pretty predictable. WhatsApp followed by Slack followed by Mail. What you're not going to see appear is, Instagram, Tiktok, YouTube.

Instead of watching things, I'm reading a book, I'm going for a run, I'm spending time with my family.

Many years ago Rick Rubin changed his lifestyle to be a healthier person and I asked him what made him turn the corner. He said that he realized that if he didn't take care of himself, he couldn't show up for other people. He said that he set up his life up so that the one thing he is sure to get done every day is something that makes him a better person.

That really influenced me. I try to be super particular about how I spend my time. I really do try to fit in the things that I know make me a better person.

When I was a startup CEO and I was running marathons people would say I don't understand how you have time to train for marathons and be a startup CEO. I would answer, I don't watch movies or television. So there's multiple hours every week. Secondly, I don’t have time NOT to run. If I didn't run or take showers, I would never have good ideas.

You don't have good ideas when you're staring at your phone scrolling Twitter. You have good ideas when your system is flooded with endorphins and you haven't looked at a text message for 45 minutes and your body's searching for carbohydrates.

Follow Ian:

• X: @iancr

• Galley: gallery.so/higallery

• Fisfulayen: Ian’s old blog (no longer posting, but full of lots of great historical content): fistfulayen.wordpress.com

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You may know my two interviewees today by their names. You may recognize them by their iconic profile pictures:

@NedRyersonBing and his Ghost
@MaryPatBing and her Nerd Glasses Punk.

But… did you notice that they are both Bings?

Yes, Ned Ryerson Bing and Mary Pat Bing are one of the few married couples in this space who are both active collectors and who haven’t chosen the clichéd "Main User" and "Mrs. Main User" as their usernames.

I have branched out from interviewing artists exclusively. Artists are, of course, a critical leg of the digital art ecosystem. But it is, indeed, an ecosystem.

The simplified chart below offers a high level map of the digital art ecosystem.

Culture, at the center, is shaped by the key players in the ecosystem: artists, builders, and collectors.

These groups interact with each other, and the sum of those collective actions becomes culture.

Chief among the interactions among these key groups are financial interactions. The chart above also attempts to summarize the key money flows.

Money flows…

• …from collectors to artists (i.e. buying art)

• …from collectors to builders (i.e. platform fees)

• …from artists to builders (i.e. platform fees or a cut of primary sales)

• …from builders to artists (i.e. sponsoring and marketing a drop)

(Of course, there are other less obvious financial flows, such as builders “paying” collectors in their native token as incentive for using the platform, or artists “paying” loyal collectors with free or discounted drops, but those are sufficiently niche that they are not very relevant to the big picture here.)

The money starts with the collectors.

Without collectors, there is no marketplace. Without a marketplace, there is no financial incentive for artists to show up and create art or for builders to show up to build platforms or technology or IRL events.

If nobody shows up, no culture is built.

In other words, collectors serve as the lifeblood of the ecosystem. The collectors inject liquidity, which is really just a financialized synonym for “aliveness.” Liquidity serves as the catalyst which brings life and force to the culture-building flywheel.

That is why I’ve decided it’s important for me to begin interviewing collectors and builders, in addition to my artist interviews. If we want this space to flourish, we need to bring in new participants across all three groups. If my interviews can inspire, even at the margin, someone to begin gleefully dabbling with art, or collecting, or building, then I’ve done my job.

(Speaking of which, I will be announcing my first builder interview in the coming weeks - I am excited to share it with you.)

If you missed my first two collector interviews, you can find them here:

Today’s conversation with Ned and Mary Pat is my first time doing an interview with multiple people. It made for a lot of fun and back and forth.

Some of the topics we discussed include:

• The story behind their usernames and their thoughts on anonymity

• How they have navigated their shared all-encompassing hobby as a couple

• The hyper financialization of art (and why it's a good thing)

• Emerging artists on their radar

• Art they hope to never sell

• The bull case for Chromie Squiggles

• Their strategies (or lack thereof) when it comes to collecting

• Price predictions for one year from now

• And a whole lot more!

Now, please enjoy my conversation with Ned Ryerson Bing and Mary Pat Bing.

Monty

p.s. If you enjoy this conversation, please press the ❤ button at the top of this post and share it with your friends. If you have questions or feedback, please comment on this post. (If you’re reading this in your email, you can view the browser or app version here.)

p.p.s I recently created an Instagram account. You can find me @montyreport.

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A Conversation with Digital Art Collectors Ned Ryerson Bing and Mary Pat Bing

Monty: I have to start with your usernames: Ned Ryerson Bing and Mary Pat Bing.

For the uninitiated who are listening to this or reading this, these are references to the movie Groundhog Day and to a specific scene when Bill Murray's character, Phil, is talking to someone who he went to high school with named Ned Ryerson. In this scene, Ned enthusiastically says "Bing" over and over again and he also mentions that he dated Phil's sister, Mary Pat.

Why did you decide to structure your online identities around this niche scene?

Ned: I would love to tell you that it was deeply thought through and has some prominent role in how I got to where I got to be. But it just started when I got into Top Shot and needed an anon user name.

I don't know why I was thinking of this scene. But I love the movie and just picked the name. Who knows, maybe Phil Connors was taken.

One time I had a younger kid tell me I was an idiot for using my real name. And I was like, “Yeahhh, it's not my real name.” Some people just don't know the character, but when they do they're like, “Oh my God, I love it.”

Then when Mary got in the space she was trying to come up with a name. I remembered that line about Mary Pat and it just totally landed.

Mary Pat: We were looking for a way to connect us, but I didn't want to be “Mrs. Bing.” I felt that Mary Pat Bing was a name where some people might know we're connected, but it wouldn’t be obvious.

One funny thing that came out of this is that you, Ned, had a Zoom chat with the actor who played Ned Ryerson: Stephen Tobolowsky. How did that come to be?

Ned: There is a photographer in the space, Trey Ratcliff , who recognized my username and he actually knows the actor, Stephen Tobolowsky, who played Ned Ryerson.

The character himself is now special to me because it's part of my life. It's my alter ego. And I was like I bet Stephen Tobolowsky would think this is hilarious and weird that I'm building this entire thing off of his fake name. Like which one's the real Ned?

So Trey made the intro over email and it took a while, but Stephen was up for a call. We spent half an hour together and it was great.

It genuinely seemed like he enjoyed the conversation, like it wasn't a chore. We talked about how he met his wife and tips for actors and about his kids. It was just a really cool conversation.

He actually has a podcast that's just him telling stories about his life. I just recently listened to it and it's really good. He's a really interesting guy. It's called The Tobolowsky Files. I think it's done now, but he did 99 episodes.

Why did the two of you choose to be anonymous?

Ned: I started anonymously because I have a job. I had more of a full time job when I started. I didn't want people to think I was not doing my work. It was just freeing. I didn't want to have conversations about what I tweeted and things like that.

In real life I have a Twitter account, but it's not very active, never has been active. I've always been a bit paranoid about saying the wrong thing. So when I came up with a fake name and an anon Twitter account, I was like, “Oh my gosh, I can say whatever I want.”

Months into it, I realized I wasn’t saying anything I wouldn't say otherwise, but I'm just more able to be myself. I've really enjoyed the pseudonymity. There are points at which it's a pain or I wish I could say my real name because of the connections you can make.

I've been somewhat careful about maintaining anonymity, but not so careful. But initially it was just for freedom of ability to communicate and to do whatever I want.

Mary Pat: You have more freedom with anonymity. You don't really worry about what you're saying as much. You don't have a job or coworkers that might bring this stuff back to your real life.

There is some freedom to anonymity. But I also feel like you get to a point where you wish people could know who you were, or you could go to an event and post pictures of yourself.

There's almost this element of, does it still really matter that much? In the beginning, it's, “Oh, we're in crypto, we're going to be anonymous.” But maybe it doesn't matter as much as it did in the beginning.

Let's talk about both of your pseudonymous faces. Ned - you have a Ghxst. Mary Pat - you have a Punk. Can you tell me the story behind those and why you chose the ones that you chose?

Ned: I don't remember exactly how I found Ghxst. I was not the earliest, but I was pretty early. They were impossible to get - it was the gas wars before gas wars. I was new to NFTs and understanding how to work Metamask and all that stuff and also I wasn't comfortable spending a whole lot of money yet on this stuff. It was all very foreign and wild.

But there was an auction for Ghxst 57. I was like, “I can't control if I get them on these stealth drops, but I can control whether I get it at auction.”

I loved this one. It was a rarer Halo Ghxst. But I also really liked the starkness of the red and the yellow and the black.

I had scheduled a haircut at the time of the auction concluding. I brought my laptop to the barber and I had it up while they were cutting my hair and then the haircut ended and I was huddled in the corner on a laptop doing the auction, and I won the auction and that was it.

I think I opened the Twitter account shortly after and that was my PFP.

Mary Pat: My PFP is a bit indicative of my shopping habits.

Ned got into NFTs before me. When I got into NFTs, I guess I came in a little hard and wanted a Punk right away.

I had read about CryptoPunks way before we were in the space. I read a random Vice article and I thought they were super cool. I thought the technology was really interesting and I wanted to learn more about it, but then it just faded and I forgot about it.

Then once Ned got into it, it was like, “Oh, one day we might get a CryptoPunk, that would be super cool.” To me, it was always the ultimate collection.

So we waited. Then ETH dropped to $900 or something like that, and we decided it was a good time. I remember we were on vacation and we needed to transfer ETH and we were trying to hide this from our family because we didn't want to talk about this thing that we were buying.

It ended up being a fun thing that we did while we were on vacation and we couldn't talk about it in front of anyone else, but we would quietly hide in the corner and giggle over the fact that I finally got a CryptoPunk.

You mentioned your family on vacation and I'm always curious — do any of your friends and family know about your collective addiction to digital art?

Ned: Mine do. My friends definitely do. I got them into NFTs for a bit. They've faded off, not all of them, but most of them. My dad has a background in art and my mom to a certain extent is in it through my dad, and my sisters follow what I'm doing.

They don’t really know the details of it, but it's not a secret with my friends or my family.

Mary Pat: Mine definitely don't, and I think that's something that is a little bit sad.

Women in general are just not in the space. If we ever meet people in public and they’re into crypto, it is usually the male side of the couple that's into it.

I haven't really figured out why my friends, when I talk to them about it, just don't have any interest in it whatsoever. It's interesting.

I don't know if it's the money thing that makes NFTs uncomfortable, or is it the art? Because I think I could talk to my friends about collecting art. So I think it does have a bit more to do with the financial aspect of it, or the trading aspect.

As for my family, I don't really talk about it with them and I don't know why. They're not really into art. I don't think they would understand it. They would think it's weird.

Were the two of you into art before crypto art?

Mary Pat: I've always been interested in art. I never had money to collect it when I was younger. But I had my posters and things like that. When we first started dating, Ned and his dad collected art together. I feel like you introduced me to collecting art, Ned.

Ned: My dad is an academic art person. He works in schools on the art side. So growing up, I actually hated it.

The joke was that I would call museums “the M word” because whenever we would go to a city and travel, we would have to go to a museum and it was the worst part of the trip.

But as I grew older it became a way to connect with him. He's very into photography and the history of photography. I started growing up and needing stuff for my walls and looking at art as a kind of alternative asset.

My dad always says, “You can't hang a stock certificate on your wall.”

Art became this way of putting money to use that I also got enjoyment out of and also connected with my dad over. We would collect photography.

Frankly, understanding the auction houses and the way that things were priced and how it worked I think helped when I first got into crypto art because there is a real learning curve on understanding these kinds of markets.

It's obviously different, but having experienced the auction houses and the way that the art world was, I had a cheat code in my dad. When I came to NFTs, I was like, Oh, my God, this is so much better in almost every way.

The main way it's not as good is the physical art itself isn't there yet, right? Like the physical art on my wall is a better experience than looking at a JPEG on my computer. But other than that, the friction and gatekeeping involved in traditional art is not a feature, and NFTs solve for that and more.

Another big difference is how liquid these markets are compared to traditional art and how these artistic pieces turn into tradable assets. The “blurification" of art, so to speak, in which art becomes just another ticker on a screen.

On one hand, it's great for artists to have liquid markets and participants. On the other hand, you have a lot of people in the space who don't care about the art. They care about the money. Not that you can ever separate the two, but I'm curious if either of you have thoughts on this dynamic.

Ned: Art was already financialized. This is the hyper financialization of it you're talking about — this ability for it to transact so quickly and frictionlessly. There are bad parts of that and there are fantastic parts about that.

Imagine you actually are in it for the art. It was hard to buy these things before.

Imagine you wanted to discover an artist in Brazil and buy his art the next day. You couldn't. You just literally couldn't.

Imagine you wanted to buy 6,000 pieces of art. I don't know if you've seen people's collections on Tezos, but people have thousands and thousands of pieces of art. You could not do that before. You couldn't store it. You couldn't ship it.

Again, art was already financialized. This might take it up the ladder a couple of notches, if not more, but it also opens up the ability to transact for the people who actually love the art as well.

The good outweighs the bad, in my opinion. It is then dependent on the culture to have a scene of people who truly love it for the art.

You arrived to the space first Ned. What was your reaction, Mary Pat, when that started?

Mary Pat: We both got into Top Shot together at first. Ned needed my email address to create another spot in line for some pack drop. Then I found out that you could make money on these and I was like, wait a minute - that's my pack! I just pulled a LeBron James!

Then Top Shot ended and I fell off the scene a bit. I went back to my job and kids and all that stuff. But Ned got a little bit more into it.

At first I was very patient and kind and then I started to get a little frustrated and maybe a little jealous that Ned was spending all his time on his computer with these strangers that I had no idea who they were. I think we got into a couple of massive fights.

I'm sure everyone's had this argument with their partner - who are these people? What are you doing online?

Then I had a talk with myself, and I realized he clearly loves this and so I decided I need to understand it.

So I set up a wallet. I had bought ETH years ago in a random Coinbase account. I transferred ETH and I came upstairs and I was so proud of myself. I told Ned, “Hey, guess what? I set up a wallet.”

I thought he was going to be so proud of me, which he probably was, but his initial reaction was, “What did you do? Did you tell anyone your seed phrase? What have you done? Why didn't you ask me?”

After that whole Intro to Crypto Security, I feel like it took me a little while to get into it. I didn't want to be a part of your crew. I wanted to find my own space. I was like I'm not going to just join your friend group.

I needed to find my own way and my own crew. I did and it's been really fun ever since.

Luckily for Ned, I no longer yell at him anymore for spending hours minting things. Now we just neglect our children together.

Ned : My take on this is she handled it fantastically. I found this other part of my life and world and disappeared and was distracted and all that stuff.

She totally took it in stride. Did she break every once in a while? Absolutely.

But I earned it. It wasn't out of the blue. My memory is that she was super understanding about it. She would get excited with me about something if I was excited about something. All that good stuff.

Mary Pat: I will say if people have partners that are upset — and I get it, I was upset that my partner was spending time doing something that I didn't understand — I really would recommend introducing your partner to the crypto art world and showing them all this stuff.

I'm always sad for people when they're like, “Oh, my wife hates generative art.” But I really would recommend people explain it to your partners and show it to them. It's a really cool world and it's so much more fun to do it together.

Even if your partner doesn't get into it, just have them understand it and try to explain it to them, because you never know… they might like it.

During my Twitter sleuthing I noted that you started your own business Ned. In your own words, you were fortunate to have a “life changing exit.” I'm curious what you can share about your entrepreneurial journey.

Ned: I put that in a tweet?

Mary Pat: I was just going to say, what did you say?

Ned: The “life changing exit” part I didn't remember.

But yes, I started a business a little over 10 years ago with two other people. You might be surprised that someone who's into NFTs and crypto is able to tolerate some risk.

I started the business with these two folks and we bootstrapped it. We didn't raise any money from VCs or anything like that.

We steadily grew it and it became a successful company that had a good culture. Eventually it got to the point that we'd been doing it for 10 years and there was a good offer and we jumped at it.

Are you still at the company or have you moved on fully now?

Ned: I'm still at the company. I've moved into more of a part time role.

By late 2021, I realized I had gotten way more interested in other things — this space being one huge part of it — and I just wasn't as engaged as I used to be. I communicated that to them and I am in a part time role now

Mary Pat, what about you? What can you share about your IRL work?

Mary Pat: What can I share? Ned and I work in similar industries. We met at work. Then Ned left to start his own company. I'm still at the company that we were at when we met.

Basically, I run a large division of a media company. I think that would be the best way to describe it. It's very different from this world. I am not involved in art at all or in trading at all. Mostly people and money. People and profits.

You met at work?

Mary Pat: Yeah, we pretended like we weren't dating for like a year. Everyone knew the whole time, but we thought we were really slick.

And you have kids, right?

Mary Pat: Yeah, we have two kids. They're great. They keep us on their toes. They're both maniacs.

God, it's so weird. I don't know what to share about our personal lives and whatnot.

Ned: They're young enough that they don't really care about NFTs.

I'm a relatively new parent. I have two kids. I'm curious, has getting into this world and digital art influenced the way you think you'll approach art and craft and creativity with your kids as they get older?

Ned: Personally, yes. It's hard to A/B test it. I don't know what my brain would be thinking right now if I never got into this space.

When I was growing up, it was like, “You want to get into the music industry? Like don't try, it's like way too crowded. It's too competitive.”

Or, “You want to get into the sports industry? Oh man, don't do that. Everyone wants to get into the sports industry. It's impossible.”

Now I don't actually think any of that's true. Based on my life experience, I feel like it's possible that I might've been successful in the music industry if that's what I wanted to do.

So with my kids, I'm not one of those people that’s like, “Do whatever you want without thought and follow your passion” or that sort of a thing. I think that is too rosy. But also don't limit yourself. Have an open mind.

One thing that I feel like has served me in life is being open to opportunity and when that happens, jumping. Like being willing to jump. Willing to take on calculated risk and not being closed off to it.

I grew up going to museums - the M word. I hated it. I'm guessing they're going to grow up hearing about NFTs and generative art, and they're probably going to hate it. But then maybe when they grow up, they'll like it.

Mary Pat: I think our kids are going to love it. I grew up loving art. My grandparents were art collectors — not expensive art, but they would go to art shows and buy art from local artists and put it on their walls. I've always loved art in that sense from a young age, and I can see it with our kids.

I think they've got an artsy eye. I love watching them draw. The pictures on my wall here are all pictures that my kids have drawn. I think our kids are going to be into art.

I don't want them to think the museum is the M word because I love museums. So they're going to museums with me and you (Ned) can stay home.

When it comes to collecting, between the two of you, you have a pretty big collection. But of course, ETH is not unlimited.

Do you have a strategy or thesis when it comes to your investing in art collecting or is it just impulsive?

Mary Pat: I would say I'm impulsive. You might have a strategy Ned, but I just buy what I like.

Ned: I'd say that it's a hard question to answer because, I started collecting non Top Shot NFTs in March of 2021. It's been a little over two years, which actually is not that long of a time.

There's a generative art collector and thought leader named Sonso, and he recently posted about how he is struggling with how to think about his future collecting.

I think it is a real thing to think about, because I cannot spend at the pace that I have for the previous two years, but I also think it was important for me to have bought a lot of the pieces that I loved quickly, on the early side.

One of the things I'm doing during the bear market is trying to stratify my collection.

When it was the bull market, everything was up and great. But when the bear hits and you look at your collection, you notice that when some pieces go down in value it bothers you but with others it isn't bothering you.

You realize what you like and what you don't really care about.

To your point about financialization, the bear market strips it away a bit and you start to realize which pieces stand out to you for the long term where you don't really care whether the price is going up or down - you just love having it in your collection.

I think that will evolve over time, and moving forward, unless something great happens to us financially, we can't spend at the same pace and we'll just have to pick our spots a little bit more.

Mary Pat: The financialization of art also allows you to collect more. For instance, if I have something that I loved a year ago, but I don't love it as much right now, then I can sell it and someone else can love it, for whatever price they're going to pay, and then you can use that ETH to buy something new.

So I think the financialization of art actually allows you to collect more than you would traditionally.

We've got a storage room downstairs full of art that used to be hanging on our walls. Am I going to sell those? Probably not. Would I have to take it to an auction house? How would I sell it? It would be very hard to sell. In that sense, the financialization of art is great. It allows you to keep going. You get to continue to collect.

Deciding to buy is one thing, but how do you decide when to sell? I know selling is often harder for collectors than buying.

Ned: It's hard to answer with any sort of broad brushstroke. But I'd say there are probably two main times that I decide to sell.

The first is I bought something and it turns out I just don't like it that much. It could be that I minted something and I don’t really like the mint. It could be that I bought something and didn't care about it, but thought the price might go up.

The second is because I need liquidity. I try to be somewhat disciplined about new ETH entering the NFT Wallet and if I'm low, I'll go through my wallet and find something to sell.

As an example, I have more than one Chromie Squiggle, but I sold my least favorite one, maybe six months ago, not because I don't believe in Squiggles, I absolutely do, but I sold it for 15 ETH because it was 15 ETH and I had multiple of them and I wanted the ETH for other things. This was my least favorite one. I was willing to let it go.

You do indeed have a very nice collection of Chromie Squiggles, including one you bought from me back in the day. Last year you bought a Hyper Squiggle from KeyboardMonkey. Why are you bullish on Squiggles?

Ned: I think that one of the most interesting people in the space, if not the most interesting person, is Snowfro.

He is a killer CEO who started arguably the best NFT company. I think Art Blocks is a fantastic company to come out of the space, disrupting traditional art.

He's also a spokesperson for the entire space. I don't know anyone that doesn't like Snowfro. He's just a thoughtful person who is giving back to the community and building a real company with real revenue streams and real culture and fostering IRL events and meetings.

Obviously Art Blocks is loved by a lot of people in the space. The idea that you can mint something without knowing the specific output — I can understand why some people who are not in the space might go, “That sounds insane. Why would I spend $2,000 on something if I don't know what it is?” But there's a thrill in that. It's really fun.

And then Squiggles themselves are fun. They're like the NFT logo. There's no question if it's a Squiggle. If you see one it's super recognizable, it's super colorful, it's super fun, yet there's enough difference to them all that you can go really deep. And there's enough of them (9,999) that a lot of people can collect them, and they can disseminate and proliferate in a way

There may be more to talk about than that. But high level my bullishness on Squiggles is just that:

1. The person behind it.

2. The company, Art Blocks, for which the Squiggle is the logo.

3. The art itself, which is is really fun and accessible and proliferating

What is a piece or a few pieces from your joint collection that you think you might never sell or that you'd like to pass on to your kids someday?

Mary Pat: A piece I would never sell would be Cold by Ripcache – it’s a 1/1 from his network mythology series.

I’m a huge Ripcache fan, I think his art is incredible. But he’s also very thoughtful and he’s really good at connecting with his collectors and the community. He’s just a really nice person in general. I have really enjoyed getting to know him through collecting his art.

This piece is special to me partly because of the art and partly because of the way I bought it. It was part of the Christie’s auction that coincided with NFT NYC. I was able to go to Christie’s in New York and see the auction preview live. It was really cool to see so many strong digital art pieces displayed in a traditional auction house like Christie’s.

Then to bid on it was cool for me because it connected my old world of traditional art collecting and bidding at auction houses and connected it with this new art world that I’ve found in web3. So that was a very special piece and a great overall experience.

Ned: That’s hard. I feel like I won't sell a number of pieces. Never say never, but there are a few that come to mind.

I certainly hope that I'm never selling the hyper squiggle. Unless it gets to a price where I can't justify holding it anymore.

Another one is my Anticyclone by William Mapan. I minted one with a Guide One trait. I'm actually going to get the physical as well. So I just probably won't ever sell that one.

Finally the other one - and I'm laughing about this one - there's an mfer 1-of-1 I have. For those that aren't familiar, these are Sartoshi's chicken scratch drawings and it's this person walking into a room with someone at the computer. He did versions of the different NFTs of the time. So there's like an ape, there's a punk comic, there's a ringer, and there's a squiggle.

I got the squiggle. It’s ostensibly the dad walking in, and the body of the person is a squiggle and he's saying, “Stay away from NFTs. They're dangero — Oh God No!!!”

That just symbolizes Art Block Summer for me and my entry into the space. Someone would have to throw a pretty silly number at it for me to let it go, because I just feel like it's a great, underrated piece.

Why are you drawn to the artist Alpha Centauri Kid, Mary Pat?

Mary Pat: One of my group chats that I'm in everyone was minting The Great Color Study when it came out. I missed it. I don't know if I was busy with something else, but I just didn’t want to spend the time to understand what was going on.

Then when I saw ACK's piano collection, I just thought it was a really exceptional collection. I remember I made Ned sit down and put it up on our big screen because I wanted to look at every single piece. I loved how many there were, but I also loved how cohesive it was. It was clearly a set, yet one was very individual and they could each stand up on their own.

Then I did not win my auction. I still cry about losing that auction.

After that I decided, “Okay, now I want to dig in and check out Color Study.”

He's got a lot of different styles and yet they all work together. Also, I've gotten to know ACK a little bit just through group chats and then I met him in New York when I bought one of his physicals and he's just a really nice guy.

I think that's something that's really fun about the NFT space - you can have relationships with artists.

I've never had a relationship with an artist I've collected before in the traditional art world. I think that's part of the reason I like Ripcache too. I've chatted with him a couple times. It's just nice when you understand the artist behind the art.

By the way, I don't think artists owe us anything. I think an artist can decide they never want to talk to their collectors ever and that decision doesn't make their art any better or worse. But for me talking with artists and understanding what goes into their work has been a really fun part of my collecting.

Absolutely. Ripcache and ACK are two of the favorite people I've interviewed just in terms of my interactions with them and how kind they've been.

For both of you, if you could go back in time to two years ago and give your past self advice right as they were starting their NFT journey, what would you say?

Mary Pat: Don't buy an Azuki. No, I'm kidding. I would say that, though.

Ned: I'd say transfer more ETH more quickly and buy more of these grail pieces that are going to become inaccessible. It's an easy answer, but that would be one.

I don't have a lot of regrets though.

I’ve obviously lost some money on some things and made some money on some things, but I feel like I've done what I wanted to do in this space.

I spend time in it. I go to in person events. I met so many people that first year. I met more people in that first year in NFTs than I had in the previous 10 years of my life.

It was a crash course in meeting new people. It was so fun for me. That's what I wanted to do and I'm happy I did it.

You're an entrepreneurial person, Ned. Now that you've taken a step back from your company, do you think that you will try to work in this space in the next chapter of your career?

Ned: I think if I started a new company, it would be in the space for sure. I can't picture it not being in the space.

I don't have any particular desire currently to do it. But I am not the type of person that has a five year plan.

I'm willing to not have a plan and just keep my eyes and ears open. If the opportunity comes along and I'm feeling energized enough by it, then I'll jump at it.

One thing that I will say for people starting companies right now is that the Web3 space is very immature, and that makes it really hard to have a lasting winning company.

I’d rather find the little spaces in between and solve problems for people there, than say launch a new NFT marketplace or something like that. That's too mass market for me. That's just too much of a home run swing for me. I tend to like to swing doubles a little bit more.

But I feel like those in between spaces are too immature for me to feel super confident. I really appreciate all the people that are building right now, though, because they’re laying the groundwork for things that will be there in 10 years.

There is no shortage of opportunity for people in the space. I would absolutely, if I was starting something, be jumping over to web 3, because I think if you can find yourself in a space or at a company that has the wind at its back, it just lifts you up. You just have so much more opportunity when you're swimming with the tide, so to speak. I'm a huge believer, obviously, in NFTs and crypto. In 10 years I believe it's going to change the world. I think it has societal implications.

When you're not collecting art and when you're not working what do you both like to do? What do you do for fun or to relax?

Mary Pat: We collect art and we work.

We like to travel.

What else do we do?

Ned: We spend a lot of time with friends, whether it's getting together without our kids or getting together with our kids.

Work, web3, kids, and friends. Of course, like family, parents, stuff like that.

That in itself is a lot. It doesn't leave a lot of room for a bunch of other stuff.

But I like to golf when I get free time. I've recently gotten into cooking a little bit more. I like to learn a lot about a lot of different stuff.

What was the last great thing you cooked?

Ned: Ooh, I made homemade ravioli.

With a pasta maker?

Yeah, with a pasta maker from scratch, and then the filling from scratch. It was the first time I've ever done it. I think it was pretty good.

Mary Pat: I have to say your cooking hobby has been fantastic for me because I mean, I can cook, I just don't enjoy it. I always wanted to be married to someone that loved to cook. So it just took us 10 years for me to find someone who wanted to cook for me.

Are there some lesser known or emerging artists that you're excited about right now?

Ned: I don't want to name someone who people think has “arrived” and I'm going to call them “emerging,” so I am not sure I would call them emerging, but…

I really like an artist who goes by Pale Kirill. He's awesome, and I feel like he's under appreciated it in the space. He’s getting better and better. [Editor’s note: His full name is Kirill Semenovich]

Lars Wander on the generative side. He recently had a really great drop called Rhythm & the Machine. I think he's really awesome.

Luke Shannon I'm really excited for. He's got a couple of collections coming out that are going to be great.

I have to ask you about The Monument Game. The two of you had a couple of editions of Sam Spratt's Player edition and you both submitted observations and you created this dynamic back-and-forth where the observations were right next to each other and they were speaking to each other.

Take me behind the scenes. How did that come to be?

Ned: Obviously we’re priced out of the rest of Sam Spratt’s stuff. So when this came along and it was an edition of 256, it was like, okay, we might be able to participate in this.

I actually was the counter bidder for Player #1. This was before Sam had really outlined a lot about it, so we were blind bidding a bit and it got higher than I was planning on, and I lost it to PTM.

I was able to mint two and then we sat down and started working on it. We were just messing around with themes that we wanted to do. I think it was Mary’s idea for two people to be talking.

The idea is that we're in it together and that the person is supporting the other person when they're vulnerable and they're like, “I want to leave.”

Mary Pat: It was a lot of fun.

I remember seeing those two characters in the middle of the painting and something struck me and it was just a very cool place to center in on.

I think what we wrote was really indicative of our relationship. We both have been people that support the idea that you should do things that you want to do, but also don't be afraid to leave a situation when something's not working out or when it's just isn't right.

You're never stuck. I think that's something that we've both tried to help each other with. Don't just be on a path because you have to be on it. Be okay to pivot and support each other.

We can go through some crazy shit together, but that's okay, we'll figure it out.

Ned: A silly representation of the pivot thing is that early in our relationship we would go out on dates to restaurants and we started to develop this habit of if we sat down at a restaurant and we weren't feeling it we would just get up and go.

We would tell the waiter or whatever, but we wouldn't see the dinner through because we just had bad vibes. We would look at each other and be like, this doesn't feel like right, let's go somewhere else. So we would just get up and go.

It's one of those things I think most people would just be like, leaving would be weird, and then see the dinner through.

I love it.

I'm going to wrap this up with some rapid fire questions.

What are you reading right now?

Ned: Friend Tech? No, I'm kidding. The last book I read was The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. It's a great book. Certainly if you're an artist you would get something from it. But it also made me feel like I was an artist, in my everyday life.

Mary Pat: One of our friends is a monk. Last time we saw him, I asked him a bunch of questions about being a monk and he gave me a book called I Asked for Wonder and he thinks will help me understand what it is to be a monk and why he became a monk and things to think about.

What's a show or a movie that you've watched in 2023 that stands out to you?

Ned: The best show I watched this year was Beef. It's a 10 part series on Netflix. I thought it was a documentary on meat when I first saw it come up — the Die with The Most Likes documentary.

But it is an awesome show. It was super psychological. The premise is basically like these two people get into a road rage incident and it all just goes from there.

Another great show that I loved was Welcome to Wrexham.

Mary Pat: Severance. I thought it was awesome. It’s a mind bender.

Who are some Twitter followers you recommend?

Ned: Die With The Most Likes is one of my favorite Twitter followers.

Mary Pat: Put notifications on for him. It's amazing.

Ned: On the generative art side, I think one of the best accounts is Sonso (pronounced “So-n-So”)

All right, if you’re willing to play, let's wrap up with some price predictions for 12 months from now.

Let's start with the price of ETH. For reference now, for anyone listening, we are currently at $1630 right now.

Ned: So I think we're on the precipice of going up, but I don't know whether it's going to be like a rocket up or slow up.

So I'll take the more conservative approach and I'll say $2500 in 12 months from now,

Mary Pat: I'm going $1800. Sorry.

With your respective ETH prices in mind in 12 months, what's the Punk floor going to be?

Ned: Punks are a stable coin.

Mary Pat: I think in 12 months from now they’ll be 55 ETH.

Ned: I agree.

What about Grifters?

Mary Pat: I think Grifters are such an under appreciated collection.

It's XCOPY. 666 unique XCOPYs. Yes, it's a PFP, but it's also art. I think it's such a cool collection. I think people don't know about it that much. I think that if more people knew about it, I think the price would be higher.

I will guess they run a bit and will be at 15.

Ned: 10

Chromie Squiggles?

Ned: Also a stable coin. But I think it'll be up. I'm going to go with 16 ETH.

All right. We're generally bullish around here. I like to hear it.

Ned: Those are all some pretty amazing collections. Hard not to be bullish.

Follow Ned and Mary Pat on X: @NedRyersonBing and @MaryPatBing

Adam Lizek (better known in the digital art community simply as Adam or Rhynotic — his username on X) is a walking personification of the new wave of young, digitally native art collectors. Adam is a developer in his early 20s. His entire life has been mediated not just by the internet, but by mobile handheld devices and social networks.

The concept of digital ownership is not new or strange to digital art collectors like Adam. Before non fungible cryptoart, Adam was buying and selling video game assets such as CS:GO skins, which are unique digital objects in the Counter Strike universe. (Unlike most digital art, counterstrike paraphernalia doesn’t exist on a decentralized ledger like Ethereum, but on a centralized database maintained by a private company.)

By early 2021, Adam found himself trading NBA Top Shot moments as a way to make some money. Within a few months, Adam had immersed himself into the new world of digital artwork and collectibles. He was minting and flipping artist editions on Nifty Gateway. He was constantly hitting his limit of 100 Discords servers. By the middle of 2021, Adam was a regular contributor to numerous art communities, including as a moderator in XCOPY’s Discord.

After spending time with Adam, my sense is that he was initially attracted to NFTs as a way to speculate and make some money, and also because he was interested in the tech.

However, like a lot of today’s digital art collectors, the more time Adam spent learning about the objects he was trading, the more interested he became in the culture itself, and in the artists and collectors that were collectively shaping that culture.

As Adam’s interest deepened, he found himself “flipping NFTs” less often and “collecting digital art” more often. This path from speculator to appreciator to collector to evangelist is not uncommon. This pattern is one of the reasons I believe there will be many many more digital art collectors a few decades from now than there are traditional art collectors in 2023. The pathways to get into digital art are more widely distributed, democratic, and non-judgmental.

In summer 2021, without really planning for it, Adam stumbled into starting his own business by developing a product that most digital art collectors have interacted with at one point or another — a wallet verification bot which he named Vulcan.

Artists such as XCOPY, Alpha Centauri Kid, Luis Ponce and many others had been hiring Adam to customize bots for their Discords. Sensing an opportunity, Adam developed a business that would allow anyone to integrate his bot into their Discord and customize it to their liking. Less than a year after founding the company, Vulcan was acquired by Premint, where Adam still works.

Adam and I met up on Zoom while he was visiting New York City and trying to decide whether to move there from Austin (he did, a few weeks later). About a month after our first meeting, I met him in person in Marfa, Texas for the annual Art Blocks Weekend. In my time with Adam, I have been impressed by his relaxed, casual vibes and his bright energy. He seems to me like a person who is in the flow of life. He is doing things he wants to be doing. He is having fun. He is spending time on things that make him excited. He is hungry to learn and grow.

There is also a lot that Adam doesn’t know, which he readily admits. He doesn’t feel the need to portray a facade of “having it all figured it out.”

During our interview, we discussed:

• How he first got into NFTs

• Emerging artists on his radar

• One piece of art he hopes to never sell

• His strategy (or lack thereof) when it comes to collecting

• How his early work building bots led to an amazing art collection

• His hopes and dreams for his future

• His biggest NFT cope

• What is behind the name “Rhynotic”

• The story of why he had the conviction to go big on Sam Spratt and acquire three Skulls of Luci for under $25,000 total, and a behind the scenes look into his trade with Snowfro for one of those skulls in exchange for a Cryptopunk and two Chromie Squiggles.

• His greatest fears

• Price predictions for one year from now

• And a whole lot more!

Please enjoy my conversation with Adam Lizek, AKA Rhynotic.

Monty

p.s. If you enjoy this conversation, please press the ❤ button at the top of this post and share it on social. If you have questions or feedback, please comment on this post (if you’re reading this in your email, you can view the browser or app version here).

p.p.s I recently created an Instagram account. You can find me @montyreport.

This issue is brought to you by my partners at Wild.xyz.

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A Conversation with Adam Lizek AKA Rhynotic

Where are you right now?

I'm visiting New York and staying in the East Village. It’s just lovely. I've visited like six times this year, and I am finally going to move here I think. I've been saying this forever. I saw Ben Skaar’s comment on your Twitter to ask me when I’m going to move to New York. OK Ben, fuck you, you’re right.

Where did you grow up? 

Central Florida.

You live in Austin now. Why do you want to move to New York? 

The art scene in New York is really cool and I'm just tired of Austin. After college, I moved to Austin for a job, and then I quit my job, and then I started NFTs, and here we are. 

Every time I visit New York I have such a great time. I'm still 23. I feel like I would love Austin if I was like 30. But the bar scene isn't amazing right now for me.

Editor’s Note: Since this interview happened, Adam pulled the trigger and officially made the move to New York.

What did you learn from reading The Untethered Soul by Michael Alan Singer? 

Oh god. I learned a lot.

I read that book during the pandemic and it gave me a really cool perspective on how you can observe the world and just let everything pass over you and not get stuck on one idea and one feeling.

If you can do that, you can be fluid. You won't get mad or anything. 

That was the main thing I took from the book.

When I read it, the one analogy that has always stuck with me was the idea of your thoughts being your roommate. Sometimes your roommate is annoying, sometimes they root you on, sometimes they don't have your best interest at heart. But rather than thinking of your thoughts as you, think of them as a roommate in your head and you get to listen to them talk.

Yeah, we are not our thoughts. We are the passenger, or the observer. It all goes back to not getting stuck on things. I always get stuck on things, so it's good to remember that. 

When did you first get into NFTs? What was your first purchase? 

I tell everyone that it was a Mad Dog Jones piece - Why would I care I'm just a cat. Whether or not that's true, I have to double check. Maybe a Top Shot moment was before that. 

I vividly remember going and buying the Mad Dog Jones piece for $2,500 on my Amex card when I was in college, and it was a lot of money. 

I have it tattooed on my leg. 

Why did you buy the Mad Dog Jones edition? Why did you decide one day you’re going to spend $2,500 on this piece?

I used to do a lot of shoe flipping and shoe botting. That was my thing. I know a lot of people did the pivot from sneakers to Top Shot to Nifty Gateway. It was a very common trail for people. 

There were a lot of open editions on Nifty Gateway at that time. Right around then, an edition by Boss Logic had just gone up 10X in two days. If you paid $1,000, you now had $10,000. Obviously, those numbers are attractive and I was like, "What is this? What am I missing?" 

I think the Beeple sale was also right around that time – the big $69 million sale. Things were bubbling up. I was like, "You know what, I really want to get into this, I'm going to buy this Mad Dog Jones edition." I can’t remember if I bought one or three, but I somehow ended up with three editions eventually. Then they went from $2500 to $12,000 each, and I was like, “This is more money than I've ever had.”

I didn't sell them, obviously, at the top. But I did buy them to flip them. And now here I am no longer flipping anything really.

What’s your most memorable sneaker flip?

I hate to say the most memorable is the one I made the most money on.

They were an Off White Air Force One in Canary Yellow. I think I sold those for $2000 or $3000.

Tell me about your career journey since you graduated college.

I work at Premint full-time, working on Vulcan. That’s my day job but it's not like a normal day job. 

Out of college in 2021 I got a job at a company in Austin and it was remote. Then after three months, they wanted me to come in to the office and I was like, “No, I do not want to do that, I will find something else.”

I was doing NFT stuff on the side at that point and this was right before the big August 2021 run. I was friends with these people at Crypto Raiders, which was like a MATIC dungeon crawling game, and I got a two week job helping them with some code. I thought it was awesome and realized I could totally work in the crypto space as a developer. 

Then I started doing side projects for artists' custom verification bots. The first one was actually XCOPY, which is really funny. I was a moderator in his Discord. That happened just because I asked him – like, do you want a moderator? And he said, sure. 

The Discord had a really shitty bot that kept giving everyone the SuperRare one-of-one holder role. I was like, this bot is bad and I can do something better than this. So, I made a custom bot for XCOPY.

Then other people saw that and wanted it. Alpha Centauri Kid hit me up and wanted one, Lucréce,  Luis Ponce – a lot of people that I hadn't heard of yet at the time. I did their sales bots and verification bots all looped into one. 

In fall 2021, I did 15 bots in one month and I was getting 1 ETH per bot. And I was like, “Holy shit – This is like $60,000 in a month” because that was back when ETH was $4,000 or whatever. I thought, “This is amazing, what am I doing?” because it was more than my salary at the time. That’s right around when I quit my job.

Anyway, I kept doing all these custom bots and then I realized I was just doing the same thing over and over again. That's dumb. I should just make one bot that people can configure and edit themselves for their server. That was the inspiration for Vulcan. 

Then Premint acquired Vulcan?

Yes. in May or or June 2022.

Vulcan was just me and I had a friend who helped me scale it to some extent, who is an amazing software developer. I just wrote the code as best as I could and then my friend helped me out with it.

Then Premint came in and basically acqui-hired me, and now I’m part of Premint. It's been awesome. They've helped me scale it. Brendan [Mulligan] is an amazing dude. I have no complaints at all.

You're still a mod in XCOPY and ACK’s Discords? 

I am. I’m a mod in a few others too, but I’m not active in them. I constantly hit my Discord limit and I have to leave one. But the only ones I'm really active in are XCOPY – that's like my daily one that I'm always in – and then ACK, I pop in and out. Whenever ACK needs something, I help him.

ACK said on Twitter that you're one of his favorite people he's come to know over the past two years. 

That's awesome. I saw that comment and I didn't respond to it. I was texting him today. I love ACK. I've met him four or five times. He's awesome. He's a great dude. He's super humble and just appreciative of what he has and the space — he has a really cool path.

MP Koz commented on ACK's comment and he seconded what ACK said. 

MP Koz is awesome, too. I did his sales bot as well, which is funny. That's how I met all of these people. 

That was actually my investment strategy for a bit. I would take the ETH that they gave me and then I would buy their art. I thought if these people are willing to put 1 ETH into their sales bots and their verifications, they're investing in their brand, they believe that it's worth it. 

I have so many Louise Ponce pieces now. I have a Ripcache one-of-one. I have a bunch of ACKs. So it worked. Those have all been great purchases.

There's a lesson there about participating in a space by adding value and building. It's not just that you can earn income, it's also that you meet people, you develop these relationships, and you get an inside look at some things that might be more valuable later. Not that it's all transactional of course – the relationships are great to have just in and of themselves.

Besides buying art from people who you have worked with or you know personally, do you have a strategy or a thesis or criteria when it comes to what you're investing or collecting?

Not at all, which is the best way to do it.

People always say I'm being humble. They ask, “How do you have such a good eye?” I don’t. I’m just on Twitter a lot, and if it's cool, if it's on my Twitter, it's probably someone I follow who collects the same things. That seems to work so far. 

So my strategy has just been buying things that are cool and paying attention to what my friends are into.

But at the same time, you have limited ETH. And sometimes you do decide to go big. An example would be Sam Spratt. Back when the Skulls of Luci were still under 15 ETH, you decided to buy two. You spent a fair amount of ETH, nearly 25 ETH total, for these skulls long before they became incredibly sought after.

You already had one skull in your collection which you received as a free bidder’s edition, yet you still decided to pony up for two more. You had this foresight about Sam. Why did you have the conviction to go big at that moment?

I talked to Sam a bit before that. I didn't know him personally before Luci or anything like that. But I did know of his works, I think a lot of people do and just don't realize it. 

When I'm talking to my friends about Sam, I was like, “He did Man on the Moon III, he did all of Logic’s albums. You know his art.” 

That's how I found out about him initially. Then I saw that he was doing Luci. He had announced that there would be a bidder's edition. 

So I told all my friends to bid on it. And they’re like “what if I win?” I said, if you win, you’ll be very happy.

So I got a skull and four or five of my friends got Skulls just because we bid on the piece.

Then a few months later I was watching the skulls on secondary and thinking to myself that they were priced low in ETH, plus ETH was at like $900. 

I thought he might do something with them, but I also thought even if he doesn't, Sam is on a really good path. I just had a really good feeling. 

So, I bought the only two skulls that were listed. Both of them were under $15,000 at the time.  

Joey Lawrence said “I’d like to hear the story of Adam using a Luci Skull for liquidity, winning, and getting it back.”

This would have been right before the Consensus conference, right when all the shit coins were popping off like Pepe and Turbo. 

I took a 40 ETH on-chain loan on one of my Skulls, on Arcade. Which is also really cool just to be able to see I got like a $75,000 loan on something I got for free. That’s awesome. 

So, I took that and then got very lucky just buying into Turbo and there was another one called Reaper's Gambit. I think I made like 40 ETH in a couple weeks. I took a 90-day loan out on the Skull, but I paid it off in 20 days.

I used that ETH that I made. I bought a Summer Wagner piece on AOTM. That was 9 ETH. I love that, and I'm glad I have it.

I bought an Antpantone piece and I bought a Jack Kaido one-of-one that I split with a friend – his first mint. 

I want to say I bought other things, what they are … I can’t even remember, it’s crazy.

The blockchain knows

Yeah somehow I spent all my money and now I have no ETH at all. 

So, for people who aren’t familiar, you traded one of your Skulls of Luci with Snowfro for a CryptoPunk and some unminted Squiggles. Can you tell me the backstory of how that trade went down? 

I had never met Snowfro until the Consensus conference, but I knew what he looked like. Sam was giving a talk and before or after the talk I was outside with another collector named Sunday Funday. He was wearing a Squiggle shirt. I saw Snowfro walking out and I didn't realize these two knew each other. They were talking and then someone mentioned unminted Squiggles. 

So I told Snowfro I would give him a Luci Skull for ten unminted squiggles. And he was like, “Redbeard offered me a lower number.” 

Redbeard is also on the council for anyone unfamiliar, but he really helps coordinate trades for people that are interested, or people that are trying to leave the council, even though no one's really trying to leave. He's really about that. 

So Redbeard let me know that there was an offer on the table for unminted Squiggles. So, we went back and forth on prices. I still wanted 10, but he loves those Squiggles and he does not want to give them away. So, we ended up settling on a CryptoPunk, which I got to pick from a few options, plus two unminted Squiggles. 

There's also a funny story that I don't know if anyone's heard yet publicly.

Redbeard texted me a couple days before the Squiggle mint to confirm my wallet.

So the day of the mint, I was waiting for my Squiggles, refreshing OpenSea, and then all of a sudden I look and I have seven Squiggles. I was like this is weird. 

I was at a happy hour with some friends, some of whom are into NFT stuff and some of whom are not. I said, “I just got an extra $100,000. Sorry, just give me a second. I need to figure this out.” I was like, oh maybe Snowfro just decided to give me five extra. Like I don’t know why he would do that, but the thought crossed my mind.

Then I got a text from Redbeard asking which ones I got, and I said, “Dude, I don't know. I got seven.” He was like, “What the hell? You gotta tell Snowfro!” I said I will, but I was going to a trivia night and I'd figure it out when I got home.

Then he texted me saying “oh wait five of those were mine, send them to my wallet.”

I found out that they were for his fund, and he gave Snowfro my wallet twice instead of his wallet. And then I was like, “But I get to pick, right?” And he was like, “Sure whatever.” But I knew which two token IDs were supposed to be mine. And luckily, the rarest one was a fuzzy, and that was my token ID.

You mentioned you have some friends who are in NFTs and some friends who aren't really into NFTs. What do your friends who aren't into NFTs think about your life? 

Some of them get it. And some of them will get it. That is how I view it. 

Some are genuinely interested in NFTs. Some think that NFTs are a fad, but they get why I do it. Then there are others who don't really get it and think that I’m wasting money. I get a lot of that.

I try to explain it the best I can, and I think art is the best way. So, even if people don't get the NFT thing, if they come to my apartment and they see all these art pieces that I have hanging up, they're like, “Oh, this is really cool. I get it.” 

How do you display your art? 

I had a token frame for a bit. It's currently not hanging up, I had some issues with it. It worked great for a little bit and then I brought it to a party and I was displaying my NFTs there for my friend. I could not get it to work there and then it hasn't worked since. 

But I have a bunch of physicals hanging up.

I have one of Henrik Uldalen’s pieces that came with a physical - It's a woman with a smushed face almost, and it looks great.

I have some other physical counterparts. I have the Fvckrender Avante Art piece - Feel. I have my ACK hanging up. I have my Skull physical. I have some William Mapans. 

I don't have a great way to display my digital art currently. But I'm not collecting it to display it currently. 

How do you decide when to sell pieces?

Lately it has just been because I need liquidity to buy something else, and then I'll just go through my highest offers.

I have a rule I have been trying to stick to – don't sell any XCOPYs. Because anything I sell it for will not do as well as what I think my XCOPYs will do in the long run. I always have that in the back of my mind. 

I'm not currently trying to exit anything. I think the only thing I have listed right now is my Alpha Centauri Kid piano. I have it listed for 50. If someone wants it for 50, great.

You picked that up for 9 ETH, right?

Yeah, I picked it up for 9 ETH, which was the lowest winning bid.

I had something on loan and that was how I got the 9 ETH for that auction, then I had to sell something else. I'm learning that I don't like this loan stuff. It's risky and I should just buy things that I can afford.

Were you into art at all growing up? 

I'd go to the MoMA. I'd go to the Met. I'd go to all these museums, and I didn't really get it, and I didn't really connect with it as much as I do now at all. I knew Dali, Picasso, Jackson Pollock, and Monet. I had my favorites. But besides that, I thought it was stupid. 

So definitely, my favorite thing I've gotten out of this whole journey is an appreciation for art. 

Now I still don't get it, I'm not trained, but I appreciate it. I want to figure out what’s the meaning behind it, but I don't go to the MoMA and pretend like I know what they were trying to say.

Have you onboarded your parents to NFTs? 

Yes, they get it and they don't. For Christmas this year, I got three ledgers, I didn’t put anything crazy on them. I gave each of them a Non NFT, which is the XCOPY, Neurocolor, Moxarra collab, because I have like 20 of those. 

It was a $500 or $800 gift at the time.

My mom would then keep track and call me and say “it looks like the price is going down.” I’m like “don’t worry about it.

But I helped them set it up, I was like, “Here are your 12 words and I want you to never ever use them ever. Even if I call you and you think it's me, never use it. You'll never need it.” Obviously, good OpSec is even if I called them, they shouldn't be able to give the seed phrase.

So, they're officially onboarded. They get it. I talked to them tons about XCOPY and whatnot. I don't know if they actually care or if they care because I care, but I think there's some interest bubbling. 

I had a big XCOPY sale in 2021. It was like the biggest sale I've had. I sold something to Cozomo and I called my mom and said I’m like mom I just sold this for hundreds of thousands of dollars, should I quit my job? She was like, “No, don’t do that. Bad idea. You’re going to lose it all.” It was a funny response. 

So they get it. They like it. They're proud of me. They think it's cool.

You’re only 23. Besides continuing to collect art and work in the space, what are your goals in life? What are your goals for the next decade?

We're working on it. I think my first goal is to figure out my goals. 

It's really cool having a product that people use. I think that's awesome. And if for some reason people stop using Discord and Vulcan and it all fades away, I'd probably work on something else that interests me. 

I don't think that's going to happen, but I'm taking it day-by-day for now and working on that. 

I want to grow, I want to just keep growing day by day, and that's all I can really do.

I want to move to New York but I'm trying to rationalize the pros and cons. Who knows? Maybe by the time this comes out, I’ll have already decided. But I can always just move to New York, and hate it, and then move back, and I'm still 24. There's no rush for anything at all. 

What do you like about Summer Wagner?

Summer is awesome. I think her pieces are really cool. She really knows how to tell a story with them. 

She did four edition drops and I remember seeing those and I don't think I bought any at the time, but it was really interesting and I looked into her stuff.

Then, at NFT NYC, I ran into her, Briscoe Park, and Alizé Jireh – all photographers in the space and all awesome people. I ran into them like five different times at different events and we talked every time. They were just super cool people. I had such a great experience in person that I really did want a piece. That personal connection is something I look for when I am collecting. 

I saw that ACK just bought Summer’s last one-of-one. That whole series is awesome. 

What resonates with you about Jack Kaido? 

The only work I own by Jack are Polaroids. That's one of his first collections. I have three Polaroids. I thought they were really cool at first, and then I loved them even more when I dug into them and I got to know him more, too. He's an awesome guy and his style is constantly evolving. 

The stuff he's doing now is awesome. I love it. Traces - his new style, I love it. He's pulling in different UX elements from Mac and Paint, and it just looks awesome. 

I got to meet him, which was really cool. Although he is fully anon, he's super dedicated. When I was talking to him after the visit, he was going to go check a bunch of famous de Kooning spots for inspiration. He was telling me all about it. 

Especially seeing all his pieces at Christie's was crazy. The two that he had there were beautiful. I wish I had bought them. I think Artifaction bought both of them, if I remember correctly.

I still think Jack Kaido is underrated. 

I've come to love digital abstract expressionism. I think it's awesome. I didn't really get it at first. I understood digital abstract expressionism before I was interested in normal, traditional abstract expressionism. You can’t explain it. Either you like it or you don't, but you can pull whatever you want from it. 

I also have some Omente Jovem pieces, and I think he's great. 

Who are a few lesser-known or emerging artists that you're feeling excited about right now?

Spøgelsesmaskinen. I love his work. I found him from an open edition and I think there were a couple works collected by XCOPY. He does a lot of Tezos pieces, so I bought a bunch of his Tezos pieces a while ago. I don't even know what I would call his style but I love it. It's awesome. He says the NFT Poltergeist is his thing. 

In the same vein, Smash Dirt. He's still lesser known, I would say. I have a lot of his editions. I have maybe two one-of-ones. 

Jameson Art. I love Jameson. I met him in New York in the line for the TJo event, which was fun. I really like SVGs and his style is really cool. 

Elispri as well. They do a lot of meme pieces, but their art is really good. They have a lot of Grant Yun, ones they were inspired by. I actually have a Luci Pepe that they did, that was awesome. The one I have is the dense passage. I think they're capturing the meme economy. Those are off the top of my head four. 

What's your biggest NFT COPE? 

There are so many things I’ve missed out. I don't love Board Apes, I've never owned one, but there have been so many opportunities to get them at low prices. Even when they minted out, I was going to bed and people were talking about it in the Nifty Gateway chat. I think there were still like 5000 left or something. I was just like I’m just going to go to bed and I'll buy one in the morning. Then obviously, they were all sold out and I'm like I’m not paying 3 ETH for this. I was down like 95% on all my Nifty Gateway items that time. Definitely missed that, that one really hurt.

One story that’s not really a cope but kind of wild: I was really bad with my AMEX in college. I got it as a business card. I was buying NFTs, selling them, and paying off the card. It was like a whole thing. Really dumb. Keep in mind I was in college, I was broke. I had a $60,000 or $70,000 credit card bill. I thought I'm nuts, this is dumb. I'm about to lose it all. This is really stupid. I'm ruined. But I sold a bunch of NFTs and I got it down to $20,000.

It still was a huge bill. I needed a miracle. I'm not a religious person, but I needed a miracle. I had my second monitor open and it was the Nifty Gateway activity feed. People used to forget zeros all the time and list things for $1,000 instead of $10,000. So, I was constantly watching for that just in case. Then someone listed an NFT for a dollar. I didn’t know what it was, but it was a dollar. The cheapest one at the time was 50 bucks, so I bought it really quick and then my account got locked. They thought I hacked this guy.

The guy was like, “No, I did that on purpose but I tried to cancel it really quick and he was faster than me.” So, he admitted he did it on purpose and they unlocked my account. It was a Fewocious Shattered Glass. It was a one of 25, and I sold it the next day for $16,000.

That was that guy's biggest COPE. 

Yeah. That guy was nice, but he was like, “You should list something for a dollar.” I'm like, “No, that's dumb.” 

What's behind your name - Rhynotic?

I used to play Minecraft a lot and it comes from Minecraft. 

I used to play on a server, grind it and try to get as many materials as I could. I would have three accounts all running at the same time. My first account was something Red Sox related because I was like a fan, even though I'm not. 

For my other account, I just thought ‘rhino’ sounded cool — the animal. Then I added ‘tic’ at the end because I thought it sounded even cooler. I spelled it wrong, too. That wasn't intentional. I was in like eighth grade and wasn't spelling correctly. 

When it came to Twitter, I didn't really know what to make it other than my name, so I just went with that and it stuck.

I used to go by Red a lot, something Red Sox, then I shortened it to Red. It's my Steam name. But obviously, Red is taken on Twitter, so I chose Rhynotic. 

Besides digital art and ETH, do you invest in anything else? 

Currently, no. I really should have a 401k. I should have a Roth IRA and stuff, but I'm investing in what I know, which is currently this. I've tried having a stock portfolio and I really should, but I don’t know, right know I don’t.

I used to invest a lot in TF2 hats and CS:GO skins. CS:GO skins are booming. But that's how I used to make my money —trading up TF2 hats. I understood digital ownership that way. 

What would you say are your biggest fears? 

There is always the fear that what we're doing is a bubble, but I don't think it is. And every day I spend in it, I think it is less. If you really think that's true and you're working every day, you’re not going to make it. You’re wasting your time.

I used to be afraid of death. That was like my biggest fear. Then COVID hit and I actually thought I was dying every day. I didn't get over that, because you can’t really, but I accepted it. I think it’s still my biggest fear, but less so now. I’m not panicky and I've accepted we're all going to die.

The sad realization is we are all getting old and we are going to die, especially because I'm not a religious person. I have a hard time grasping life after death. Non-existence is a weird thing to think about. But I've accepted it.

Besides work and digital art stuff, what brings you joy on a day to day basis? What do you like to do with your time? 

Lately, I've been trying to figure that out. But it's awesome hanging out with people that I'm friends with. I enjoy their company.

I still skateboard every once in a while, although I'm getting worse. If I hit my head, like that's it. Is it worth it? I don't know, but I still cruise around. It's always fun.

I just like walking around and people watching. It's been great. I bike ride when I'm home. It’s nice being out. 

Lately I've started microdosing mushrooms. That brings me joy. It's a nice, unique perspective of the world. 

What dosage do you use for your microdoses?

0.2 grams, but they're really strong. 

So, it's not sub perceptual, like you're experiencing an altered state?

Yeah, I feel high. When I microdose often, sometimes I don't feel high and I just feel slightly different. I used to be on anti-anxiety and anti-depression medications but I didn't love them. I was only on it for anxiety reasons. People suggested trying mushrooms. It is sad how they're not normalized yet when there's so much more history of the benefits of psilocybin versus the benefits of Prozac or anything.

Have you found that it's helped with your anxiety? 

Oh, yeah, 100%. I used to take it every third day and I noticed a great improvement. Now I just take it whenever. I haven't taken it in a couple weeks, but I'm not craving it. I never had a drop off or anything. I really wish it was more normalized, and it's probably better for you than a lot of the things that we consume. And it’s not that drugs bring me joy, but it's fun to go to the park and microdose.

I also like music and movies. I think Jake Fried tweeted about consuming culture. And that resonated with me - I am a culture consumer, this is exactly right. I want good movies. I want good food. I want good books and music. Anything that people are putting their heart and soul into, I want to give my full attention to and I want to take it in.

You say you don't really have a strategy when it comes to buying art and you just buy what you like, but I think that consuming culture regularly gives you an eye. Even if you're consuming non art stuff, it just hones your brain to figure out what you like, what gets you going, and that can apply to different domains.

Yeah, I wouldn't say it's a conscious decision I make in terms of art collecting. But if someone's being genuine and they're really interested in their craft and they're being very passionate about it and they're not just trying to make money, that's a very attractive thing as a collector.

Totally. And probably one of the reasons why you decided to go big on Sam Spratt, for example.

Exactly. 

All right, Adam, let's finish up with a few rapid fire questions here. 

You've mentioned a bunch throughout this interview, but anyone you haven't mentioned who are other collectors that you pay close attention to.

Yeah, I love my dudes. KDean is awesome. Noochie is a great collector. And I have my friend, KevBot, who's a lesser known collector, but we have a lot of things that we have split. My friend Colin as well. We do a lot of co-collecting, us three, which is awesome.

And there's some other ones like Perilous. We talk a lot and we've met before. There's another one, Finance News Guy. And I have some dudes from the Austin NFT community. I have a friend named Oslo and a friend named Ty who I met through the space and the mania, and they're still here. We'll text about what they're collecting, what I'm collecting, and it's really nice to shoot ideas off each other, too. 

You mentioned co-collecting. Do you mean you guys go in on a one on one together, is that what you mean?

Yep. Me and Colin specifically have a Lucréce piece split together called Social Metropolis. It's the red and the blue.

Me and Kev have a bunch of pieces split together. We have a Lucrece Monster. We have that Polaroid by Jack Kaido. We have the XCOPY Siphon Edition from Nifty Gateway. It’s one of 20 in blue. That was a big purchase, too. In 2021, I bought the number one edition for 16 ETH and then I ended up selling it for 70. So, that was like another big flip I had. 

But I rebought a Siphon with Brendan Mulligan, my boss at Premint, and Kev. We all split it three ways. We really should’ve used a Gnosis safe and split it up three ways and whatnot, but we didn’t. It's just in someone's wallet. 

And is the agreement like if you ever want to sell this, you’ll just collectively have to decide to do that?

Yeah, it's very informal and it's all built on trust. 

Favorite place to eat lunch in Austin?

Probably Loro — barbecue Asian fusion. I don't know if you're familiar with Texas cuisine, but there is an awesome restaurant called Uchi by Tyson Cole, and then there's an awesome barbecue place called Franklin's, which is another very beautiful spot. So, Tyson Cole and Franklin came together and made Loro. It's a combination restaurant and they have great happy hour. Their lunch burger has Franklin's brisket on top and it’s awesome. It's like the best thing I've ever had. 

What would you say is an underrated neighborhood in Austin for walking around?

There's Tarrytown, there's Clarksville, anything in the west side is really nice. There's also the Roy Anne Butler Trail that goes around the river. It's not underrated because everyone does that, but it's so beautiful and it's nice out.

This question comes from JohanNFT from XCOPY Discord: “If you could only keep one NFT from your collection, what would it be?”

Price aside and all that, probably Bottom Feeder by XCOPY. 

Every once in a while, I try to sell it and it never sells. I’ll list it and then I get an undercut. But I've had that piece since 2021. That was my first XCOPY piece ever. 

I negotiated with the guy on Twitter. It was $9,000. I've just had it so long, it's my child. But I still try to sell it every once in a while for some reason, and I never have been able to. But I'm not actively trying to sell it.

Or my Grifter is another good one. I used to have two Grifters that were minted by XCOPY and then in my wallet, but now I'm down to one. And I don't think I'll ever sell my Grifter. So, maybe that's a better answer. I've never listed it or anything.

I love my Grifter. They're not properly rated. The world will catch on to Grifters soon enough. 

I agree. Even people who are in NFTs, they're like sleeping on Grifters. Why?

I still think, and this is like a firm belief, that The Rabble master would be so easy for a big museum like the MoMA to display. I love The Rabble. I don't own one, I really want to, I've been trying to. 

But it would be so cool to be able to show that we own the master, but the individual layers are owned separately from individual collectors that can operate it in real-time. I think that'd be so sick. That's like what it'll be eventually. And that's like what it is now, even if it's not in a big museum, but I just think it'd be so easy to explain digital ownership and display it.

Async art is awesome. I love Async art. It's one of my favorite sites.

What are your favorite Jordans? 

I'm only a Jordan I fan. The only ones I have right now are the mochas and the UNC ones. 

I recently downsized my shoe collection. I'm still down to 20 pairs and I still have a lot, but I've slowly been migrating out of my sneakerhead phase and more to Rick Owens boots and various New Balances that have their different colorways and whatnot. 

I know. I feel old because I used to wear Jordans and now I just wear Hokas because they're just so comfortable. 

Yeah. The Jordans don't have any support. They are $160 shoes that are probably $10 to make. I feel a little bit better about my $500 Rick Owens shoes that cost $100 to make.

What are you reading right now? 

I've been trying to get back into reading because my brain has turned to mush and I can't focus. I don't have the attention span to read a book, which is really bad. But I started reading Dune and it was a very tough read. It was hard to get into, so I stopped. 

I'm currently reading Station Eleven. It's a little weird. There is a wine bookstore called Vintage in East Austin where you go and get a bottle of wine and you can just pick a book off a shelf and buy it or just read it, so I picked it up there.

It was a little weird reading it post-Covid. But if I read it before Covid, I would have treated everything a little differently.

I’m not done, but that's my currently active book and it's pretty easy to read. 

Another book I just read, which seems like something you might like, is called Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. It's a story of these friends starting a video game company and then their lives unfolding, but it's just really well done. It was one of my favorite books I've read in the last year or so.

That does sound up my alley, actually. 

My final questions for you, Adam, if you're willing to play, let's do some price predictions for one year from now.

What will ETH be in a year?

I'd like to say 4,000. I see all these market charts. I don't know anything, but definitely 4,000. 

What's the Punk floor going to be? 

Hopefully 75 and ETH will be so much higher. 

Grifters? 

Grifters are like 20, no question. 

Chromie Squiggles? 

Like 20 as well. 

These are very conservative bets as well. That's double for everything. But if these aren’t double, I don't know what is.

Excellent. Well, Adam, thank you so much for spending time with me today. 

Thank you so much for having me.

You can follow Adam on X, @rhynotic and you can check out his vault on Opensea.

A couple of days ago the artist Sam Spratt shared this post:

Sam wrote about how he is intentionally trying to build his life and work around periods of furious energy and output followed by breaks for retraction and reflection.

The post is worth reading because, in usual Sam fashion, it is well written and thought provoking.

But more so, it is worth reading because his core message is not just about him. It is relevant to all of us across many domains: Work, play, fitness, money, romantic partnerships, and beyond.

Exert and Retract.

Today I am going to ignore the first part of the equation: Exert.

Why? Because that is the part of the equation that gets all the attention.

10 tips to increase your productivity

How to lose 10 pounds in 10 days

How I make $25,000 per month

What’s your “number”?

How I learned to increase my reading speed and double my ouput

These are, weirdly, very normal sentences that we all come across every day.

Less covered by the internety writing cabal (of which I am a part) is the second part of the equation: Retract. That is the part I want to briefly sermonize about today.

Which brings me to the image in the background of Sam’s photo…

Sister Mary Corita was a nun.

After 30 years with the Los Angeles Immaculate Heart Convent, she left to become Miss Corita Kent, artist.

She moved to Boston and began a prolific and inspiring second act producing colorful silkscreen pop art.

Some of her more renowned works include the 1985 Love Stamp she designed for the postal service and a 150-foot-high natural gas tank in Boston.

She also created luke 2.14, 51, which I love and which is hanging behind Sam in the photo he shared (and also in my daughter's bedroom).

The story behind this work is funny.

“Go Slo!”

Supposedly, Corita sent this message to President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1963 after reading that the first lady, Ladybird Johnson, had been telling him to slow down.

Corita thought that there ought to be a more elegant way of telling the President to slow down, and so she created this piece for him.

As one reviewer notes: “The text implores us to ‘Go Slo,’ but, as the color suggests, we shall proceed with this proclamation joyfully.”

Here’s a thing I believe:

By pursuing slowness, inefficiency, or even inaction, you can increase your odds of success and happiness in many key areas of life.

Investing

Be a slow buyer, and an even slower seller to maximize your long-term wealth and spend more time focusing on what’s really important.

Work

By “retracting” in the words of Sam, you can give yourself the space you need to recharge and reflect so that when you are working, the work is better. But perhaps more importantly, intentional retraction can help you sort out whether you’re working on the right thing. Breaking the intertia of a given direction is one of the hardest things to do, and if we’re constantly just exerting in that direction, we never are able to evaluate whether we’re actually going the right way.

Email

By replying slowly or not replying at all A) you get fewer emails and B) problems solve themselves, and old emails that you would have spent time replying to become irrelevant.

Ideas

Often the best ideas come not from light bulb epiphanies, but from long, slow hunches that slowly develop (h/t to Where Good Ideas Come by Steven Johnson)

Fitness

No single workout makes you fit and healthy. A slow and steady commitment to moving your body over multiple years is where you find true fitness.

Eating

Food tastes better if you go slowly and notice each bite. And it tastes even better if you slowly spent the time to prepare it yourself (bonus recipe we loved recently)

Even Video Games

A few years ago Deep Mind’s Alpha Star soundly defeated human players of StarCraft II, a game of infinite possibility and incomplete information that is more complicated than chess. Amazingly, Alpha Star performed fewer actions per minute than the human players. As with GO, the AI developed new long-range strategies never before seen.

Today is a perfect day to consider a micro retraction.

Take some time to journal and free write about a topic or problem that has been on your mind.

Go on a device free walk.

Lay in a park and do nothing.

Whatever you do today, try to go a little more slo than usual.

In service,

Monty

William Mapan is an artist who lives in Paris, France. His preferred medium is code. He is best known for his long form generative artwork, and in particular for his series Anticyclone and Dragons. Much of William’s work is highly textural and if you didn’t know any better, you might think you were looking at photographs of actual paintings. In addition to his art career, he is also a teacher and a father.

William and I met up virtually while he was on vacation in the French countryside with his family. It was after dinner his time, and he was in the middle of packing for his return trip to Paris the next day. Nonetheless, he felt totally present and available during our conversation. I was struck by his warmth and easy laughter. William is a thoughtful man, and many times after I asked him a question he would pause and look into space to gather his thoughts before responding.

Just beneath the surface of his kind and warm presence, William buzzes with energy. He has an intensity and emotionality to him that was revealed during our conversation. He stays up much later than most sane people to work on his craft. He dances and climbs regularly in order to release his energy. He enjoys sparring and debating with his partner. He feels things deeply and channels those emotions into his art.

During our time together, the conversation flowed naturally and we covered a diverse range of topics, including:

• Details of William’s upcoming drop with Cactoid Labs and LACMA (including the previously unreleased name and never before seen test outputs)

• Recent racist encounters, and how William channels his emotions into art

• William’s take on racism in web3

• The story of how William became an artist

• What William teaches his students

• The work he has done that William thinks is underrated

• His relationship with his partner, Camille

• William’s film photography hobby and the camera he uses

• Underrated artists that William thinks are worth watching

• William’s hip hop dance hobby

• …and much, much more!

Please enjoy my conversation with William Mapan.

Monty

p.s. If you enjoy this conversation, please press the ❤ button at the top of this post and share it on social. If you have anything to say/ask, please comment on this post (if you’re reading this in your email, you can view the browser or app version here).

p.p.s. William was generous enough to offer a giveaway to one of my paid community members. Anyone who is a paid community member by Thursday, August 17th can enter the drawing in my Discord for an edition of Recursive Painting #2:

This issue is brought to you by my partners at Wild.xyz.

This Wednesday, August 16th, Wild is launching one of their most exciting projects yet:

The Boys of Summer by Mitchell F. Chan.

For those of you who don’t know Mitchell, you should. He is a pioneering artist who was minting artwork on the blockchain all the way back in 2017.

Last week I sat down with Mitchell to discuss his work and this project, plus advice for artists, the balance between making art and making a living, the strange density of digital artists in Canada, and much more. You may listen to our conversation here.

As you will learn from the recording, The Boys of Summer is not just your regular old PFP collection. This is conceptual fine art meets PFP meets interactive gaming. It’s an exciting and multilayered art installation that is perfectly suited to the medium on which it is crafted.

The Boys of Summer is a collection of 999, with a mint price of 0.12 ETH. You can mint it on Wednesday, August 12th at 1:00 PM ET for the allowlist, and 1:30 PM ET for the public.

Sign up for the allowlist here, exclusively for readers of The Monty Report. I am really excited about this collection and I encourage you to check it out!

A Conversation with William Mapan

Monty: You recently shared a preview of an untitled code painting in deep cherry red, and then you posted later that “the red one emerged out of profound anger” and you “wanted to burn the world to the ground.” Can you tell me more about that?

William: It was a classic case of casual racism. It was very casual, but it hit differently with the current situation in France, and especially in Paris, where there are a lot of riots and stuff right now because a young kid was very tragically killed by a policeman.

I was on the receiving end of racism from three people in a row, so I was very pissed. When I got home, I was like, "Oh my god, I'm going to break something,” but instead I chose to open my current algorithm and try to take that off my chest and make something out of this energy and transform it and put it on a digital canvas. That's how this very deep red emerged.

I was looking for these kinds of blood colors. I also made a couple of fire ones that I didn't show. It was much more violent, I would say, so I didn't show those because I didn't want to spread more anger and hate on Twitter, since the algorithm is already good enough at that. So, I just posted this red one, which is a middle ground between what I was feeling and a beautiful artwork. It was good enough to talk to me, and at the same time, it could talk to people as well. So, I posted it.

After that, I was much more chilled. I said, "Okay, it's fine. People are stupid. It's all good. You have a family to take care of. A lot of stuff is happening in your life, most of it is good." So I took a step back. And that's when I made the pink one, La Vie en Rose, and it was a better day.

That was almost a week ago. So, how are you feeling today? What is your mood?

Today's okay. I'm out of Paris. So, it helps to get some fresh air from the city and all the riots and all the debates and all that stuff.

Taking a step back and going to the countryside is a good thing to do when you're suffocating in the city. Maybe tomorrow I will be in another mood.

The casual racist interactions you mentioned, what happened?

It was cabs that didn't want to take me because I was alone and black. They would just look at me from top to bottom and ask, "Do you have any money?" I'm like, "Yes." And they're like, "No, we don't take credit cards," which is bullshit because any cab must take card as a payment method. And it wasn't just one cab, it was three in a row. And there was a guy in the same station as me but he was white and the cab just picked him up, so that pissed me off .

So, that's what was happening. All my life I have been facing this kind of stuff. But with the current context in France and Paris, I was even more pissed than usual.

I will proclaim some willful ignorance right now. I'm not super informed about what's going on in France and Paris right now. You mentioned the police shooting. Can you tell me a little more?

Basically, a 17-year-old got shot by a policeman because he didn't want to stop the car and the police just shot him, which is illegal.

And the next night, a lot of riots started to surface in Paris and all around in France. It is the same story again and again. It’s not a good one, but that's what it is.

France is messed up sometimes and this happens. People need to stand up and it’s good that there are riots I think. There are a lot of debates because the riots are not only targeting the legit stuff, they are also destroying some little shops, which is very bad. But there's just a lot of anger in the country. Often it's very subtle and sometimes it just explodes with one shot.

I would say that compared to America, it's different, because in America racism is a thing that is talked about. It's an open discussion. But in France, it's much more hidden and much more vicious, I would say.

Sometimes, the fire kicks up and then it blows up everywhere. And every time it does, it's just terrible and nothing changes. This is something that really pissed me off.

When I was child-free, I was going to riots and stuff like that, but since I'm a father now, I don't. It can get very terrible and dangerous and violent. So, now that I have someone to take care of, I don't just go on riots anymore.

I know your son is only two years old. Have you started talking to him about race?

Not yet. He's too young to understand, but I will. It's very important to be aware of, and the young generation has to do better than mine. We just need to try to spread as much love as we can and not hate. That's how we're going to survive, I think.

Well, I'm glad you have your art to channel some of your feelings into.

Yes, I think all my life I always did that. I didn't consider myself an artist all my life, but I always find something to channel my emotions — it could be sports, or art.

What sports do you do?

I do hip hop dancing, climbing, and football. Sometimes there's so much energy in me, I just need to make something out of it, and sports are a very good thing to channel your energy towards.

Do you do hip hop dancing on your own or do you go to classes?

I go to classes every Monday. It is very fun. It has a very good vibe as well, especially towards all these racial and class differences. If there's anything very bad, we just try to have a good vibe about it and find a good solution through dancing, through education, and through communication. Dancing is a very good school. I wish everyone could dance because I'm sure we would have way less conflict in the world if everyone would dance.

I'm curious, when it comes to racism, how have you found the web3 space? Do you experience racism in the web3 community, either virtually or IRL?

Actually, no. I'm aware that there is some racism, especially in the PFP communities, sometimes I see bad stuff. But on my part, I've never experienced any racism in web3, which is very good. The web3 that I know is very open, and anyone is free to talk, to express themselves, and I feel like everyone can be represented. One very good thing about web3 is that it’s not only about the big countries — anyone anywhere in the world can create, be seen, and be heard.

Let's pivot and talk about your career a bit. Nearly two years ago, you quit your job to become a full-time artist. For people who aren't full-time artists, I feel like they often wonder what does a full-time artist do? How do you spend your day? How would you describe your job at this point?

I work much more than before, it's crazy. I wasn't expecting that, but it makes sense because as a full-time artist, you don't just create and make art, you have a lot of hats to wear.

You have to meet people, you have to code, you have to buy stuff, you have to go to this exhibition, you have to do communication on all the socials - Twitter, Discord, Instagram. So, I wasn't expecting that. And it is very exhausting.  

That's the unexpected part of being a full-time artist. It's not only about making stuff and living the life and being happy about making art, it's also a lot of admin stuff and things on the side, which is interesting.

Sometimes it can be boring if I’m being honest. But I think it's good to have another view of everything. Because ultimately, you have to become a brand and you have to do all this kind of stuff in order to make a living. I'm mostly bad at everything besides the art, so I have to improve in those areas.

I think a lot of people don't appreciate that artists are entrepreneurs -- they're running their own little businesses. You’re the CEO and you’re also the product developer, the marketer, and the accountant. You’re doing all these jobs.

Definitely. I mean you can be an artist and not sell much and be happy. But if you want to be visible so that you can sell you work, you have to put extra work into the mix, which can be exhausting.

As you have become more successful and started to make more money, have you thought about hiring anyone to help you with any of this stuff?

Yeah, I have started to think about hiring one person, especially for social. I'm very bad at social. I don't like to spend time on social — between email, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Blue Sky, whatever…there are so many things.

It could be cool to hire someone. But at the same time, it's very difficult for me to open up. I feel like if hire someone, I will need to give a lot of information about myself, about how I think, and what is my vision. So I would have to structure my life even more, which can be some work, too.

I'm very afraid of this extra work before the work starts to be less intense. I see it as an investment. So, at the very beginning, you have to put in extra work to hire someone and to guide the person to do the right stuff before the person helps you.

I think because I’m not ready yet to do that, I haven’t hired anyone. But that's something I'm keeping an eye on.

I also got some helpful advice from a friend, Tyler Hobbs, who has a team. He told me that the first year, you're under water. And you should make sure to have some space before hiring people. So, I'm not ready yet to make that space. Maybe later.

Well the first step is setting the intention.

You’re a full-time artist, you have a family, you have a kid, and on top of that, you also do some teaching, is that right?

Yes, I teach my former school called Gobelins. It's an animation and art school. I went there in 2011. I think it's good to keep the ball rolling and transmit the knowledge to the next generation and tell young people, "You can do this, don't be afraid of it.”

The classroom is divided in two, it's the developers and the art directors. When I teach art directors, I always try to tell them to see in a visual way, and not in tools. Don't be bound to tools, be bound to your vision, which is much wider. Then from there, you can figure out the tools you need to achieve your vision.

And to the developers, I tell them, don't be bound to your title of “developer.” You're human, and you're creative as well. You can discuss creativity or art or design with your little friends. Don't be limited!

I also teach technical stuff, like WebGL and how to draw with code and stuff like that.

As you were talking about being flexible and not being bound by these constraints, I was reminded of a quote you shared in a recent talk from Bruce Lee, "Be water, my friend." Why did you share that quote in that talk? What does that quote mean to you? How do you manifest that in your own life?

All of my life I have tried to adapt to any environment I was in. I think it helps to try to understand the people you’re with, to navigate your environment, your world, and just make the best out of it. I think “be water” is the perfect sentence to highlight this way of feeling.

[Editor’s Note: I recommend the entire 22 minute talk referenced in this question]

Love that. In my home gym I have a big huge Bruce Lee poster. It keeps me motivated.

So, you do all these things—your art, your career, your family, your teaching, admin, social media. It seems like there must be some things that are slipping through the cracks. What are you not spending as much time on as you would like?

Sleeping! [laughs]

I don't sleep enough. I usually go to bed around 2 or 3 AM, and my kid wakes me up at 6 AM or 7 AM. So, it's not a lot of sleep. It's very little sleep. I need to sleep more definitely.

And besides sleep, social media is definitely the thing I put the least energy into.

Why do you stay up so late?

Because I'm frustrated. I have so many things to do during the day, but then it's nighttime and I did nothing. And I'm like, "Oh, shit, I need to do something."

It’s a bad habit. This is a habit I developed while I had a full-time job. By day I would work for a company, and then it would be night and I would have dinner and watch a movie with my girlfriend, and then be like, "Oh, shit, I did no art today." And so I would spend some time, just for me, just to be happy. So, that's how I started to develop these kinds of bad habits.

And even now that I'm full-time doing art, I still kept this bad habit. I am trying to stop doing this and be like, "Okay, you did nothing today. It's okay. You have tomorrow."

But it's hard, it's in my DNA now. I need to do stuff. And if I do nothing during the day, I feel bad, which is bad, I know, but it's a hard habit to break.

The thing is, once you break the habit and you sleep more, you might get more done during the day.

[Laughs] It’s true.

I think many of us have been there where we know we should go to bed, but for whatever reason, we stay up and we're on our computer doing whatever we're doing. It's like this pull that we can't get away from for some reason.

Yes. And also at night, you don't have any distractions. That time alone, nothing can interrupt you. No calls or emails happen. No kids. I know that I will have two hours straight doing what I want to do.

How did you first get started in code-based art and what drew you to this medium as a form of artistic expression?

After high school, I did a two-year degree, which was very broad. There was mathematics, design, art history, coding, and animation. I just wanted to explore a lot of stuff, and I started coding and animating a lot by night. When I entered Gobelins, the art school, it opened this whole world I didn't know about. I was learning all these different things, and I thought “maybe I can connect all of these things through code” and that's when I started making things on the side without really showing anyone.

Then I got job as a full-time creative developer. I was doing a bunch of stuff, like 3D coding, designing, and animating, but it was all for clients. So, at night, I was like, "Oh, I learned this new technique during my job, why not use it to do something personal and try to do have fun with it?"

In 2015 or 2016 I stumbled upon a generative art exhibition. I didn't even know that term at that point. That's when I was like, "Oh, there is a term for this?!” There is a saying in programming that “the most powerful thing is knowing what you're looking for.” So, learning the term for generative art was a turning point for me. Once I knew what it was, I could do research and I learn more about it, and I also realized it was understood as a real art form.

At that point, I knew I wanted to make generative art, so I started to study composition, texture, and color theory. I'm very obsessive when I start learning stuff — I can spend nights and nights on YouTube, or books or anything I can learn from.

That’s how I started to make art with code. But I still wasn't telling anyone because my full-time job was taking up all my energy, and I didn't want to post on Instagram or wherever, as it would require even more energy for me. So, I didn't.

Matt DesLauriers was very inspiring for me at that point because I didn't know anything about crypto or blockchain stuff. Matt is very good at knowing all about the little niches everywhere. He showed me a bunch of stuff like how to set up a wallet so that I could sell pieces.

At that point, I was making little doodles and selling them for 10 dollars on Tezos. And at some point, people started to support me and push me even more. That’s when I felt like, “okay, people see this as an art, which means maybe I'm an artist.” I wasn’t sure, but I wanted to find out.

That's when I started to call myself an artist, and at that point I committed myself to making art.

You mentioned being obsessive about techniques. Can you tell me about a technique or function or command or something that you've recently added to your code repertoire that you think is useful or fun or interesting?

A lot of my techniques are not very recent. I think people see my progression as very fast, but it's just because I had been building all of the foundations for years, but I didn't have time to commit to art. But now that I do art full time, I can finally execute the old ideas I have had for so many years.

One very important technique that I learned for doing art with code was to consider color not as RGB but as HSV – hue, saturation value – and then you have much more control of the colors. I may have gotten that tip from Matt, I can’t remember.

Basically, that means converting your red, green and blue values into a color wheel and then you can adjust your color wheel in brightness and hue. Sometimes I paint with my real hands, and that was a key point for me to be able to translate what I was doing while mixing colors with paint and bring this knowledge to code with this color wheel that I could move.

I heard you talking about the color wheel on the Proof Podcast. You were discussing the Anticyclone palettes, and when you were layering them over the nighttime background, how you would turn the color wheel a bit to make it work.

Yeah, it's just a magical tool—this color wheel. A lot of stuff on this color wheel can be found in nature. There's a good correspondence and link between nature and the colors that we made up as humans.

You're best known for your long-form generative series, such as Anticyclone and Dragons, but you've also produced a number of one-of-ones. How do you approach the process of creating a one-on-one, which will just be a single output differently than when you're doing a long-form generative set, which will have hundreds of outputs? How do you think about those two differently?

With a long-form, I am thinking much more about a general idea. And within this idea, I try to represent it in different ways. All the outputs in a long form set have to be good. So, the parameter space is much smaller and way more controlled. It has to be well-balanced.

But with one-of-ones, it's just one shot. So, I can just come up with a direction and a feeling and then let the algorithm go crazy, and maybe have one good outputs out of 100. You just need to find the one great one. So I can be much more crazy about the algorithm.

There are so many images in the world, so many NFTs, so many artists creating things. How do you think about making work that stands out that's uniquely your own? How do you bring your soul into your art in a way that makes it really unique to you? I know that's a very broad question. So, feel free to approach it in any way that you want.

For a long time while I was learning to code, I was in discovery mode. I would take a tutorial and reproduce it, and maybe tweak it a little so it was more mine. But now that I have a technical foundation to explore, I no longer take as many tutorials.

I don't know everything there is to know, but I have enough information to explore myself. And If I need to find function on how to convert RGB into HSV, for example, I can look for that on the internet.

But now I try not to look too much at tutorials about how to create certain types of aesthetics. Instead, I try to find my own aesthetics by experimenting a lot. And at some point, the code becomes a part of you.

“Anyone can learn to code…but at some point, once you know the basics, you must shut down everything and find your own voice through the code.”

At some point, your art becomes very personal because only you code like that. It's not coming from tutorials or from a company or from a team. It's coming from you. Only you can do it, it's your voice. You need to find your own voice through the code.

And once I had this breakthrough, I could think in terms of ideas or emotions or whatever inspires me. Maybe my kid does something and I'm like, "Okay, maybe there's an idea here" that I can translate into code. I always try to observe the world a lot and try to interpret it with my own foundation of code. And that's why it's my unique voice because it's through my own experience.

Coding is a very open-source thing. Anyone can learn to code, there are a lot of resources, but at some point, once you know the basics, you must shut down everything and find your voice through the code.

That makes sense. I think there's a corollary in writing as well. You can read all the books you want from authors you love but the only way to find your own voice in writing is to just put away the books and start writing. It takes a while.

Yeah, it takes a while. It took me a lot of time. I've been coding for 12 years, and I only started to learn how to express myself through code maybe five years ago, or something like that. During the first seven years I was building the foundation before I could put together all of the pieces in a way that was unique to me.

What would you say are some of your underrated works?

Maybe the series 1935 that I did with Bright Moments and my early stuff on Tezos.

I feel like things become underrated as soon as people are holding, and volume goes down. So, it can only be overrated if a lot of people are talking about it and there are a lot of transactions. When an edition is low or when it's very early, not a lot of people see it. So, it can be harder to discover. It's not less good, it's just less seen.

Probably your most famous series Anticyclone, each palette is named after an inspiring woman who changed the world or your world. One of the palettes is named after your partner Camille. You wrote, "She continues to inspire me day after day, like a very bright sun." How does Camille inspire you?

We're very different. Sometimes I see things in one way, and she sees it in a totally different way. So that helps me see a much broader spectrum of life. I see more things, thanks to her, because we are very different. When I look left, she looks right.

She’s also very supportive. Because my practice is very personal, it’s very good to have this kind of support. She's really interested in what I'm creating. She always asks me what it means, what's the deeper meaning of my work. She questions me a lot. When she asked, "But why did you do that?" I question myself, and then I will say "I don't know, but I'm going to find out now because you asked."

It’s very good to have someone like her — she’s the best person that I know.

It's an amazing advantage to have somebody by your side who is both supportive and interested in what you do.

Yes. And sometimes we don't agree. I’ll say, "Yeah, it's going to be this sort of blue." And she's like, "No, that’s not a good blue." It’s good because she is as picky as I am. She's very obsessive. She has strong opinions. It’s very good to be with someone like that with strong opinions.

And when it comes to co-parenting, are you similar or different in your parenting styles?

On some subjects, we are different. And on some subjects, we are similar.

I'm much more strict, I would say, and she's a bit more relaxed.

She's like, "It's okay. It's not that bad." And I'm like, "It's very bad. It's not a simple mistake."

But sometimes it's the opposite. She like, "Oh my god, it's very dangerous." And I'm like, "No, it's okay. He's not going to die." So, it's a good balance, I would say.

I think it's good to not always agree with someone. It elevates the debate. And she loves debating with me about anything, which is very good for our souls. We are feeding ourselves.

I agree. It keeps things interesting and lively.

Is it true that French children are not picky and they eat everything?

It's true but I didn't know people said that.

A lot of people say American kids are picky and French kids aren't picky.

Oh, that's interesting. Well, I don't know about the other French kids, but mine is very not picky. He eats everything, except red stuff, like tomatoes. Other than that, he's like, "Yeah, I'm going to eat anything you throw at me."

You’ve been posting a lot of previews of these code paintings recently all in a similar style. I was wondering if those are part of your upcoming drop with Cactoid Labs and LACMA or are you just posting work from your personal playground?

Both. Now I am much closer with the Cactoid/LACMA release collaboration. Two or three months ago I think the code painting was just playground stuff. I was just exploring. I code every day and I try not to be bound to any release on a drop. I'm going to code even if I have nothing. It's actually the best to do that.

But at some point, when I have a release coming, I try to shape them toward a specific goal or specific idea. That's when I tried to make a series. It's no more playgrounds, it's becoming a series, and those are some of the outputs I have been posting more recently.

I have an idea in mind and I need make my code match this idea, which can be difficult sometimes, because you don't have the right tools or right techniques. So usually, I discover a lot of techniques on the go while creating a series.

Can you tell me more about the Cactoid Labs/LACMA drop? When will it be coming out? How big will the collection be? Does it have a name or anything like that?

The name is Distance.

[Editor’s Note: This is the first time the name of this collection has been publicly announced. Additionally, William shared two previously unreleased test outputs from the collection, below]

I almost never think about edition size until the last minute because once I finish the algorithm, then the algorithm will tell me, "Oh, I can support 100 or 500 outputs." So, I try not to listen to the market or to other people.

I just try to listen to the algorithm that I created. It depends on the outputs and the diversity in it. If people tell me they want a low edition, but I see that the algorithm can handle way more, I'm going to go for way more, because I don't want to be bound to the market in terms of creativity. I think it's very bad to do that.

Being a generative artist is very different from contemporary artists where they use their hands like with sculpture or painting, you are much more limited in terms of production. You can make way less stuff in a year than generative artists. Generative artists can make an algorithm for a year, and then have a thousand of outputs at the same time. For painters, that's not possible.

It seems like you're doing a bunch of other stuff. You have a Christie's release coming up. You have an upcoming release with Avant Arte and Cozomo de’ Medici, and that one will include a physical component, right?

Yeah. I also specialize in making amazing physicals. So, it's going to be a lot of exploration, a lot of experimentation, which I love. I love to experiment and discover new ways to create. I can't wait to do that. It's possibly like code painting stuff. I see code painting as a way of painting, but its not just one series, it is a way of drawing, so I can use it for a different bunch of stuff.

The code paintings are very lifelike. They're very textured, and they really do look like oil on canvas.

When you zoom out 5, 10, or even 20 years, what is your dream career look like?

At that point, I want to be part of the discussion in history. I want to do my best for my son. If in his art book, there is a little picture of me with my artwork among a lot of other artists, I'd be proud. I think we are making history right now. We are standing on the shoulders of our elders, and we are continuing the conversation.

I think there's a lot to talk about here and I hope my work will be part of the discussion. I hope I will have had an impact on the future generation, who will look at my work and realize they can express themselves in code. It's not about coding. It's about your humanness and expressing yourself with code. I hope I will be remembered in that way.

Well, I think you're on your way William!

Besides code, I know you play around with other mediums for fun. Do you ever think you'll release or sell work in other mediums?

Yeah, for sure. I think physical painting is on the way. I am making a lot of progress on my painting right now.

And you also dabble in photography.

I see photography as a hobby. I haven’t committed yet to photography. Maybe I never will, I don't know.

But I consider making art with a medium when I start to commit a lot to it and making stuff with the purpose of making art. I'm not at that point yet with photography.

Let's end with some rapid-fire questions for fun.

What's your favorite museum in Paris?

Centre Pompidou, definitely. Pompidou is very big. When you’re there, the air is art. It's crazy. Even the building is a piece of art. There's also a lot of technology stuff in there. They're very interested in computer art and video art. It's a very good museum.

What type of camera do you like to use for your photography hobby?

I do film photograph, obviously [laughs].

I like tactile stuff. I have a new Olympus XA I just bought. It's my favorite thing ever. It just goes in my pocket. There is a flash. I can take it to any party or whatever. With film, I just like the feeling of not knowing. It's like a snapshot of your memory, of your life, and you're going to discover it way later.

In Paris, what's an underrated neighborhood to walk around?

That's tough because it's all interesting. Maybe the twentieth [arrondissement]. It's not super touristy and has much more of a village mood. So, you can just work there and enjoy your life. Sit at a cafe, have a crepe, whatever, just enjoy being there. It's not about shopping. It's not about tourist monuments. I enjoy visiting.

What are some digital art grails that you haven't had a chance to collect yet that are on your list?

So many. Probably a piece from Matt [Deslauriers]. Probably a Meridian. It's very cliché to say that but this is the one I feel most connected to. I didn't have time to collect one yet but I'm going to at some points.

Are there any underrated artists you'd like to shout out to help bring some eyeballs to their work?

There was an exhibition recently called N=12 from Feral File. They are doing a group show with 12 artists. A lot of them are not super known yet but they're very talented. So, check all of them out.

[Editor's Note: The artists included in this exhibition are Elsif, Dan Catt, Nadieh Bremer, ippsketch, Piter Pasma, Lia Coleman, RalenArc, Anna Lucia, Bart Simons, Melissa Wiederrecht, Reva Fan, and Nicole Vella)

What is the music that you're listening to right now and enjoying?

Usually I like to listen to hip hop and classical music. They're very different. When I'm in an inspired mood, I listen to hip hop. I like 90s hip-hop until 2000 or maybe 2010, and that’s when it started to change too much for me.

I listen to classical music when I need to focus a lot or crack a formula or figure out something very specific.

Finally, what's the best French TV show or movie that you've seen recently?

Emily in Paris — but we have a love hate relationship with the show. You can still watch it and enjoy it because it takes place in Paris and it is funny. But you can also see how the people who made it see Paris, which is totally unrealistic.

Well, William, I know it's late and you need to pack. Thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with me.

Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed this conversation because it was not the usual questions that I get.

Accounts to Follow:

X/Twitter: Monty // William

Instagram: Monty // William

Dear Reader - 

The following short story - Luci’s Labyrinth -  is inspired by the artwork VIII. Infinite Ceremony by Sam Spratt (pictured below). 

The story responds directly to the artwork and is also heavily influenced by the broader tale of Luci as documented by Sam Spratt (@SamSpratt) across multiple digital paintings and written psalms.

I wrote Luci’s Labyrinth in response to the following prompt from Michaely (@Michael_Chestr) and Lord Midas (@LordMidas_ETH) in regard to VIII. Infinite Ceremony: “Create a response to what you see.”

My intent with this story is to consider the character of Luci in a contemporary context. Beyond that, I won’t say much about the story or the setting or what I am trying to say - I will leave that up for interpretation. I will note that scholars of Luci who pay attention will be able to find a number of winks and nods to Spratt’s source material peppered throughout the story.

In service,

Monty

Luci’s Labyrinth 

“Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. Why should I henceforth not love my dreams and not make their riddling images into objects of my daily consideration?” - Carl Jung

i.

Many years later, as Luci rested beneath the eucalyptus, they were to remember that distant day when they decided to leave The City.

The air was crisp and the light was slanted. It was early February, one of the first mornings of the year that hinted winter might end soon. Luci didn’t notice. The windows of their 14th story apartment were closed. Two pundits were discussing something consequential on their regular daily news podcast. Coffee was brewing. Luci’s phone buzzed with texts from a client. 

BAM.

Luci startled and their body spun them around, though by the time the turn was complete, their mind understood the sound. A bird had hit the window. Luci exhaled. This was a thing that happened from time to time. The cost of progress, Luci always thought. Improbably, the bird had fallen onto a narrow ledge outside, part of the window frame. It was blinking in shock. 

Luci walked to the window, and stared at the bird. They felt paralyzed. What were they supposed to do now?

“Thank you for listening, and we will see you again tomorrow!” said the host in a professionally cheery tone. The coffee machine beeped in completion. Luci’s phone buzzed again. The bird was still blinking. It appeared to shiver. Do birds get cold? Luci wondered. Can I touch birds with my bare hands?

A sudden gust of wind blew the bird off the ledge. Luci cried out involuntarily and quickly levered the window open the few inches that it would allow. They looked down. They saw what they usually saw: Steel and glass. A street lined with miniature cars and buses. A steady river of two-legged animals dressed mostly in black and gray.

Luci felt slightly winded for no apparent reason. The morning sun glanced off their cheek, vital against the cold air. The old yellow flag - an  inheritance from their mother, now used as a makeshift curtain - hung askew next to the open window, rippling softly in the breeze. Luci stared across The City.

I am in a cave. Or is it a cave? Are those roots? How did I get here? 

“Hello Luci.”

I swivel around. I am not alone. She is glowing and beautiful and not quite  like me. Trinkets and pages are strewn about. On the ground, bowls overflow with earthy liquids and powders. 

“Who are you?” It is all I can think to ask.

“I am Sima.”

“What is this place?” 

“You wandered in here Luci. When you left, you didn’t know where you were going, but here you are.”

“Where did I come from?”

“You came from The Empire.”

Luci’s phone buzzed again. They snapped back to their apartment. How strange, Luci thought. It was rare for them to remember their dreams. They gazed across the apartment, overcome by a sudden sense that they were standing in somebody else’s home. Luci’s eyes stopped at the clock. 8:47 AM. Time to go.

ii.

This  building is a monument to progress! Tallest building in the Western Hemisphere! That’s what The Boss always liked to tell clients when they first arrived. Luci had to admit that the view was mesmerizing. From up here, The City appeared to Luci like a labyrinth.

But today the view felt different. It made Luci feel dizzy and melancholy. The labyrinth usually seemed like an endless maze of possibility. Today, it struck Luci as a sort of cage, crafted with daedalian precision to ensnare the roiling mass of humankind.

Luci liked their job in the way they liked getting into the car to run an errand. It’s nice to have the car. The car is easy. The car protected them from the elements. The car is a technological marvel. But despite all this, the car somehow still managed to sap their vitality and make them feel subtly alienated from the world. It didn’t always feel convenient to Luci to walk to the grocery store on a cold evening and farmer-carry the bags home, one in each hand, but it made them feel something. Luci wanted to feel something, and this job wasn’t making that happen. But what was the alternative?

Luci sat down at their desk and flicked on their monitor.

I begin to look around more. I am no longer scared. I understand this place won’t hurt me. It is sacred.

Sima and I are not alone. We are surrounded.

I don’t need to ask, I understand. My ancestors are with us. And not just my ancestors. My demons. My past. My former dreams.

Mother, is that you? Young Luci…I recognize you.

I close my eyes and let my past wash over me. 

“Did you know this is actually the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere?” The Boss led a new client into the conference room.

iii.

Isaac’s Deli had been on that corner since Luci was a child. Luci used to go there with their mother on special occasions, and always on the first Saturday of every month when the two of them would come into the heart of The City. Luci ordered the same thing every time: “Bagel with cream cheese, toasted please.” 

Whenever they ate at Isaac’s together, Luci’s mom would enthuse about the unlimited free pickles. “This is how it should be, Luci. This is real hospitality and tradition right here.” Isaac’s no longer offered unlimited free pickles. Regardless, the bagels were still excellent.

Luci didn’t go to Isaac’s Deli often these days, but the morning had left them feeling unsettled, and they wanted something comforting: “I’ll have a poppy seed bagel with cream cheese, toasted please.”

They sat down. The old wooden chairs were the same ones from when Luci was a child. These chairs had seen them grow up. 

“Why are you here Luci?”

I pause. Why am I here? I know why I left. There was no other choice.

“I needed to leave.”

“Needing to leave is not a reason. You could have gone anywhere. Why are you HERE?”

I look around me. Others have been here before me. They are paying attention.

“I came here so that I may return.”

“Number 48!” 

Luci’s bagel was ready, one dill pickle on the side. Luci ate the pickle first, chewing slowly. Going back to the office right now did not sound appealing, but such is the way of things. 

iv.

“Constitutionals are good for the soul,” Luci’s grandfather used to say. Whenever Luci took a post meal walk, they always thought of their grandfather. It was one of the reasons Luci liked going out for lunch, rather than eating at the office.

As Luci walked back toward the office, the melancholy of the morning began to melt away,  replaced by an unusual feeling of buoyancy. Luci felt each step took them further than usual, as if they were being propelled forward by some external force. Issac’s bagels always did the trick.

Luci had walked past the old church by the office a hundred times, but had never stepped inside. Today, however, as they were passing by, they heard a choral harmony wafting through the front door. Luci slowed, and then paused. It was a weekday afternoon, so there wouldn’t be a service. 

Luci hesitated, then walked up the wide, dirty marble steps toward the massive wood and iron double door. They peeked inside. The choir was huddled together in their carmine robes, but otherwise the church was empty save a few people sitting in the pews. The light was dim and golden. This performance  must be a dress rehearsal.

“....Roots hold me close; wings set me free; 

Spirit of Life, come to me, come to me.”

Luci let the music wash over them.

“The choice is yours Luci…will you choose to stay asleep or will you wake up?”

I feel the weight of my history, as if I am the 200th page in a closed book, trapped by all the pages that have already been written.

I look down, and as if the cave can read my mind, the book is there. Bound in hide, it looks ancient and weathered. I stare. I am nervous. I reach down and open the tome. 

I see them staring back at me from the page. Fifty skulls.

I realize that my eyes are wet. A tear falls onto the page, and the canvas begins to transmute, as if it were a boiling pot of water. From the froth an embodied skull rises, and stares me in the eyes.

It doesn’t speak, but I can feel us communicate. We are one.

I know what must be done.

“Sima…I am ready to wake up.”

I grab the skull from the air. From its base, it casts a light. I flip it around to illuminate Sima’s face, and offer her the totem. She stares into my soul. 

“You are ready Luci. The dance can begin anew.”

The choir finished their song, and the members began chattering with each other in low voices.

Luci was in tears. A church volunteer glanced at the newcomer. It wasn’t common that the choir brought people to tears, but it did happen from time to time.

Luci turned away, walking  back out the double doors into the familiar roar of The City. The sun was still out. It was turning into a perfect February day. Luci could almost feel the buds on the dogwoods filling with energy. A bus full of tourists roared by. A street vendor selling their wares was shouting.

Luci took out their phone and texted The Boss: “I won’t be back to the office today.” 

Over the past year and a half I have interviewed some of the wisest and most creative people in the digital art space.

Good wisdom never goes out of style, so I decided to dig into the archives to find some of the best insights and advice from my artist interviews.

Whether you are an artist/creative, an entrepreneur, a student, an investor, a parent, or a W2 employee, the lessons in here are broadly applicable.

I recommend that you read these lessons, and then, in the words of Bruce Lee, “adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”

Read on for wisdom from DeeKay Kwon, Sarah Zucker, OSF, Terrell Jones, Grant Yun, Ripcache, Amber Vittoria, Des Lucréce, Maliha Abidi, Emily Xie, ACK, and Erick Calderon.

In service,

Monty

This issue of Art Life Money is brought to you by my partners at Wild.xyz.

Please read to the bottom of this section for an announcement about their very unique drop tomorrow, including information about their allowlist.

Wild is the community where you can create, collect, and explore experiential art.

Wild (@wildxyz on Twitter) makes it possible to:

• Collaborate with boundary-pushing creators in their application-based artist residency

• Collect curated experiential art on their platform

• Experience immersive works produced by Wild

I’m excited to share an allowlist opportunity for Wild’s drop this week:

Bubble by Santiago Grau is a collection of 200 generative dynamic NFTs. Each piece in the collection is an on-chain binary state artwork. On mint, an "alive" bubble is generated. If transacted again earlier than its resiliency value the token will burst. The state of each token is stored on its contract and represented visually.

You can register for the allowlist for this collection using my Premint link. If you are selected, you will be able to mint one of the 200 pieces for 0.08 ETH.

This collection is launching TOMORROW, Wednesday, 7/19.

12 Life Lessons From World Class Artists

1. There is no right moment to take the leap

I learned from DeeKay Kwon that if you wait for the right moment, it will never come. He told me that his biggest regret of his twenties was not quitting his corporate job sooner. “I spent way too much time doing work for others when I should’ve spent more time doing work for myself. I am proud that I have my own style of art but I feel like I could’ve started that way sooner.”

2. Creation and relationships are the antidotes to dread

Sarah Zucker has danced with existential dread for much of her life. Like many of us (including me), she has a deep fear of death. She once wrote on Instagram that “I know I shouldn’t be afraid, but in a very base primal way I fear death, and the passing of time and the decay of all things and the loss of everything I love.”

For Sarah, two of the antidotes to dread are creating and investing in relationships. “Aside from creating, the best relief I find is companionship,” she told me. “Having friends and loved ones you can talk and laugh and dance with is immensely soothing to the soul.”

I suspect that these antidotes might be broadly universal. Make things. Invest in your relationships. You will feel better.

3. Know your game and manage your risk

Ovie Faruq AKA OSF taught me the power of knowing your game before you step into the arena. “Every time we buy or sell NFTs or crypto or whatever it is, I have a game plan in my head,” he says. “I know what levels I'm buying at. I know what levels I'm selling at. I'm not chasing higher prices, I'm not selling at lower prices.”

Knowing your game — when to enter, when to exit, when to change your mind — is a centerpiece of a good risk management structure. As they say, the number one rule is to survive. OSF is a master at survival, and the entire interview is worth re-reading.

4. Your art won’t sell itself

Artist Terrell Jones knows from first hand experience that no matter how good of an artist you are, the harsh truth is that your art won’t sell itself. When you sign up to be an artist, you are signing up to run a company of one.

In other words, if you want to make it in the art world, you can’t just do art. You have to be a full stack entrepreneur who is charge of marketing, social media, operations, finance, strategy, and innovation.

“I minted my first piece on Foundation in March 2021 and that piece sat for at least four months, maybe more,” recounted Jones. “What I didn't realize at that time was that you needed to build a community around your art”

But at the same time, you must resist the urge to cater too much to the community that you are building. Jones told me that his advice to newcomers to the space is to “Keep your narrative. Keep your story. Just know why you're doing things. Just know yourself.” 

5. Bored people are boring. Find beauty in the mundane.

When I was a kid, occasionally I would gripe about being bored. “I’m bored! Let’s do something else.” Whenever I said this around my grandmother, she had the same response: “If you’re bored, you’re boring.”

As a 7 year old, I didn’t understand what she meant. But now I wholeheartedly agree. I think that artist Grant Yun would agree as well. During our interview, he reminded me of the value of finding beauty and intrigue in everyday activities.

“I genuinely enjoy driving,” he told me, “It literally doesn't matter where I'm driving, even if it's the same route I take every day. There's always something I see on the road that strikes me - maybe it's someone standing there and walking around, or maybe the weather that day is extra foggy or extra bright, or anything really.”

This is such a good lesson. Traffic doesn’t make you frustrated. Only YOU can make yourself frustrated. Sit back and enjoy the ride. It will be over before you know it.

6. Great art is about more than just aesthetics

During our interview, the anonymous artist Ripcache described what he hopes to achieve with his art.

“To try to understand and critique my place in time.”

This is a simple but powerful lesson that art is about a lot more than just aesthetics.

Ask yourself: What are YOU trying to achieve with your art? How is that reflected in your practice?

7. Be deliberate about your business structure and taxes

Artist Amber Vittoria is simultaneously very whimsical and very practical.

During our interview, she dispensed some very practical advice for artists who are thinking about how to structure their business and manage their taxes:

A big reason for my S-Corp election was to save on taxes. But also, long term, if I do want to hire somebody to help me, that will be a lot easier to manage since I already have payroll set up and I am doing bookkeeping.

In terms of how I keep track of my income, that hasn't changed. I use QuickBooks because that's what my new accountant likes to use. But I also keep a personal spreadsheet where I have all of my clients listed on there, when I invoice them, and when an invoice is paid.

Then, with NFTs, every time I make a sale, I convert my ETH through Coinbase to USD, and I mark that as income in my spreadsheet.

I used to update my spreadsheet monthly. And then I realized the stress of doing it monthly was a lot. So now I have quarterly tabs on my spreadsheet. And then I do the same thing with expenses. [She also pays taxes quarterly.]

There are a few apps I've used in the past like Expensify. But right now I have QuickBooks and one credit card for all my business expenses.

That's how I keep organized. I'm assuming if you're a bigger operation, then it'll probably be a little more complex than that. But I just try to keep on top of myself as much as possible and I try to stay organized.

8. Life is a series of obstacles. Expect them.

This lesson comes from my conversation with pseudonymous artist Des Lucréce, but it really comes from his mom.

Des told me that one of the biggest lessons he had learned from his mother is that “life is what you make of it, regardless of the obstacles that come your way.” Keep in mind that this advice is from a woman who lived through the Vietnam war, raised Des as a (mostly) single mom, and who worked tirelessly to provide a life for Des.

At a separate point in our interview, while reflecting on the death of his father, he told me that “Life is a cycle of highs and lows — the seasons pass and time keeps moving forward. Life is worth living because our time here is finite, and the moments we remember are what make our short time here special.”

The entire interview is packed with wisdom.

9. By giving people the benefit of the doubt, you also win

Maliha Abidi was born in Pakistan and moved to America when she was teenager. When she arrived, some of her American classmates at her new school would make fun of her accent and mispronounce her name. When I asked her about this experience, I was struck by how she handled it:

“I don't think they had malicious intentions,” she told me. “I think most of them were genuinely curious because they weren't used to seeing people like me… there are still lots of people who don’t pronounce my name correctly. And I don't make them feel bad about it. I try to share it with them politely.”

Maliha could have been pissed off. She could have been resentful. She could have assumed ill intent. But instead she gave her peers the benefit of the doubt.

The key lesson here is not that she let them off the hook, but rather that by not dwelling on their intentions she was the one who was winning. Rather than wallowing or feeling depressed, she could move on with her life.

Give others the benefit of the doubt. It makes your life easier.

10. Schedule and protect distraction-free creative time

Artist Emily Xie is a full time artist, which means she is a very busy entrepreneur. “I often find myself meeting with gallerists, communicating with folks over DM, answering emails, fulfilling print orders, attending art events, and writing or speaking about my work.”

In the face of these wide ranging responsibilities, she reminds us of the importance of being very deliberate about creating space for distraction-free creative time: “While the business side of art can quickly become consuming, I find that it’s all well worth it once I get to sit down and enter art-making mode” she told me. “I just try my best to cordon off large chunks of distraction-free time for this so that I can enter that flow state that I so crave.” 

Schedule your creative time. Turn off your WiFi. Leave your house. Do whatever you need to do to get into your flow. Your career (and sanity) depends on it.

11. Spend more time with your kids (and really BE there)

Alpha Centauri Kid has three daughters. I interviewed him right before my second daughter arrived into this world, so I asked him for his advice. This is what he said:

I think the best advice I can I give is to just spend more time with them. This is advice for myself too - to stop what I'm doing more and just try and be patient and be in every moment with them, because one day I'm going to desperately wish they were here to spend time with. Being more in the moment and more present is the best advice I could ever give anyone. 

Living “in the moment” and “being more present” might be some of the most oft-repeated aphorisms of our time. That is for a reason.

Rather than breezing past this advice like you usually do, stop and consider how you might apply it to your own life today. Yes, today.

12. Just keep going: You can’t *think* your way to success. You have to DO things.

During my conversation with Art Blocks CEO and Artist Erick Calderon (AKA Snowfro), my biggest take away may have been how much of his success transpired because he just kept going.

He started multiple businesses in college. After college he started a long shot tile company and kept working at through multiple close calls with failure. After he began tinkering with code and learning about the blockchain, he spent years tinkering around before he landed on an idea for Art Blocks. Then, Art Blocks went through multiple iterations before it ended up being the platform we know today.

They key lessons here is that throughout his entire journey Erick was not sitting around just thinking about how to proceed, instead he just kept doing things, iterating as he went.

Learning by doing is more effective than learning by thinking.

Art Life Money is a shorter-form, roundup style post with notable news, links, short musings, and other things worth checking out, all related to… you guessed it: art, life, and money.

Continue reading for more on:

• The art market cycle

• Speculation about William Mapan’s upcoming drop

• Emerging artists

• A Twitter account I recommend following

• Links worth clicking from the past few weeks

• A reflection following the birth of my second daughter

• Crypto retirement accounts

• The power of compound growth

• An allowlist opportunity for the upcoming drop from my partners at wild.xyz

Monty

p.s. I changed my Twitter handle to @montyreport.

p.p.s. I also created Instagram and Threads accounts with the same handle - @montyreport. Give me a follow! I’m planning to use Instagram to highlight great art and give more of an inside look into my life.

This issue of Art Life Money is brought to you by my partners at Wild.xyz.

Wild is the community where you can create, collect, and explore experiential art.

Wild (@wildxyz on Twitter) makes it possible to:

• Collaborate with boundary-pushing creators in their application-based artist residency

• Collect curated experiential art on their platform

• Experience immersive works produced by Wild

I’m excited to share an allowlist opportunity for Wild’s drop this week:

Most Accidents Happen at Home by artist Jonas Lund — a collection of 256 3D pieces exploring accidental drops and the dissonance between real and imagined physics.

You can register for the allowlist for this collection using my Premint link. If you are selected, you will be able to mint one of the 256 pieces for 0.085 ETH.

This collection is launching Wednesday, 7/12.

Where are we in the art market cycle?

Art collector and investor Ben AKA B3N (@__DeFi__ on Twitter) recently wrote an insightful post with his thoughts on the art market:

Volumes are down. WAY down.

Why?

Ben’s thesis is that existing buyers are illiquid and there are not many new entrants.

While we may be down now, markets move in cycles. If you look forward, there are a lot of reasons to believe this trend will change. Ben breaks it down nicely.

His closing remarks are optimistic: “I truly believe we will look back on now in a couple years as a period of abundant opportunity, as a wonderful moment in time to be a long-term-oriented collector, investor, artist, or builder in this space.”

I could not agree more.

Read the full post and follow Ben here.

I am doing an interview with Ben soon as part of my Collector Series. If you enjoyed my interview with collector and investor Prosecco, you will definitely want to keep an eye out for this one. Reply in the comments to this post if there are specific questions you want me to ask.

William Mapan

I am interviewing generative artist William Mapan for The Monty Report this week. Mapan is best known for his Art Blocks curated collection Anticyclone. Please leave a comment on this post with any questions you would like me to ask him.

Mapan has spent a lot of time on Twitter teasing what appears to be an upcoming generative set.

My (unconfirmed) suspicion is that this will be a drop in collaboration with Cactoid Labs and LACMA.

I have written before about the value of acquiring a full set of all of the pieces from the LACMA Remembrance of Things Future Volume #1, which historically has acted as a de facto mint pass for their subsequent drops, such as Interwoven by Emily Xie. (By the way, I put my money where my mouth is - I own 2 out of 100 possible full sets.)

There are not many pieces available on secondary (collectors understand the value), but it still is possible to acquire at least one full set. It’s not cheap: 7.7 ETH at current floor prices, but you may be able to WETH it lower.

To stay up to date, follow Cactoid Labs, LACMA, and William Mapan on Twitter.

Emerging Artist Highlight

I am keeping an eye on the art by Data Velvet. Data creates lush, vibrant, and playful digital dreamscapes that they describe as “ AI-assisted data artifacts.”

Here is Coastal Fracture, which was collected for 0.33 ETH on June 30th by @Ju5tin_boyeeE.

Twitter Follow I Recommend

I have been enjoying following SuzanneNFTs for her art commentary and insights. She focuses primarily on generative art, but does highlight other stuff too. She also regularly reports on notable sales, which I appreciate.

Give her a follow at @nf_suzanne!

More Art Things

Le Random unveils epic generative art timeline and Michael Spalter is a fan.

Art collective Money Clicc announces July drops from artists die with the most likes and Cowboy Killer. Drop 1 is this Wednesday 7/12 - details here. As of this writing, it is possible to join Money Clicc for 1.1 ETH.

Artist ripcache writes a delicious thread on the Dutch Golden Age and how it relates to crypto art.

Speaking of Dutch Golden Age, I recently finished reading Girl with a Pearl Earring. Recommend.

If you missed 6529’s thread on The Goose, here you go.

Collector’s corner releases a great podcast with Erick Calderon. I recommend pairing it with my recent interview for a full serving of Snowfro.

Artist Hackatao conducts delightful interview with fellow artist Matt Kane (and he turns the tables at the end).

fxhash announces a multi-chain future that will include Ethereum & on-chain minting.

Sotheby’s announces a gen art program powered by Art Blocks. Their first drop will be with legend Vera Molnár.

The Relentless March of Time

Almost two years ago, my first daughter arrived into this world.

A couple of weeks ago, at the end of June, my second daughter arrived.

It feels different this time and I was trying to figure out why.

After reflecting, I think I feel differently because I more fully grok the relentless march of time than I did the first time around.

When “pre-kids Monty” thought about “babies” he lumped them all into one big vague box that was filled with humans from age 0 to 2.

Now, having been with my first little pup almost every single day from age 0 to 2, I realize how ridiculous that notion was.

Every month during the first two years is very different. Every week even. And some weeks, it feels like every day you are meeting a new little person.

This little being who you love more than anything is always just out of reach. By the time you think you understand what it’s like to have a 7 month old, then they are 8 months old, and they are totally different.

The cliché is true: They do grow up fast. I had heard that phrase a million times before I had my own kid. But now I feel it. I blinked and my first daughter transformed from a helpless newborn into a hilarious, energetic, empathetic, and surprisingly athletic little powerhouse.

Unlike money, you can’t save time. You can’t hoard time. You can’t stop time.

It just keeps going. No matter what, it slips away.

I know I will blink again and she will be heading off to kindergarten, and then high school, and then she will be leaving our home. Then someday I will have to say goodbye to her forever.

And this will all happen much much too fast.

The relentless march of time was something I pondered intellectually before kids, but now I really feel it. That is why this time feels different.

We spend so much of life focused on accumulating money and status and bullet points on a resume. But at what cost?

What if you spent a little less time focused on padding your wallet, and a little more time focused on investing in moments and memories?

Retirement Account Crypto

Depending on your situation, goals, and risk tolerance, it may make sense to consider investing in ETH or BTC in one of your retirement accounts so that you can enjoy tax-free/deferred growth and avoid taxable events on your sales. I am planning to do this myself in the near future with ETH.

In order to do this, you need to set up a self-directed IRA or 401k. There are a number of providers with varying fees and pros and cons. Unfortunately, many providers don’t offer staking (yet), but some do. I am still finalizing the platform I will use and then need to decide whether to dollar cost average my way in, or just do a big buy.

Warren Buffet and the power of time

Here’s a wild fact from The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel that really demonstrates the power of compounding, especially in the later years.

As I write this Warren Buffett’s net worth is $84.5 billion. Of that, $84.2 billion was accumulated after his 50th birthday. $81.5 billion came after he qualified for Social Security, in his mid-60s. Warren Buffett is a phenomenal investor. But you miss a key point if you attach all of his success to investing acumen. The real key to his success is that he’s been a phenomenal investor for three quarters of a century. Had he started investing in his 30s and retired in his 60s, few people would have ever heard of him.

That entire book is worth reading, by the way, if you haven’t yet.

Also, while this opinion is unpopular with a lot of crypto people, I highly recommend you diversify your wealth. Crypto and art have their place, but they are not the only ballgames in town. The stock market is the most consistent and proven wealth-creation machine of all time. Ignore it at your own peril.

Alright my friends! That is all for today’s issue of Art Life Money.

Before you leave, please leave a comment and let me know:

• Did you enjoy this issue?

• Do you have any questions?

• Do you have any constructive criticism?

• Anything else you would like to hear about?

Or, if you just want to say “I enjoyed this post” then please just hit the heart button at the top or bottom of this post.

We’ll see you back in this space soon with my interview with OSF and Mando, all about their partnership.

Until then, be well and accumulate memories.

Monty

p.s. As a reminder, if you like, please follow me on my new Instagram and Threads accounts.

The Monty Report is a publication and community focused on digitally native art and culture. We interview top digital artists, collectors, investors, builders, and more.

Subscribe now

If you would like to join my membership community — The Hound House — you may join here. If you prefer to pay for your membership in crypto, please DM me on Twitter @montymedici.

I also encourage you to check out my archives for more interviews and writing.

This issue of The Monty Report is brought to you by our partners at Wild.xyz.

Wild is the community where you create, collect, and explore experiential art.

Wild (@wildxyz on Twitter) makes it possible to:

• Collaborate with boundary-pushing creators in their application-based artist residency

• Collect curated experiential art on their platform

• Experience immersive works produced by Wild

I’m excited to share an allowlist opportunity for one of Wild’s upcoming drops: KIEYA by the artist Nygilia. This is a very unique project.

• You may follow the artist Nygilia on Twitter @nygi_xxv

• You may read more about KEIYA in this article by the author

• You may register for the allowlist here

This collection is launching tomorrow, June 22nd, at 1:30p PST. Register now!

Down The Rabbit Hole With Snowfro

The story of Erick Calderon is the story of opportunity meeting preparation.

Erick is a lifelong nerd with an entrepreneurial father who grew up in an era of rapidly changing technology.

As a kid, he was a curious tinkerer who had more friends on early internet message boards than he did at school.

As a college student, he sold snow cones and developed a taste for entrepreneurship.

After college, he followed in his father’s footsteps and launched a long shot tile company that was ahead of it’s time, and which still exists today.

In the mid-2010s, Erick began tinkering with blockchains and spending more time on Reddit. One day in 2017, while Erick was browsing the internet from his tile company showroom, he happened to see a post on the Ethereum subreddit announcing, “CryptoPunks: An experiment in digital collectibles on Ethereum.”

I’ll leave the rest of the story to Erick, who tells it better than I can in our interview.

As you read this interview, you will notice that Erick enjoys wandering down rabbit holes - though never in a boring way. Each time I asked him a question, he shared more than I expected. This is a reflection on how Erick’s mind works: He is endlessly curious, passionate, and focused. He is also generous with his time and energy. Our 90 minutes together flew by, and I learned a ton.

Because we went down so many rabbit holes, we only got to about 25% of the questions I had on my list. We didn’t even get a chance to talk about his art before we ran out of time. Luckily, Erick generously agreed to a Part 2 of this interview at some point - so we all have a lot to look forward to in the future.

During our time together, Erick and I discussed:

• His tile business and interior design tips

• His childhood and family

• The story of the day he discovered and claimed CryptoPunks

• How he built Art Blocks

• Art Blocks’ ownership structure and his thoughts on selling the company vs. remaining independent

• The Art Blocks curation board

• Artist royalties

• His plans for the remaining 210 Chromie Squiggles

• …and much more.

Please enjoy this conversation with Erick Calderon.

A Conversation with Erick Calderon - Part 1

Monty: I need your help. I am thinking about a kitchen remodel, and one thing I want to avoid is the ubiquitous white subway tile that is in every Airbnb. Can you help me figure out what to do? 

Erick: Wow, it's been like two years since anyone asked me for tile advice. 

My favorite thing to do, which was always antithetical to my own success in the tile business, was to tell people to bring the countertop up to the backsplash and make it monolithic.

Tile is actually a very fashionable thing.  There are trends, very serious trends, and very overdone trends. HGTV has taken it to the absolute max. 

During my time in the industry, I would help people pick tile, and then I would show up to their house 3 or 4 years later and be like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe I helped you pick this.” They would still love it, but I would feel guilty because it knew it had turned into an overdone trend.

Obviously, I have way more exposure to tile than 99 percent of people in the world. So my mindset is very different. But I started getting terrified at the rate at which something felt outdated to me. 

Because of this, I became the person at my company that became known for always recommending the boring option. When I say boring, I actually mean minimal and sophisticated.

The most minimal, sophisticated and highest longevity thing you can do with a tile backsplash is to bring the countertop and just turn it up so you have a solid countertop as a backsplash - just a continuation of the quartz or granite or marble. Then you have no grout, no maintenance, and it lasts longer.

It's more expensive up front, but long term I think that it's actually less expensive because you don’t have to deal with maintaining the grout or chipping tile.

People think about tiles for bathrooms, kitchen backsplashes, etc. Are there any other places in the home where you think tile is an underrated material?

I like having tile in a walk in closet. 

The entryway is also a good place for tile. Even if you have hardwoods everywhere, having a tiled mudroom where you can literally bring in all the mud in the world and not really damage the walls it is nice. Even if it's a small space, I think it looks good as a transition. 

The primary bathroom, too. Not just tiling the shower walls, but bringing the tile behind the sink or on some of the other walls I think makes it look a lot more high end and it also makes it feel cleaner in there, as opposed to having a bunch of sheetrock. 

Tile aside, I have a sneaking suspicion you may have other interior design opinions. What are elements or patterns of great indoor spaces?

I am a very minimalistic person. I like super simple spaces. 

I live in a mid-century modern house that was built in 1951 and then was updated later on. It's a little bit more embellished than anything else that I've ever lived in. 

But overall I like to keep it minimal. The simpler, the better because it doesn't get outdated. Having gone through 20 years of selling tile, I’ve realized how quickly you can get turned off by something that you thought was really cool two years ago. 

The bigger the tile, or the more simple the wood grain, the better it will age. Then you can mess around with things that you can replace more readily, like art. But you can't change the tile and you can't change hardwoods without it being really expensive.

As you began to dedicate yourself more to Art Blocks, how did you manage the leadership succession process at La Nova [the tile company]?

We had a gentleman that was in charge of a division at the company. He was into crypto and he started to realize what was happening with Art Blocks taking off, maybe even before I did. At one point he was like, “Erick, you may not even have time to come in anymore soon.” 

At that point he hit me with his proposal to take over as CEO of the whole company. It couldn’t have come at a better time - I was starting to really pull my hair out trying to figure out how to juggle both organizations. He took over, and he has been running it since. 

It's been about a year and a half since then. Now I go the showroom and work there once a week and meet with the team then, but my day-to-day involvement is quite low.

When you're not working in the showroom, are you working at home?

Last year, we moved into a house that has an office. In that office, I have a window. 

Before that, I worked full time in the tile showroom, in a small back conference room which was around 200 square feet, with a tile display all around it. I just stuck a table in there, and the first two years of Art Blocks were operated entirely out of there. There was only one window, and it was very high up.

It got it to a point where I started suffering going in there everyday. I would go in and I'd lock myself in the conference room from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. I would come out for  a bathroom break or two and maybe to grab something out of the fridge to eat. But I usually didn't have lunch, because my meetings were all back-to-back. It was just so crazy. 

On top of that, because of all these back-to-back meetings, I'd have like three minutes to go to the bathroom. Maybe this is oversharing, but sometimes I'd hear someone outside in the showroom that was a client of mine who I really cared for and would love to just catch up with. So I would catch up with them instead of going to the bathroom, and then I would have to literally hold it through the next meeting.

It got to this point where I wasn't even functional.

Now I just go on Tuesdays, and I try to spread my Tuesdays out a bit so I can interact with the team if they need anything. 

But here at my home office I have a window that looks out at grass. I'm very close to touching it all the time. I also have food in my fridge. It’s a very different experience, and from a mental health perspective it’s not something I could ever take for granted now.

As somebody who drinks a lot of water and has a very small bladder I understand your bathroom pain.

I know you've told this story before, but many people haven't heard it…Take me back to 2017 and tell me about the day you discovered CryptoPunks and what happened next.

I was browsing Reddit, just like I normally did. I liked hanging out and asking questions in the EthDev subreddit. Even though there was definitely a community there, I was shocked at how little activity there was. 

One day I stumbled across a link with the CryptoPunks announcement. At that point, I hadn’t synced to the blockchain in a while, so my first thought was like, “Oh, shit, I'm way behind on all of my Ethereum blocks.” People don't really have to deal with this anymore, because we have Metamask and all sorts of things, but the more you need a blockchain to sync within a short period of time, the slower it is going to go. This is just Murphy's law. 

I remember watching the clock tick while I was syncing. Right when I logged in, there was still an Ape available to claim. I was like, “Okay, I need to hurry up!” but it was snagged like three hours later and it took me six hours to sync. 

I stopped syncing at one point, and then I went home and I finished syncing there, thinking maybe the internet was a bit better. Once I was synced I immediately went and claimed every Zombie that I could find. I was watching them get picked off as I was going, and I'm surprised that more weren't picked off to be perfectly honest.

Back then you had to sync the full node within the wallet app. Today if anybody has dealt with using Etherscan for smart contract interaction, that's what it was like back then. But you had to implement the ABI [application binary interface] directly yourself. So you had to go to Larva Labs GitHub to get the ABI for the CryptoPunk smart contract, then paste it into the wallet app, which would then populate all of the functions. Then once that happened, you would be able to go in there, call the function, type in the number of the Punk you wanted to claim, click execute, and it would execute the transaction for claiming the punk. 

I continued to claim them until I ran out of ETH, which was not very much ETH, but I claimed as many as I could, and my very last one was a punk that personally reminds me of my wife, although I am often told that I'm delusional. 

During this I was all stressed out and my wife asked me what was going on and I was like I can't talk, I’ve got to figure this things out. At the end after I claimed all of those zombies, I came down and I told my wife about it. I remember her looking at me like, “You spent how much money?” At that time it was hundreds of dollars. But here we are today.

I feel like a lot of people in that situation might look at the Reddit post and they'd be like, “Oh, interesting. That's kind of cool.” And then they would just continue with their day. But something in you felt a sense of urgency to go in there and claim them immediately. On top of that you had this instinct to think, “Oh, and there's this one type of rare zombie and I want to collect all of those that I can!” So I'm trying to figure out, what is it about Erick that made you feel that compulsion? 

For me, it's pretty straightforward: I just fell down the rabbit hole of blockchains. And way more interestingly, I fell down into the rabbit hole of smart contracts. And it just completely blew my mind.

I had been a tech hobbyist, and I've always dabbled in tech, but not at that level, and especially not financialized things - like that's definitely not something I’ve ever messed with. I'd never bought stock before. I'd never participated in investment rounds or anything like that. 

But when I realized that you could program on a public computer that everybody had access to, my mind was blown. 

As a lot of forensic people have discovered, I was playing turn-based blockchain games back then. DappRadar was around, and at that time they had three statuses for their apps - “Live”, “Beta”, and “Coming Soon” or something like that. There were 100 apps and I went through every single one because I thought it was so freakin’ cool. 

It was all very exciting and very interesting and it was demonstrating the power of the technology.

January 2017 is when I first got into smart contracts. At that point I would tell my friends about this idea I had in my head of “Magic the Gathering, but on the blockchain.” I was willing to bet that there was something there in terms of being able to have a digital thing that is provably scarce. 

The term “digital ownership” did not cross my mind. Zero credit is taken for having discovered that, but something was brewing in my mind related to all of that. And then when I read that CryptoPunks announcement, it clicked, and I was like, this is it. This is the thing that my mind was floating around. It all came together at that moment. 

It was an epiphany moment for me. I was deep into the Ethereum rabbit hole during that time and throughout it all I was navigating blindly. And then during the moment I had that experience, the lights just turned on. It was powerful.

I never thought there would be financial value associated with these things. At that time I thought people were lunatics when they were sending me $200 offers for a Punk. But, obviously, they did come to have value.

How many of the Zombies do you still own?

Two. My main zombie and then a single trait zombie with a brown beard, which gets a lot of flack within the ecosystem, poor dude.

I would eventually consider parting with him. I've gotten to this point where having extras of everything, it just feels… well, when 98% of your net worth is in NFTs, you start to think about how you can live perfectly satisfactorily without extras and still feel very, very proud of your collection. I guess that bearded punk is probably the one Larva Labs NFT that I could see myself parting with.

Do you still have the one you bought that reminds you of your wife?

Yep. That's in a separate account I have. I guess I'm being contradictory here, but I have an account with 10 extra CryptoPunks that don't fit within my full set. 

Let’s zoom out now. Take me back to your childhood. Where did you grow up? And what were you into as a kid? 

I was born in Mexico City, but I moved to Houston when I was six. I grew up in Houston and I have spent most of my life in Houston. 

As a kid, and I say this now as I watch my kid that's around a similar age, I was just an incredibly curious kid. I got into everything.

I remember my dad had old calculators and stuff, and he would give them to me, and I would take them apart and put them back together. But I wouldn't ever be able to put it back together as effectively as they were originally put together. Sometimes he didn't give me permission and I would take certain electronics apart and not be able to put them back together, which always got me in trouble. 

My dad was really big into cameras and photography and mechanical things and digital things as well, so very early on I was interested in that kind of stuff. 

I remember at a very young age, having a Tandy computer and playing Double Dragon. It was my first foray into computers and I got really excited about computers, and I got excited about pixel art, which is really all you could do back then. 

I actually went on these BBSs, which was this weird thing where you had to dial phone numbers that you found in an esoteric corner of the newspaper. They would be full of message boards with all sorts of stuff. Some of it was very weird and for people way older than me. But one thing I came across was some really fun pixel art stuff. I remember downloading them and being like, “Holy crap, it's like a photograph!,” but it was definitely just pixels on the computer. Very early on, I was exposed to computers and I'm very grateful for that.

[Editor’s Note: BBS stands for Bulletin Board System. After my interview with Erick, I got curious about these, and went down a little internet rabbit hole (no dial up necessary). For a good primer, I recommend this first-hand account from The Atlantic, titled The Lost Civilization of Dial-Up Bulletin Board Systems]. 

During that time, I discovered Q basic, which is a programming software that was built into computers, and I was super curious about it. There were computer stores popping up in Houston at the time and one of them had a book on Q basic, so I got the book and brought it home. All I did was copy the examples of code from the book into the computer to make a game.

I'd spend hours just copying characters out of the book into the computer. Inevitably I would make a mistake and I'd find myself debugging code, but I had no idea how to code. I was eight or nine years old and that’s how I started tinkering with code. Since then I've always been really fascinated by code. I was always the nerd with the graphing calculator.

Then this thing happened when I was around 13. I really liked pagers, but I didn't have any friends. But I thought pagers were really neat and cool. So I got a pager, this Swatch circular pager that they don't make anymore, but I was super proud of it. Then I thought, “Well, I need to do something with this because no one's going to beep me.” 

I wrote a software program on Visual Basic, which at this point I was running on Windows 95. The program would dial my beeper at school to tell me my next thing to do — as if I didn't know exactly what my schedule was going to be every single day in school, because it didn’t change. 

Every morning, I would print out a little card that fit into the back of the beeper that would include numbers, along with different things I was supposed to do that would correspond to each number. Then the computer would auto dial my pager, and it would beep me and it would just put the number “1,” which meant I would have to look at my little card and see what corresponded with number one, and then I would do that thing.

I wrote that and I thought, “Man, this isn't very useful to me, but I feel like this would be super useful to other people”, because back then there was no scheduling software or anything like that. 

I remember talking to my uncle about it, and he told me something about how you’ve got to be careful, because you could get sued for using the software by the big software companies. It freaked me out and I moved on and I stopped tinkering with code at that point for a little while. 

If I could have asked 10-year-old Erick what he wants to be when he grows up, what would he have told  me?

You could have asked six-year-old Erick and it would still be the same as 35-year-old Erick — to be a business person like my dad. 

My dad was always this entrepreneur type who loved connecting the dots between something somebody makes and something somebody wants, and understanding why they want it and then putting the two together. My dad was a serial entrepreneur. 

What are some of the businesses that your dad did?

Before I was born he was importing silk and paper flowers from Japan to Mexico City, which people used to embroider and put into dresses. 

He got really big into the exercise business selling treadmills that were made in the USA to Spain and Mexico.

He also worked in the sporting goods business. He claims to be one of the first people to bring a skateboard into the country of Mexico. He had discovered it through one of the fitness people that he met in the United States and he actually carried one back to Mexico with him.

He got into the tile business, which is something he did entirely as a hobby. 

He also ran a clothing shop in Mexico City and was purveyor of fine furs in the 70s and 80s. 

I think he was a news reporter at one point. 

He did all the things, but basically he was an import-export person. That's his entire thing. He imbued that into my brother and me and obviously when I got into the tile business that was very impactful. 

He’s also a very fashionable man, and he taught us this idea that fashion and trends are not just about clothing - they show up across industries.

He sounds like a fascinating man.

He is. He kind of looks like the Dos Equis guy too, so he fits that most fascinating guy in the world thing. 

Did you go to college?

I went to the University of Texas in Austin and studied international business, because that’s what I was going to do – I was going to be a businessman like my dad.

I really enjoyed college, probably more than I should have. I was pretty sheltered in high school. I was a very quiet, shy dude and I did not have very many friends. So when I was unleashed into Austin, Texas in 1999 it was a complete upside down change.

Then after college did you get a real job? Or did you go straight into founding your tile business?

I actually started a couple of businesses in college. I started a digital printing company, because I had a digital camera. But the business didn't make sense because at the time nobody else had a digital camera, so it didn't really go anywhere.

Then I started a snow cone stand called SnowFro, and that was when I realized that I really enjoyed being an entrepreneur.

When I got out of college, I was offered a job as a management trainee at Buckle, which was a fashion store at the mall. I thought, “I did not just go to four years of International Business School to get this job.” Maybe I was being arrogant, I don't know. 

Instead I moved back into my parents house, and I said, “Hey, Dad, let's do something.” At this point he was winding down his businesses. He told me, “Look, we've got all this extra closeout tile here. You can get rid of it, because we’re exiting the tile business.” I took the opportunity to sell all of his remaining tile, and during that time I got to know tile very well.  

After that, my dad asked what I wanted to do next, and I told him I wanted to start a tile business. He thought I was crazy, because he was shutting down the tile business and now I wanted to start a new one.

I think there's something curiously similar between the innovation of NFTs and some of the innovations that we're happening in the tile world back then. At that time I was telling my dad and others, “There is this kind of tile that doesn't really exist yet and people think it's stupid, but people are really going to care about this type of tile in the future.”I was talking about porcelain tile. Back then everything was ceramic or marble, and porcelain was more expensive and very uncommon. 

The common thinking was, “Why would I pay for a man made thing if I can get the natural stuff cheaper?” But I saw that porcelain was more durable and better made, and there wasn't a lot of porcelain tile out there.

When I decided to start a tile business, it was because I saw this new technology that I felt was going to dominate the tile world eventually, and so I decided that's what I was going to dedicate my time to. We started a business focused entirely on porcelain tile, which was different than 99% of other companies who were focused on ceramic or marble tile. 

It was a grind for about five or six years, and then we went into the 2008 housing crisis, during which point we were maybe one invoice from closing the entire business down. Today, I would guess that a vast majority of the tile sold is porcelain tile, especially commercially.

I feel like I get lucky a lot in life.

I used to hate tile growing up. All I'd hear about would be my dad complaining about dropping a tile on his foot and having to go get surgery or lifting too many boxes and hurting his back. Then all of a sudden at the age of 22 I discovered this type of tile that I didn't hate. Then I felt like, “Wait…I like this. And if I like this, I think other people would like this.” Sure enough it has become the standard for the commercial, and oftentimes residential, tile world. 

While you were running the tile business, you launched Art Blocks. It appears from afar that there were lots of fits and starts to the Art Blocks launch. You officially launched the company multiple years before it became what it is today. You experimented with a number of things including printing and other more esoteric approaches. Then in 2019 you kind of stopped Tweeting, and Art Blocks seems to have been floundering. Take me back to that time - what was happening? What were you thinking, feeling, and doing?

In 2018 I had my second child, which shook up everything pretty significantly. 

I was building this concept of Art Blocks from the day I claimed my CryptoPunks in 2017 through roughly the time that my second child was born in 2018. I got to the point where I found myself incredibly frustrated that I wasn't able to communicate what I wanted to do with Art Blocks effectively. 

The concept for Art Blocks was there but there was no front end. In my life I often feel like a nutty professor, waving my hands and telling people, “This is going to be great and big and this is going to change things!” That’s how I felt back then. 

Between 2018 and 2020 I was figuring out that the Venn diagram of generative artists and people who understood blockchains was a very, very tiny overlap. Within that overlap, because there was no front end at the time, I had to get someone to understand that they needed to deploy their own smart contract, create this thing called an art node, manage it, and create an endpoint for it.

Then there was this entirely other concept, which is this idea of listening to the blockchain for entropy for new pieces of art to be born.

That whole thing was just such a stretch! I look back and I'm like how did I think that people would even be even remotely interested in participating in that? But there were some people that responded and tinkered with it.

That was 2018. By then we had version one of Art Blocks, and then my kid was born. I continued tinkering, and then in 2019 I “discovered” NFTs. 

Of course I had already technically discovered NFTs as a Punk collector, even though they weren't really called NFTs back then, and I also got deep into CryptoKitties around that time. I owned NFT's, but I didn't really discover NFTs until later. I was just building and thinking about Art Blocks and trying to figure stuff out.

During that time, early Art Blocks didn't really even have an NFT component. The NFT component was this weird interface token thing we had, and the art part of it wasn't even an NFT. 

I am going around and pitching Art Blocks to everyone I know, and to be clear there were only about 100 people in the ecosystem at the time. But I was in the CryptoPunks Discord every single day and I eventually realized that the crazy ideas of Art Blocks were impossible to understand and also way ahead of their time in terms of what was functional and available back then. 

As a business owner and an innovator, I get really excited about new technology and I completely isolate myself from the outside world and I just focus on technology. I don't think about how people will use it, I just think about how it affects my work. So as a generative artist and creative coder, I just thought about how it would help me release my work. It was very internal, and I had zero sensitivity to what was happening around me. So I hit a wall in 2018 and early 2019, where I was like, “okay, yeah, Art Blocks isn't going anywhere. I can't communicate my vision. Nobody really wants to use this.” 

Once I realized that, I turned into a different person. Instead of pitching my idea, I just shot the shit with people in the space and got to know everybody for about a year and a half. I sat in the CryptoPunks discord and greeted new people and explained to them how to create a wallet and why these pixelated characters were worth $100, which is what they were worth at the time. 

I just went into the ecosystem and started meaningfully participating. I ended up in a hundred different Discords in 2019. So when I “fell off the face of the planet” on Twitter, it's because I had just migrated my entire self to Discord and was completely immersed there.

So at this time, you are spending all of your time in Discord just socializing and movement building?

2019 was interesting because during that time, I got to meet other humans, which I wasn’t doing in 2018. I went to NFT NYC in 2019 and realized that the people on the other side were actually bodies, real human beings. This strengthened those relationships, and to this day, I still talk to a bunch of those people. 

Meeting people in real life also gave me a renewed, crazy confidence in the ecosystem. I was walking around with an early Chromie Squiggle card, and I handed them to different people and was trying to tell them the story, and they were looking at me with their eyes crossed. 

At that point I was pitching the concept of an on-demand, generative minting thing. During NFT NYC in 2019 I met Matt and John [the founders of Larva Labs], and I realized they are human too. I went on this crazy shopping spree where I spent the rest of my life savings on Autoglyphs and CryptoPunks.

After NFT NYC I came back and decided to buy every single type of CryptoPunk that existed. That's when I started my collecting, and around that time Matt and John mentioned that I should stay tuned to the CryptoPunks Discord because something's coming… some sort of ASCII art.

Then two months later, they stealth announced Autoglyphs, and I minted a bunch. A few weeks after mint, everyone started dumping all their Autoglyphs, so I came back, told them, “I'll buy all your Autoglyphs”, and I put my life savings into it basically. 

That got me reinvigorated. Because then people started coming into the space and were telling me my collection was cool. They seemed to appreciate that level of collecting and the amount of thought and love that went into putting these things together. 

In the meantime, dozens of new NFT projects were sprouting up left and right and really fun things were being done by some of the OGs like natealex and Jimmy. More people were getting involved — Top Shot came around in 2020 and they generated a quarter million wallets in six months and got all sorts of new people involved in the space. 

It was just a weird time. It was the busiest time for me. I was on Discord for like 11 hours a day. But I mostly spent time on Discord with no purpose, because I was just shooting the shit with a bunch of nerds.

Do you still have your Autoglyphs?

I do. I have pared that down to a full set from one to ten.

I'm really excited to be exhibiting those pieces in my house in June, for a really interesting Collector Circle event that's happening with the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston. 

We're gathering a bunch of the other people from the museum’s Collector Circle group. 40 or 50 people will come over to my house and be presented with what I hope to be the weirdest art collection they've ever seen in their entire life. 

That will include all the Autoglyphs and all the Punks and all Meebits and all the Art Blocks stuff. 

You mentioned that having a second kid was crazy. I'm having my second kid in a few months. What advice do you have for me?

Wow, congratulations!

I feel like I should just have a canned response that demonstrates empathy because it is a shit show, but also that it's the most beautiful thing in the entire world.

I have the honor of living with two velociraptors who are both boys and they're both very young. Sometimes it makes it very hard to do what I do. Most of the time it's really hard to leave.

Often they just help bring me back a little bit down to reality.

Also, they do like Squiggles a lot. 

That first year after your second child was born, you're on Discord a bunch going down this rabbit hole. Was there any tension in your relationship with your wife? Her feeling like she was doing all this childcare while you’re spending your time talking to strangers on Discord?

There was some tension… but I think I balanced it pretty decently. 

I would definitely put my phone away to hang out with the kids. But this was also happening in 2019, which is when I realized that there was potential for there to be significant value in the Punks and the Glyphs that I had. 

During that time, we had just moved into a new house and things had gotten a little bit more expensive and these things started gaining value. I realized that I was sitting on something that was not just this fun toy and I felt this need to be a deep participant and not just sit on the sidelines. 

As money gets involved, people get hurt, and I felt like there was an opportunity for me to shape the ecosystem a little bit. It felt like my calling to be in Discord every day to talk to new people and diffuse weird situations. I was like an official mod in the CryptoPunks Discord with three or four other people.

I remember when things started heating up. I would find myself sitting at the kitchen table with my phone out instead of in my pocket. I did find it creeping into everyday life. But it came with this enthusiasm and this understanding that what I thought was going to take 10 years to materialize in terms of adoption was happening that year and it was coming very fast. Like I would watch the number of people in the CryptoPunks Discord grow by 100 people a day after being 100 people for three years. You could feel an earthquake coming and it felt like I needed to be there. 

My wife is very patient with me. She's always been very supportive. You know, lots of eye rolls too. Because that would be weird if she just thought everything I said was cool.

At that point she also realized that not only was this going to be my next rabbit hole – like a deep, deep rabbit hole – but also she got excited about the fact that there were other people that I could talk to about it.

At that time, I felt pretty trapped in not really having a lot of people to talk to about it all. I had my brother to talk to and then a couple internet friends. She recognized that as well, and she was very graceful with me.

Let’s talk a little more about Art Blocks. I'm curious about the curation board. How does the curation board work? Can you dive into the details?

The process today is very different than the process when I started Art Blocks.

Initially, I think I created a curation board because I was too chicken to tell an artist sorry, this work can't be on Art Blocks. 

Art Blocks started as an open platform. It was for everybody. It was a place for anyone that wanted to release a thing to be able to do so without any kind of constraints. 

But it started being too much to where the infrastructure couldn't handle it, and I couldn't handle it. All of a sudden, we were seeing really great art on the platform and it felt really unreasonable for me not to prioritize the really amazing stuff versus the people that realized that you can make a quick buck if you releasing something on Art Blocks.

A few weeks after launching, I literally texted and called a bunch of friends to establish the first curation board. To be honest, a lot of them were my Punk friends. But all of a sudden, it evolved into a pretty important group of people that were making, in my opinion, pretty important decisions about the future of generative art and of Art Blocks.

The company grew and legally, things evolved. All of a sudden there was an accusation that somebody on the curation board had purchased an artwork by a curated artist before the artist was announced to be curated.

As Art Blocks grew and as the ecosystem grew, we started to onboard more professional people to our team. At that point our art team was formed. That art team was able to bring their real life art background and experience to the table so they could actually formalize the charter of the curation board. 

At that point, we required that everybody on the curation board had to dox themselves and they had to follow certain rules to be there. We diversified the board, because as you can imagine, since it was a lot of my CryptoPunk friends initially, it was a lot of dudes. We went through a process of identifying how we get a diverse group of voices on this board to make sure that the things that we're picking are the best things for generative art and for Art Blocks. 

Today the board is around 20 people. They have to vote every so often, and if they don't, they get removed automatically. They get a stipend for participating on the board. There are bylaws of what you can and cannot do as a member of the curatorial board.

As a result of that level of formality, we've been able to put together a really beautiful group of people that come from all over. We still have some of those early Art Blocks collectors or CryptoPunk people in there. But now we also have curators of museums, and executive directors of art institutions, artists, and a well rounded spectrum. 

Another issue you've been outspoken on is artist royalties. As part of your efforts to help promote a culture of royalties Art Blocks recently launched the its own marketplace so that people can buy and sell directly on Art Blocks rather than going through another marketplace, which more likely than not does not honor royalties. I'm curious how that's been doing since you launched it?

I think volume can be significantly better, but people get caught in routine, so it will take time, and it might not happen until there is another cycle that brings in new participants who can form new habits.

I've had access to all of the Art Blocks marketplace features for a really long time and it took me a lot of work and habit building to consistently use the marketplace. This is from someone who has the biggest vested interest, both as a creator and as a platform. It just takes time.

Platforms can and should lay the groundwork and the infrastructure, but I feel very strongly that the success of the paradigm of creator royalties relies on creators. I think it’s really important for creators to be responsible for building a culture of royalty support within their collections and among their collector base. If enough of that happens, then I really think that that culture will come back.

It starts with the creator having somewhere to send someone to be able to participate in royalties if they want to buy an artwork. But beyond that, it’s about building a culture.

Look at it this way. Imagine if I did a drop of 100 NFTs that were compelling, and I said that if you have participated in the past in the secondary market for my artwork in a way that is supportive of myself and the platform then you can have an allowlist spot to buy this new work for 0.25 ETH. If you didn't, you’re going to get a Dutch auction that settles at 3 ETH. 

In this example, the person that has supported royalties literally has at least 2.75 ETH of demonstrable value for having participated in that ecosystem in a positive way that contributes to the artists. That's probably more than the amount of money they've paid in royalties by having sold a Squiggle.

When royalties are being paid by everybody in the ecosystem, the creator gets to not gate that content, and just gets to share it with everybody. But that work costs time and money and effort. Nurturing a community takes a significant amount of time and bandwidth. 

If an artist can demonstrate that there's value there, whether it's by rewarding people that are paying royalties or something else, then I think that's where we start getting closer to having the cultural norm of royalties become so valuable. 

I remember, two years ago, I was essentially saying, “Buy art for the sake of art itself and don't buy Art Blocks unless you want to hang it on your wall.” People were like, “Shut the fuck up, you know this is just for flipping and speculating.” 

Look, I understand the value of the speculation and flipping. I had just gotten out of Top Shot, and I understood exactly what that meant. But I created Art Blocks to be art for the sake of art itself. You can do what you want with it, but this is why I created this thing and you can't change my narrative of why I created this thing. I have authenticity built on years of building and working towards this thing. 

All of that led to me being able to look at you straight in the eye and say, “If you want to buy this, make sure you want to hang this on your wall, otherwise, there's a chance that it's going to go down in value, and you shouldn't buy this if you're buying it purely for speculative reasons.”

I got crucified for it, and I got yelled at for it. People thought we were delusional. 

Today, everything is down. Art Blocks are worth a lot less than they were a couple years ago. But Art Blocks and real artwork have taken significantly less of a hit than a lot of the other things in our ecosystem, whether it's PFPs, etc. 

Today, the meta that seems to be resonating with the biggest group of people is, “Buy art for the sake of art itself.” Art first. Capital A Art. 

In the same way that I felt that even with all this speculation in NFTs, it was still worthwhile to pursue art for the sake of art itself, today, I feel just as strongly that the concept of royalties as a cultural mechanism is in the best interest of this ecosystem. I'm very bullish on the idea that artists will demonstrate that there is value not just for the artists, but also for the collectors and the overall NFT community by participating in this cultural construct of creator royalties. 

I feel confident that that's going to happen, but it's going to take a while. For me to be able to execute an effective demonstration of that will take some time. For a lot of the other creators in this space, it'll take them some serious time to really grind out what it really means to support your collectors, and the people that are supporting the ecosystem.

This is such a rich topic, and there are so many more questions I would ask if we had more time.

We could do two hours just on this. 

I want to talk about the Art Blocks ownership structure. I believe the company has raised money from investors, is that right?

Yeah, we've done two rounds of funding to investors. We did a round in April of 2021. Then we did a second round in July of 2022.

How much of the company do you own at this point?

I still own the majority.

I'm curious about the long term vision for Art Blocks. When you raise money from investors, those investors are expecting liquidity or an ROI at some point in the future. Not always, but typically that comes in the form of some sort of liquidity event.

If there is a liquidity event, it can potentially change the ownership structure and compromise the independence of the company, which can result in a shift in mission or purpose. I'm curious if you've been thinking about that, or if you have any responses of what your long term vision is there.

Wow, I've never been asked that.

 I've talked about this internally with my team a lot. 

There’s some sensitivities here, but there's a couple of things to note: 

Number one, when we did these rounds of fundraising, I'd tell the investors that I was never going to sell Art Blocks. 

Initially, I didn't want to raise money. Then Art Blocks started growing and I wanted to hire people. There was enough money coming in to hire those people, but those people were leaving careers and jobs and I know crypto well enough to know that in any moment, that money could stop coming in. These people were leaving careers to come over and it just made me feel very uncomfortable, so I raised money.

People told me that I should stay away from VCs and to be careful because they are going to want a token or this or that. I told investors that this is what we are doing, and if you want to be a part of it then these are the rules — I'm not doing a token and I have zero interest in selling this business anytime soon – like anytime soon.

I understand that funds do have terms and they have to turn stuff over. But I made it very clear to people that that's not something I was thinking about. 

I'm 42 years old now, and I never thought that I would be doing my hobby as my job. I have absolutely zero intent or desire to stop.

But I remember having a conversation with one of my team members, and he was like, “You know, that's very noble, but also consider that it's not just your investors that would be interested in a liquidity event… early Art Blocks employees would probably be very grateful for an opportunity to be rewarded for their confidence in, and commitment to your crazy fucking ideas this early on in the process.” 

I realized that it's not just the investors who would benefit from an exit – it's the employees, the team, the stakeholders. We have so many stakeholders at Art Blocks. We have artists, we have collectors, we have employees, and we have the VCs - and I'm very grateful to be working with some of the most supportive VCs in the world. I always like to call out Collab+Currency. Derek has a weekly call with me. Not only is he one of our lead investors, he is one of the smartest people I know. By far the most full macro understanding of this entire ecosystem is in that man's head. 

I started to think that this conviction I had to never sell this business because I really want to take care of this vision might not be something that these really amazing humans that decided to come work with me wanted to hear. 

To be clear, I've never done a startup before. I've never raised money before. I'm learning as I go.

I remember, one of my teammates told me, “I can't believe you're a solo founder.” I replied, “What are you talking about?” His reflection back was that it’s just a lot. It's just a lot of decisions. You're running the business, but then you're also having to make these freaking investment decisions and hiring decisions and whatever. I remember getting pretty emotional thinking about that… like, holy crap. Yeah. This has been a crazy ride. I learned what options were, I learned all of these things and I've learned as I've gone. I’m learning as I go to this day. I realized that a lot of the early things that I said might have not have been exciting for someone that had just quit their job to come work at Art Blocks.

I have no idea what the future holds. I also think this is a really weird time to be talking about any kind of liquidity event. I have spent years of my life on this, and from where I am standing right now, I cannot imagine wanting to do anything else in my life.

So gosh, I don't want to be pressured and I don't want to be talking about this for a really long time. Look, if in 8 or 10 years Art Blocks is a massively successful company and we are taking down the veil of crypto and we’re not just a crypto company, but a company in the world of companies competing with companies in the traditional space, then I don't know… maybe an IPO would make sense. 

I have no idea what the future holds but I do know that we are focused on building the shit out of this thing and making this thing the best thing that it can possibly be.

I'm working with some really wonderful human beings and all of those people are really passionate about generative art and blockchain technology and digital asset ownership and the value proposition that the future brings for all of this. If I was not working with such a great team, I think this would be a much harder question. But I think we're all pretty aligned right now that we just need to put our heads down and build and make this thing the coolest thing that we can think of.

It sounds like you're being thoughtful about it and that you will continue to be thoughtful about it.

Like you said, you're building a business and trying to do all this stuff, and so you can't think too much about the future. But at the same time you have to think about what is Art Blocks’ mission, and what is its role in the world? And when is taking on money potentially at odds with that?

It's hard. 

I remember people would send me emails, and their email signature would say “two exits”, or “three exits”, and I was like, how do you even hire someone when that's in their email signature, right?

I'm not saying it's bad. Again, maybe the people that get hired are on this boat, because they are excited for the exit because it’s everybody's payday. But there is a very inherent misalignment of using the word “exit” in an email and doing things that you're excited about and passionate about and hiring people that are just as excited and passionate about what you're doing and using the word “exit” in your email.

I'm learning and navigating as I go. I am learning to be open to all of the personas in this space, because they all have a place.

We’ve all gone through this whole process of being frustrated with the flippers and speculators and then realizing how critical their role is in all of this, just like the artists and the collectors and the stakeholders.

There’s just a lot man. There's a lot going through my mind at any given moment. And it feels like it’s just getting heavier and heavier every week. But I guess that's what we’re here to do, to figure this all out and navigate and write the playbook as we go.

Since we’re running low on time, I am going to skip my next few sections on art and money and personal life, and we can save those for Part 2 sometime.

I will end with one final question: The 9999th and final squiggle will be minted for LACMA later this year. First of all, congratulations. Between now and then what are your plans for the remaining Chromie Squiggles?

Ooh, that's a hot topic these days.

I have committed to putting 100 squiggles away for my children that they can't touch until they're 25. That serves multiple purposes. One of them is demonstrating commitment to this project and the weirdness of crypto. But also I think it's going to be a really interesting to watch over the coming years what happens not just with the value of squiggles, but with public perception of them. If it continues to grow, then there will be 100 Squiggles that are guaranteed never to touch the market, at least for the foreseeable future.

Then I have some really exciting charity things that I'm doing in the next few months. I have reserved the majority of those last Squiggles as gifts and charity. I am also having conversations with some institutions to accept Squiggles. Then I am giving some away for contests and stuff. 

It is the weirdest burden to have. Like I need them to be gone for so many different reasons - everything from security to figuring out what to do with them. But it will also be sad when they’re gone too… bittersweet.

This conversation was edited and condensed for clarity.

Today I am experimenting with a new format. I am calling it Art Life Money.

Art Life Money will be shorter-form, roundup style posts with notable news, links, short musings, and other things worth checking out related to…you guessed it…art, life, and money.

If Art Life Money is well received, my plan is to make this a recurring weekly post. Assuming people enjoy this format, then starting in September, my tentative plan for for my publishing schedule is:

• Mondays - Interview or occasional long form thought piece

• Thursdays - Art Life Money

Why am I waiting until September? Some life transitions are underway for me, and I will write a bit more about that in a future post. Between now and then, my schedule will be more sporadic.

Now, let’s dive in to Art Life Money #1!

This issue of Art Life Money is brought to you by my newest partner...Wild.xyz.

Wild is the community where you create, collect, and explore experiential art.

Wild (@wildxyz on Twitter) makes it possible to:

• Collaborate with boundary-pushing creators in their application-based artist residency

• Collect curated experiential art on their platform

• Experience immersive works produced by Wild

I’m excited to share an allowlist opportunity for two of Wild’s upcoming drops:

• Flower Sand by Yuma Yanagisawa is a new collection of generative NFTs that explores the tensions between natural and mechanical algorithms. Register for the allowlist here.

• Everyday Odyssey by Stupidgiant is a collection of curated image outputs from stupidgiant’s daily sketch practice. Register for the allowlist here.

Both collections are launching tomorrow, 6/15, at 11AM PT, so be sure to register by then (I personally registered for both).

— ART —

(1) Artist Grant Yun is releasing another physical+NFT paired drop with Avant Arte titled Fall.

The drop is lottery style, meaning everyone has an equal shot at winning the chance to buy 1 of these from a total edition of 35. You can enter the lottery here.

Yun’s first drop with Avant Arte was En Route, which currently has a floor price of 13 ETH and a last sale price of 16 ETH (5 months ago).

If you’re interested in this drop, keep your eye out for a Twitter spaces that Grant and I are planning on doing next week to talk more about this piece.

(2) Mark your calendars for Monday’s interview with Erick Calderon

Erick Calderon AKA Snowfro is the Founder/CEO of Art Blocks and the artist behind the Chromie Squiggle. We had a really fun conversation, and I can’t wait to share it with you next Monday.

(3) Does supply and demand matter in art?

The art world turns the concept of supply and demand and turns it askew.

It still matters…sort of…some of the time.

An artist must create a baseline level of supply in order to create any demand. An artist who has only produced one piece, for example, will rarely find much (if any) demand for their work.

On the other hand, an artist who releases 20 new pieces a day may find some demand, but not necessarily high price points.

Finally, when an artist becomes popular, the more supply they create (to an extent) is actually helpful, rather than harmful. Here is a quote from The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art:

When an artist is hot, the economist’s concept of supply and demand does not apply. If the artist can create enough work to show simultaneously at several galleries and art fairs, the greater buzz produces higher prices. Each show, each fair, each mention in an art magazine, each critical appraisal produces more talk, more visitors, and more jumping on the bandwagon.

There is no single recipe for success, but it seems like many of the most promising digital artists of our time are thinking carefully about how to manage their supply.

(4) What Emerging Artists are you Watching?

I want to hear from you!

What emerging artists are on your radar?

Comment on this post and let me know.

I will highlight one in the next issue of Art Life Money.

— LIFE —

(1) For anyone who has kids or who is thinking about having kids…

I enjoyed this recent post from Tim Urban: 10 Thoughts From the Fourth Trimester.

“It’s pretty amazing how bad babies are at everything. They’re terrible at thinking, at knowing anything, at moving all parts of their body. The cool thing is that spending time with a super unimpressive baby has made me super impressed by myself. Like I’ll watch the baby sitting in a baby bouncer trying to reach for a little wooden flower one foot in front of her and she just flings her arm in the general direction and misses by a lot. Then I’ll reach for a glass of water and all of my joints work together to send my hand on a perfectly straight path through three-dimensional space, gracefully clasp my fingers around it using the perfect amount of pressure, raise it to my mouth, tilt it in perfect sync with the movement of my lips, and then return the glass to the table and gently place it down like an absolute genius.”

— MONEY —

Focus on the big wins.

I was listening to this episode of Neckar’s Minds and Markets with author Jared Dillian, who recently wrote Those Bastards: 69 Essays on Life, Creativity, and Meaning, (which I haven’t read yet but it is on my kindle waiting for me, because it looks like a fantastic book - excerpt below).

Anyway, during the podcast, they were talking about big wins vs. small wins when it comes to personal finance and money.

Dillian made the point that if you buy a house that is $100,000 less than another alternative, you will save 6 figures in interest alone (at today’s rates) over the lifetime of the loan.

That $100,000 in saved interest is the equivalent of 50-100 years worth of lattes. So while the personal finance industry loves to focus on little things like eating out, you can make much greater leaps and simultaneously consume less mind space by focusing on big wins.

Some of the “big wins” related to personal finance that come to mind for me include:

• Salary negotiation (do it regularly and methodically)

• Who you marry and who you surround yourself with (optimize for shared values and the “right” kind of memetic desire)

• Where you live

• Developing multiple income streams

• How much house you buy

• Investing early and often

• Not overtrading, and letting compounding do its work

• Mastering your mind to make it easy to enjoy a non-expensive lifestyle

If you can notch “wins” in many of these big categories, you probably won’t need to worry about the little stuff.

Do you agree with this philosophy? What big wins are missing from my list? Leave a comment on this post and let me know.

Alright my friends! I am keeping it short and sweet today so that is all for this first issue of Art Life Money.

But before you leave, please leave a comment on this post and let me know:

• Did you enjoy this format?

• Do you have any constructive criticism?

• Would you like it if this was a recurring weekly feature?

• Anything else you want to tell me?

Of, if you just want to say “I liked Art Life Money #1, please keep doing them,” then please just hit the heart button at the top or bottom of this post.

We’ll see you on Monday with my interview with Erick Calderon.

Until then, be well.

Monty

I have an exciting giveaway for my Patrons of the Arts. Please scroll down for details on how to enter.

If you are a Hounder, but not a Patron, don’t worry, I have not forgotten about you! I will have more giveaways for you in the future. I am just reserving my higher value giveaways for the Patrons. If you want to upgrade your membership…

Read more

Two weeks ago I released Part 1 of my interview with the artist known as Alpha Centauri Kid. Part 1 was focused on The Broken Keys, ACK’s new collection of 48 unique one-of-one pieces focused on the central theme of a piano. You can read it here:

The full interview - Parts 1 and 2 - is also available as a podcast for Hound House Members (it will unlock to the general public one week after its release). Members may access the podcast here.

Read on below or listen on for a great conversation about ACK’s art, a glimpse into ACK’s personal life and thoughts, and some alpha about his upcoming projects.

After I released that interview, ACK had an incredibly successful auction. All 48 pieces were sold for a total of 730 ETH ($1.3M). The top winning bid was 31.69 ETH. The lowest winning bid was 9 ETH.

ACK responded to the sale on Twitter:

He also named the group of collectors that holds the pieces “The Piano Collective.”

What will the role of The Piano Collective be? What will they do? What should they expect? According to ACK, only time, and The Muse, will tell:

Now that the hullabaloo of The Broken Keys has subsided a bit, I am releasing Part 2 of our interview both in written form (this article), and also as a podcast, for those of you who prefer to consume via audio. You can find the podcast here (Currently the pod consumed via the Substack app - in the near future I will be uploading all pods to Spotify and other podcast platforms.)

Part 2 is much more expansive than Part 1, and during this part of the conversation, we cover the following topics:

• ACK’s background, and how he decided to quit his government job to pursue art full time

• The Muse - who is she? How does ACK communicate with her?

• Parenting, the finiteness of time, death, and regret

• His collab with XCOPY

• His relationship to money

• Some alpha about his future plans, including his idea for his next big collection, upcoming physicals, collaborations, and more

• …and a whole lot more.

Please enjoy this conversation with Alpha Centauri Kid.

In service,

Monty

A Conversation With Alpha Centauri Kid, Part 2: The Man Behind The Muse

Monty: I always like to start by going back in time. I'd love to hear about your childhood. Where did you grow up, and what was your family like? 

ACK: I was born and raised in San Antonio, where I currently live. I've spent most of my life here. I have an older brother, and overall, I had a good family and positive experiences. My parents were divorced, so we had our share of issues like any other family, but I always maintained good connections with my mom, dad, and brother.

Prior to going full-time into art, you were working a day job at the Department of Homeland Security, and then you quit in late 2021 to pursue art full-time. Could you please bring me back to that point in your life and tell me where your head was at. How did you make that big decision to take that leap, and how did you know it was the right time? 

I've been an artist my whole life, but I started pursuing NFTs, and digital art in March of 2021. Throughout my journey, I gained some momentum and some quote-unquote success. 

By December 2021 it was becoming really difficult to do both art and my day job – I would work on art for most of my day, and then I would rush to try and get all of my “real” work done within the last two hours of the day. 

I got to the point where I couldn't balance the two because I was just so obsessed with getting my next piece out and taking advantage of the opportunities that were coming my way. The art just consumed me.

Like normally you just work on art at your own pace, and that's ideally what you should do anyway. But when you finally discover that wow, people care enough about my art to pay for it, then you realize that this needs to be taken seriously. 

At the end of 2021, I had two huge one-of-one sales: Punk 6529 spent 165 ETH for my SuperRare genesis – ctrl + alt + generate. Then the following day Vincent Van Dough spent 200 ETH on til death do us part. 

Those two back to back sales were a total of one-point-something million dollars. And not to talk about money, but I had a decision to make. I realized I had made a lot of money and I needed to be respectful of the situation and go full-time on this. Because to make that kind of money for art and to still do your day job, it just feels like you're not committing. I realized I had no excuses. I couldn't come up with any excuses to continue working.

Let’s put a flag on the topic of money because I do want to come back to that. But to follow up on what you were just saying, I think a lot of newer artists struggle when they hear someone like you say, “oh, I started to find success and the next thing I know Vincent Van Dough is buying my piece for 200 ETH.” 

But there's this vague, foggy in-between of how'd you go from zero to that? And I know it's different for every person and there's no roadmap and what worked before may not work in the future and it's not even something you can always explain. But I'm curious if there are pieces from that puzzle and from your journey that you can point to or highlight that helped you build your success and your reputation?

So the first thing that really opened the door for me was hanging out in the XCOPY discord and just having the right idea for a collab with XCOPY at the right time. And fortunately he was available and interested. 

This was prime XCOPY time. I mean, obviously it's always prime XCOPY time, but at that moment he was having massive sale after massive sale. And at the time, I was just hanging out in his discord as a fan because he was one of the first artists I learned about when I came over to crypto – him and Beeple were the two that brought me over.

So I would just fanboy in his Discord for months, just chatting and making friends. And I just had an idea to do a collab with him and fortunately it worked out. So that was a really big door opening moment for me. And it was because of that collab that 6529 and VVD both learned about me. But with VVD, it was actually my follow piece when he really jumped on board.

One thing that really helped me on my journey was being daring enough to continue the story that XCOPY and I told as a collab. I thought there was more to the story, and so I took a risk and I furthered that story and that theme with another piece.

And that's the piece that VVD shared. He tweeted about it. I had never talked to him before. And then he wrote a tweet about me being “next up.” 

I think the work spoke for itself and people really resonated with it. And then from there, I just kept trying to improve my process and I really started being  more thoughtful when it came to releasing new work.

Because prior to the XCOPY collab, I was just a guy making art. My highest sale at the time was 2 ETH. I was just making art, sharing it, getting it on Foundation, and then X copy agreed to collab.

So that created this window, and I tried to be really thoughtful, and I thought to myself I can either go all out or I can squander this opportunity. Because an XCOPY collab doesn't guarantee me any further success after that. The rest, it's up to me to continue my story and my journey.

So I think finding opportunities and really just running with them is really crucial to moving your career forward.

Can you get into more detail about the XCOPY collab. How did that actually go down? Did you DM him? 

I was just learning how to work in 3D with Cinema 4d.

I'd made a few pieces on Foundation, some punk-themed pieces. And I just had my all-time-high sale and I was talking about it in XCOPY’s bar - which is just his Discord, but he calls it the bar. And I was talking about the sale and he congratulated me, and I said, “Hey, I have an idea for a scene, a bar scene called XCOPY’S, do you mind if I do that?” And he was just like yeah, go for it. 

At that point I was thinking man, he's really cool, this is my chance to shoot my shot. So I DMed him a two-paragraph-long note asking if he would collab on this piece and he agreed. He said “make the bar and we'll do the rest together.”

So I rushed home from work that day and started making the bar scene. Then I sent him stuff that night and we spent about two weeks on it, going back and forth. Those were two of the most fun weeks of my life. 

I even titled the Cinema 4D file I was working on “XCOPY holy shit” because it was such a big moment - like, holy shit, XCOPY is collabing with me. 

We went back and forth for two weeks. I would work on something and then he'd work on textures, or adding his style and he would send it to me and I would layer it in. The entire bar scene is layered with things he created. And if you explore the scene, you'll see that.

It was his idea to put water in the bar. Once he said that, I was like, man, that's fucking brilliant. And then the process of figuring out how light and shadows play on water was a fascinating learning experience.

It was such a brilliant fortunate experience for me. It was amazing learning from him that early on in my career. I learned so much that has really helped me long-term. He's also one of the people that taught me how important titling your art is.

Editor’s Note: The collaboration between ACK and XCOPY resulted in the low edition piece called Last Orders!.

Now you've been full-time for a while as an artist, and being an artist in this space is more than just art. It is also twitter, marketing, ideation, etc. I'm sure every week is different, but what does a day in your life look like right now, if you were to characterize that? 

My wife wakes up and gets the kids up and gets them ready for school. Then, I get up and take them to school. She stays here with our youngest daughter.

And then when I get home, I usually make coffee and just come and sit in the office, which is also a playroom. We're moving soon. Sadly I won't have the kid’s kitchenette in my Zoom background anymore. 

Then I'll have coffee and then I'll ignore all of my emails and I'll just start making art. All of my other shit's piling up, but all I want to do in the mornings is just sit and think about art and think about what I'm working on and maybe try a new scene. Lately everything I've been doing has been to get the piano collection ready.

So usually just coffee and art all morning. And then by the afternoon, I pick the kids up, play with them, go outside, hang out, and have fun. And then in the evening I'm back on the computer once everyone's asleep. 

How do you take your coffee?

Just black

So, of course, I can’t talk to you without talking about the muse. In June, 2021, you minted a piece called She Doesn't Need You, which was sold for 0.3 ETH to Punk6529. This piece includes some of your iconic imagery, including a piano and flowers, and it's set in Paris. 

Much later, in reference to that piece, you tweeted “she's really been here with me all along the muse. I believe this is her first appearance in my art. It's crazy for me to think about, really.” 

So who is this muse? Who shows up in this piece? And when did you first meet her?

So I think this scene was a sneak peek into my future. And I obviously didn't realize it at the time, because it wasn't some planned thing to have these elements become a major part of my aesthetics. The recognizability has just happened. Like I never thought to go back and say “let me go find things I can repeat,” it just naturally evolved that way. 

When I created it, I was not planning on it being the first piece that the muse appeared in. But I'm assuming that this female figure here is the muse.  I think this is when the muse energy was first born or brought into my world. And now, somehow, I have wound up where I'm at now where I can feel and refer to The Muse.

It's cool being able to share the process and the journey with this greater being - The Muse - who really is just the artistic energy floating around the universe. I think if you're willing to let in the whispers, then you're opening yourself up to opportunities that could be great for you as an artist.

And so I try to be available to those whispers as much as I can and tap into them as often as I can. 

I think that there is wisdom here both for artists and for people who don't consider themselves artists. The truth is that we all have a muse - whether you want to call it that or something else. There are times in life that if we are quiet and we listen to the whispers, as you call them, it might lead us in an important direction…but only if we have the conviction or the courage to take those steps. 

Yeah, I agree. I think the universal law is real. Like with the muse prints, for example, the moment I started on that course, I had no idea.

It seemed impossible to get silk screen prints in the Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art day sale. It was just a thought. But I found a great silk screen printer who was willing to let me work with her to make these and once that door opened, then I'm like, okay, let me just start going down this road and see what happens. 

And then fortunately, I got a meeting with Nicole Sales from Christie's - she's great. I had a coffee with her, and she liked the idea. And I had no guarantee from anyone, but I knew that this is what I needed to do somehow.

Just by setting out on that course, I was able to achieve it. Doors just started opening up and every time there was a new obstacle that made me think damn, this isn't gonna happen, somehow magically things kept going towards that place as long as I kept trying.

Besides playing on the piano, are there other settings or places or activities that help you communicate with the muse? 

Listening to music. When I'm driving and I am listening to music it's a good place for me to think about art and I'm taking notes all the time.

I'll come up with an idea or I'll have a vision of something and I'll stop what I'm doing, take a note, come back to it later. But yeah, driving, sitting, playing music, and even just sitting and thinking in the quiet usually helps. 

This might sound like a silly question, but do you ever find yourself talking out loud to the muse as if they were a person? 

No. I don't take it that literally. It’s more like an energy source. I can't communicate with it, but I can show my obedience to it by being available to it, and whatever this energy is that I call the Muse will continue to guide me as long as I continue to be open to it. 

That's why I've had to say no to a lot of things over the past year. Things I didn't want to say no to, but it just wasn't what I felt The Muse wanted. It can feel risky to say no to certain people, but you’ve just got to trust your instinct.

And fortunately, when I choose to follow that intuition it seems to work out. It doesn't work out every time, but eventually things pan out. 

So moving away from art for a moment. So you're the father of three daughters? My second daughter is arriving this summer, so you're a couple steps ahead of me. What advice do you have for me? How exhausted am I going to be? 

I don't think you'll be exhausted. 

I think the best advice I can I give is to just spend more time with them. This is advice for myself too - to stop what I'm doing more and just try and be patient and be in every moment with them, because one day I'm going to desperately wish they were here to spend time with.

Being more in the moment and more present is the best advice I could ever give anyone. 

Amazing advice, and often very hard to put into practice.

Very hard to practice. I'm a failure at it all the time, but I go to sleep thinking about it.

What is your favorite part about being a parent and what would you say is the hardest part for you? 

I think my favorite part is sharing life with people who love you unconditionally. 

And I think the hardest is to give them the time they deserve. Even though I do give them a lot of time, they deserve all my time. But, obviously I can't do that. No one really can. But knowing I won't be around for them someday is terrifying. That scares the shit out of me. 

Are your daughters pretty tuned into your art career and the digital art world? 

Yeah, they are. They went to Christie’s with me and my wife last year for the auction and they were there in the auction room while it's sold, and so was Anonymoux - he was a few chairs down with a paddle and he won it right there live, which was amazing. 

But yeah, they [my daughters] know the ins and outs. They know the pieces, and they have their favorites. They used to love laughing about the Pepe art and I used to try and convince them to make Pepe art and they wouldn't. 

One of their favorite things to do is making art. They love making art in Cinema 4d. They'll always come up and say ask if they can work on their art pieces. My oldest daughter is working on a scene - a really cool scene pianos and flowers, believe it or not, but it looks like their own little unique styles. It doesn't look like an ACK.

So that's amazing to see. I really want to have make it easy for them to tap into those creative outlets as they grow up. 

How do they describe you to their friends? Do they say you are an artist?

Yeah, they'll say that. Sometimes it’s ridiculous. One day they were like “I told my friends that my dad is a VIP.” I had to tell them I am not a VIP. They think I'm some big shot, which is hilarious because I'm just me.

The piece I mentioned earlier that we put up on the screen, She Doesn’t NEED you, you wrote that it symbolizes a future in which your daughters don't need a man or anyone else to accomplish their wildest dreams.

What are some of your wishes for your daughters over the coming years? 

To have the means to pursue their passions in life and not have to work too soon if they don’t want to.

Obviously they’re going to have to have their own experiences and struggles and stuff like that. But I had to get my first job working in fast food when I was 16 years old, and I hated it. I hated that I had to do it because we grew up poor and it just really pissed me off. And it was the worst way to get into the work field.

I know that’s a very common experience. That's how most of us have to do it. But I want them to have the choice of  how they get introduced into that world and maybe they don't have to get a bad job. Maybe they can intern or work at the gallery that I want to build or whatever. I just want them to have optionality and I don't want them to have to stress or give up their loves in life to make money.

Tell me more about the gallery you want to build. 

I want to have a gallery here locally [in San Antonio] and that way I have somewhere to display my muse prints and the physicals I'm working on. I can host exhibitions myself. I can curate. I can get a Cath Simard 1-of-1 on the wall there if she wants to do a physical. I can get any of my friends or artists, and I can showcase their work. I can work with my daughters maybe when they're in high school or whatever, if the high school wants to. I want to have a place where I can curate stuff and I can hold exhibitions for local artists and younger artists.

I think art should be something that people are thinking about as a career, because some people have no choice but to be artists. For lot of us, we're just artists no matter what. And I don't want it to be just some delusional fantasy. I want it to be a real opportunity for some, or at least something realistic to strive towards that if they want.

I want the gallery to be an experience. The last time I was at Disney World you go on those little boat rides and you get to go on these experience tours, and I think that's the best way to experience art.

So that's why I chose to work with OnCyber, because they could take the sculptures I made for the Broken Keys Collection and they can put them in the gallery, so you're getting more of an experience of the collection. 

I think we need an “Art Disney World,” and I want to do that for me and my art. I also think it should be done at a large scale. I don't have the means to do that, but I'm going to do the best I can at making a gallery. 

I love the vision. A customized Steinway piano [referenced in Part 1]. A gallery. You're an ambitious person. 

I have the opportunity. If I squander it away, I would forever regret it. 

In your prior response you mentioned that “we don't have a choice about whether or not we're artists.” I think that might make sense to people who feel that way, but for people who don't consider themselves artists or who have never experienced that, that comment might be a little head scratching.

What do you mean you don't have a choice? Can you just expand on that?

For me personally, and I'm certain other artists feel the same, I've tried to quit art before. I've tried to quit music and walk away from my creative side. I've tried to ignore it and hide from it. But  you just can't. You’re going to find yourself in a moment where you need to get this creative thought out.

The times when I swore off music and I swore off art, that happened because I felt like I was at rock bottom, and I was like, you know what, fuck this I'm not going ever touch art again or music or anything.

And I think that's the moment that the Muse really entered into my life and just said, okay he's at rock bottom now, now we can show him, now we can bring him back into this world. 

I'm pretty sure people who leave the space are still going to go on to create art, because it's just not an option. Even when I was working for DHS, I was always working on something, some piece of art somehow, whether music or a Photoshop or an oil on canvas. It just never stops. I do think that a lot of people ignore those things and don't think of this way, but me personally, I try to not take it for granted.

You mentioned money earlier. I said I would come back to that. You were working a government job before you went full-time into art. I imagine you were making a solid middle class government salary. And now a single piece of yours can sell for what your annual salary was back then.

So I'm curious, as your finances have evolved and you've been able to earn more money, how has that impacted your life, your psyche, and your relationships? 

It hasn't impacted my drive to create. If anything, it has heightened my enthusiasm. I've always been passionate about my work, often going above and beyond, even when making a music video that would only be seen by six people. 

The newfound freedom from not having to spend ten hours a day at work is truly amazing, and I consider myself very fortunate. This change has greatly influenced my mental mindset. I believe it helps me relax and focus more on my art. 

However, in terms of my life, not much has changed. My lifestyle isn't extravagant. Yeah I drive a Tesla, but I have no desire to buy a Ferrari or anything of that sort. I prefer to earn a steady salary and continue pursuing my artistic endeavors. 

Actually, there is one thing that has changed. I now have the option to invest in something like a Steinway piano to create a beautiful piece of art out of it [Editor’s note: ACK discussed these plans in detail in Part 1 of this interview]. Normally, one wouldn't spend that kind of money on a Steinway just to transform it. But the idea is there, and it feels like an opportunity where, if I build it, they will come. 

I have these options available to me now, but I am no Beeple. I have enough money to fulfill my artistic potential, and beyond that I try not to dwell too much on money. My focus remains on becoming the best artist I can be.

Are most of your friends and family aware of your successful art career at this point?

Yeah, my immediate family is aware of my situation, but I don't have many close friends outside of this space. I used to have a very close friend with whom I engaged in various creative endeavors. Unfortunately, he fell into a difficult situation and got involved with drugs, which he has been unable to overcome. He's still struggling, and I've been there for him, doing my best to support and help him. He was my lifelong best friend and we always had each other and didn't really need anyone else.

However, discussing this topic can be awkward with social acquaintances and casual friends because their first question is often about money. They ask how much my artwork sells for. It feels strange to respond with figures like half a million dollars, $200,000, or even $50,000. Any amount above $10,000 or even $500 for a piece of art is amazing.

So I try not to talk about it too much. When someone asks what I do, I simply say I'm an artist. If they ask about the type of art I create, I mention painting or digital art. Usually, the conversation doesn't go beyond that. It’s also weird to say “I sell NFTs” - I mean NFTs is just the technology to sell digital art, right? 

I'm not selling NFTs. I'm selling art. You know what pisses me off a lot is when I see a lot of influencer types saying things like “I'm looking for new NFTs,” or something about NFTs, and they'll have a whole paragraph about NFTs and they never say the word art. That always bothers me when these Punk profile picture people or Bored Ape people just use the word NFT for everything. It doesn't sit well with me when I see long, big articles about NFTs and there's not one mention of the word art.

I feel you on that. I've been more cognizant of only using the term in my writing when it actually makes sense, rather than just as a placeholder for whatever I'm talking about. 

That does bring up a thought - yesterday, I was telling my father-in-law about my plans to do some silk screens for the Color Studies.

I don't know if you saw the Pale Blue Death - I did two of those as silk screens. They came out so good. And we already have the screens, so now I can do the other ten colors. So I decided I'm going to do 10 silk screens at 35” x 40” for each color. 

I'll have a hundred total and I'm going sell them traditionally - like no NFT attached, because there already is an NFT - The Great Color Study.

But there's a demand for them. So I'm going to give away some. Like the ACK PFP holders will all get one. And if you own the full Color Study set plus the Pale Blue Death, you'll get one for free as well. That's, so that's 30 something people total. And I'll have about 60 left to sell and to give away.

But anyway, my point was he [my father-in-law] was like “don't forget about your digital collectors.” 

I'm like, this is for my digital collectors. A lot of people want physical art in their home. I see a piece behind you and that doesn't look like a TV screen, and it looks great.

Yes, having physicals on my wall is one of my ways I onboard people to digital art. They come into my office and they see this piece framed, and they’re like “that's cool. What is that?” And then I explain to them it’s actually a digital art piece, a generative art piece. And then they're like what the heck is that? And I get to educate them a little.

When you are feeling unfocused or overwhelmed, do you have any routines or practices to help you relax or refocus?

I like to go on bike rides through my neighborhood. Or just go outside, spend time with my kids. I exercise when I can. I don't do that enough. But usually if I'm stressing out or struggling, I'll just stop what I'm doing and go on a bike ride with no music, no anything, and just think – or sometimes not even think.

When was the last time you cried? 

Shit – last night thinking about…like I said earlier, when you were asking about being a parent…. 

I wouldn't say I wept, but just sitting there with, watery eyes, thinking about fuck, I'm not going to be able to be here someday for my kids when they're adults. And they're gonna need me and I'm not gonna be there. I hate that.

Besides not being able to be there for your kids, what would you say your relationship to death is like? Death and skull imagery shows up a lot in your work and I'm curious about that. 

I'm terrified of it, to be honest. It's something that haunts me. 

Especially like being successful, quote unquote makes it even scarier because I'm like, fuck what's gonna be my last piece of art and who's going to own it?

I have so many stories I want to tell. To not be able to tell those stories is terrifying to me. 

Every night I go to sleep there's like these three paintings I see – these big, huge grand paintings and I want to paint them. I know I want them to be my life's paintings - oil on canvas. I want to take years to do them. And not being able to do those is just a terrifying thought. So I need to start on them right away. 

Thank you for sharing. Let's talk about some future plans. So now that Broken Keys has been unleashed on the world, besides the custom Steinway piano, which is an epic undertaking, I'm curious if there's anything else that the Muse is whispering in your ear right now.

What does the future hold for ACK?. 

I have the color study prints I'm working on, I'll be working on those after  The Broken Keys drop. I'll think of interesting ways to give a few away and I need to figure out pricing for those and how to sell them and all those things. 

In terms of the piano, I know my father-in-law is ready. We move at the end of May. So once we move, I'll have my own studio and place to work to start this grand skull piano. [Editor’s note: The plans for this were discussed in more detail is Part 1 of this interview].

But aside from that, I want to do a really nice low quantity Ackstract edition.

I have a curated drop coming up with Avant Arte in the fall, which I am excited about. I won't say through who yet because it hasn't been announced, but it's a curated drop with some really respected people. It'll be a low quantity and so I am looking forward to that. The art's already done for that.

I think the next bigger collection I want to work on, similar to my piano collection, will be a flower collection, from Her Favorite Flower contract. I want to spend a good year on that, so maybe some time in 2024 I will have curated a collection of flowers like I did for the pianos.

I like the idea of doing collections. Not all the time, but as the inspiration comes. That's how Warhol sold his work. That's how Basquiat sold his work. Or Herring. They all did collections at galleries and people would walk in and they would buy the one they wanted. And that just seems like a fun way to sell art.

One of the, one of the most exclusive collections that you've released is your ACK PFP collection. There are only nine items in that collection. Do you have any plans to expand that collection at any point?

I actually made the 10th one just like a week ago. 

It’s so good. I can't wait to share it, but I don't also want a front run piano, so I'm just leaving it, I'm letting him just chill until I debut him to the world shortly after pianos. 

I'll give you the alpha, I'll send you the link. Just don't share it.

Oh yeah. That's awesome. I love that.

I don't know what his name is yet though. I'm waiting for that whisper to come around. 

How do you think you'll release it? 

I've released all the others with no reserve. But the last one sold for 30 something and I'm like, man in this market, I don't know.

But I need to come up with an interesting way to release 'em. But I can see myself doing a no reserve. Whoever wants it can get it if they're willing to fight for it. 

Do you have any collabs in the works? 

Joe Pease is the guy I'm really trying to work with. We're chatting and the idea is there, but I want to do it properly. I want to fly out to where he's at once we have it storyboarded and I want to film it with him and I want to watch him do his thing.

I want him to direct it and I'll be the producer and we'll combine. I think the story is going to be worth doing, but the only way to do it right is if I'm there with them and we do it properly. 

There's no guarantee it's going to happen. We just know we want to try and experiment and then if it happens, great. If not, hey, at least we tried. 

Do you have any pieces of work or collections that you're particularly proud of or that you think might be underrated by people or not talked about as much that 

Yeah, I think my ACKFTW collection of the Symphony for the Muse. One of those Muses sold not long ago for 30 something ETH. They're essentially 1-of-1s. Then you have your three colors. 

I'm really proud of that collection because that's when I started experimenting with color studies and giving optionality to collectors byt letting them pick a favorite of several. That has been an interesting thing to work with.

Let’s wrap up with some rapid fire questions. What do you like about skateboarding?

I used to love it because learning how to do tricks is just fun. Even if you’re not doing tricks, it’s fun to just get on a board and just ride. 

I used to be really good, but I was a teenager. Then in my twenties I decided that the risk of getting seriously injured wasn't worth the time I was putting into it. So I just pursued other outlets instead. But I’ll always love it.

What music are you listening to right now? 

An album I discovered yesterday called How To Kill A Rockstar by MASN. I'd never heard of them before. I like the music and I like the lyrics and the vibe of it is good.

I like Derek Pope a lot.

I like classical music. I listened to a lot of it while creating the piano collection. 

What meme coins are you holding right now? 

Only Doge surprisingly. Only because I never sold it. It's just the Doge I bought in the beginning.

This question comes from my Twitter audience. When will you grow your hair long again?

[Laughs] That must be from Iceman. I don't know. I had it long and my wife kept reminding me, you need a haircut! So, when she's finally cool with it, I'll do it.

Can you shout out some artists whose work you think deserve a few more eyeballs? 

Whenever I am asked this question I always blank out, so I will follow up with a list.

[Editor’s note: When I get this list, I will share it]

Anything you really want to acquire?

Obviously I would love an XCOPY one-of-one.

I want a Squiggle from Snowfro. I haven't bought a Squiggle yet.

Do you have a favorite squiggle type? 

I would take any of 'em to be honest. As long as it moves, I'll take it. 

Are there any collectors that you either have an especially close relationship with or who you enjoy communicating with that you wanna shout out? 

Probably one of my closest friends is Punk 9272 - @financenewsguy. He has a punk with a yellow background. He's one of my close advisors and friends who I problem solve with sometimes. He always gives me unbiased feedback and he’s not just a yes man.

VVD for sure. He’s a good person that helps me think about things strategically and he's very smart and considerate with his responses and he doesn't just kiss my ass either. 

Then there is 6529. I don't hit him up as often because I know he's just god level busy, but I really appreciate anytime I get to chat with him over DMs.

Oh, and obviously Anonymoux. He and I chat a lot. So he's one of my go-to.

Then there is Bharat, and lots of others I DM with. 

ACK, this has been super fun. Thank you for dedicating so much of your morning to hang out with me and chat.

Thank you. Yeah, no, I appreciate it. It's been an honor. I appreciate the time and your thoughtful questions.

If you enjoyed this interview, please subscribe to The Monty Report to get future interviews and reports directly to your inbox.

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For a transcribed version of this interview accompanied with images, please visit the following posts: ACK - Part 1 and ACK - Part 2.

Alpha Centauri Kid AKA ACK is an artist based in San Antonio, Texas. 

He is most widely known for his digitally native art that deeply embodies the crypto spirit. But that description just scratches the surface of who he is and what he does. 

ACK, as you will hear in today’s conversation, does not confine himself to any single medium. While the majority of his work is 3D digital art, he also works in 2D, screen printing, oil on canvas, and even woodworking.

Anyone who follows ACK, knows that he refers to himself as a Humble Servant of The Muse. But who is this Muse? How does she speak to him? Do we all have a muse? Keep listening for more on these questions.

ACK and I also chat about his art and background, his personal life, and his recent very successful piano collection, known formally as The Broken Keys. We also discuss more intimate topics including parenting, the shortness of life, death and regret, his relationship to money, and the last time he cried.

Finally, ACK reveals some alpha about his future plans, including his idea for his next big collection, upcoming physicals, the future of his highly exclusive PFP collection, a collaboration he is working on, and more.

Before we dive in to the conversation, two quick housekeeping notes:

This is my second podcast ever. When I recorded the conversation with ACK I did not know that I would use this audio for a pod, so I apologize for occasional poor audio quality and a general lack of editing.

This episode is going to be behind a paywall to start, and will only be available to Hound House members for the first week of its existence. After that, I will make it available to the general public. No matter who you are, and when you are listening to this, I would love your feedback. So please comment on the substack post, or send me a note on Twitter. And if you enjoy the episode, please do share it on Twitter.

Finally, this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only, and nothing that I or any of my guests say should be construed as investment or financial advice. I may or may not own any of the securities, tokens, or artwork mentioned in the episode.

And now, please enjoy my conversation with Alpha Centauri Kid.

Rhett is an award-winning digital artist with a background in branding, digital art, and advertising. Recently, in the crypto world, he broke through from niche artist to mainstream persona when he co-created, alongside Chat GPT, the Turbo Toad Token, better known simply as $TURBO.

In today’s conversation Rhett and I chat about his art and background, his personal life, and of course, Turbo. We get into the weeds, including his thoughts on his ongoing role in the $Turbo project, as well as what he is thinking for the billions of tokens that he still holds. We also get personal and discuss his near-death experience, his struggle with purposelessness, and his parenting.

Before we dive in to the conversation, a few housekeeping notes:

First of all, this whole podcast thing is a big experiment. I did not put a lot of work into editing, and when we had the conversation I didn’t even know I would end up deciding to turn this into a podcast. So please bear with me in regards to polish, audio quality, and all of that good stuff. I decided to ship this minimum viable episode mostly to get a sense of how much time it takes to do this, and also so that I can get more rapid feedback from my community.

This first episode is going to be behind a paywall to start, and will only be available to Hound House members for the first week of its existence. After that, I will make it available to the general public.

Finally, please note that this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only, and nothing that I or any of my guests say should be construed as investment or financial advice. I may or may not own any of the securities, tokens, or artwork mentioned in the episode.

And now, without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Rhett Mankind.

Monty

Last week I sat down with the artist known as Alpha Centauri Kid for nearly two hours. Due to the length of our conversation, I have decided to release this interview in two parts.

Part 1 (this issue) is focused The Broken Keys, ACK’s new collection of 48 unique one-of-one pieces focused on the central theme of a piano. All pieces are on live auction as I type this.

Prior to the start of the auctions this morning, digital art Twitter was abuzz, with pianos taking over my feed:

At the time this email is being sent (Tuesday, May 9th 2023 at 3:30p PST), all auctions are live. You can watch them here, and make bids if you feel so inclined.

The auctions will end on Wednesday, May 10th at 10:00 AM or 11:00 AM PST.

And now, let’s here directly from the artist himself.

A Conversation With Alpha Centauri Kid, Part 1: The Gateway To The Muse

MONTY: Let's talk about the Broken Keys collection. Tell me about when you first conceived of this collection.

ACK: I've been working on it for so long. Right after my Right Click Print drop came out in August of 2021 is when I started building my first piano in Cinema 4D, which is the 3D modeling software I use.

Once I built a model of the red piano and I shattered it, I had a vision of doing a collection of pianos. I'm really connected to the piano. The piano is my gateway to the Muse.

At first, I envisioned this as a big project of 666 pieces, which is laughable now. Once I started working on them I realized that many of the ones I was making were too similar to be a successful collection.

Then the idea came to me to make the pieces completely opposite of each other and make sure each one is unique. That way I can tell as many stories as possible with one theme: a piano.

It was hard to tell that many stories and have that many interesting visuals. It's not an easy thing to do. It took me two years of really working on it. The first year I was working on it on and off, but the last year of my life has been all about pianos, with just a few other things in between, like my Ackstract pieces and my silk screen prints. I wound up with 48 pieces.

Now that you’re done, how do you feel about what you’ve created?

It started as this grand idea, and then as time went on I started to really feel the pressure for this to be a strong collection. The strength of the collection is the most important thing at the end of the day.

I really want it to be a successful collection. By success, I don't mean how much they sell for, but in how they are received. Aside from my silk screens, this feels like it's my debut into the fine art world.

The collection is extremely ambitious in its scope. This is a good time to insert a question from one of my community members, Vespers, who wrote in my Discord: “I feel most artists pass through different styles and themes sequentially throughout their career. In comparison, it appears to me that ACK has multiple styles that all simultaneously run together in parallel. They are different stylistically while also feeling cohesive and instantly recognizable as ACK. For example, the Muse, early glitch work with XCOPY, flowers for my girl, great color study, broken piano -- all unique styles but all true to  ACK. How does he view the variety while maintaining continuity?”

That's a broad question, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I'm very flattered to hear that because I didn't set out to do that. But once I realized that it was possible to achieve, it really made sense for me to pursue a broad range of aesthetics.

I mainly do it because I love the process. Like with my Ackstract pieces for example, I just love creating them. I love that you never know where you're going to end up. For the two that I've done so far, I really love the final product. 

I think what helps all of these styles remain cohesive is that they all share an underlying theme - which is story. I try to put some story element in each piece - whether it's the piece itself, or the title or the description, or how they all interact, I’m trying to give the viewer an experience. 

The fact that there is this underlying theme across the work I think adds to the cohesion.

Looking through the Broken Keys Collection, a standouts for me is Serendipity - it's just so bright and striking, and the flowers on the piano are just beautiful. I also really liked some of the more abstract ones, such as the Ackstract Concerto and I dreamt of you again last night. I also really loved An Ancient Place. Vogue was also interesting - the piano imagery is super subtle, you almost don't notice it until you stare at it for 30 seconds. 

A Drake song is actually what inspired Vogue. He has a line saying, “I might have to make her paint a 6 on her pinky toe”

When I heard that song for the first time, I thought I have to have a model painting a piano on her big toe. I'm really proud of that scene.

Can you share a little bit about your process - the tools that you use and how you work with them? Set the scene for me.

A lot of my work lately, including the Piano collection, has been starting in Cinema 4D, which is a 3D modeling software, and then going over to Photoshop and exploring and experimenting with brushes and textures and noise and stuff.

For example, take I dreamt of you again last night. I started that in Cinema 4D, and when I first made it, it was pink. The whole scene was pink. I set up the scene and I rendered it, and then I took it over into Photoshop and I started layering in some of my noise and some of my textures. Then I realized that it wasn’t going to work as pink. So I adjusted the hue and once I saw it in blue is when I knew I loved it.

Are there any pieces in the collection you think would be fun to throw up on the screen and do a little bit of a deep dive on?

Sure. Let's start with The Mad Pianist. 

This was one of my favorites to make just because it feels like if I could have a studio, this is what you would see in it.

I started off with just the piano, the wooden piano as you see. I hadn't made an upright skull piano yet and I had a goal of doing that when I started the scene, but I had no idea how it would end up because the background was just white when I started. It was all whiteness when I first made the skull.

Once I put the skull on the piano, I thought, you know what this needs is a scene of an artist studio and what they're creating and what it would look like if I had the means to do this in real life. So then I just went crazy with it.

I love it. So is one of the reasons you're moving so you can have this studio?

[Laughs] I'm really gonna try to replicate that studio in real life.

That red sculpture in the back of the image is something that I actually want to create over the next few years. I'm going to try make that physical. I think it would look really cool on a wall.

We’re also building that grand skull piano. 

What? Really? Like physically building it? I love how you just say that so casually.

Yeah, I'm getting a Steinway and it will be self playing and we're gonna make an NFT so I can airdrop music to it and make it self play any day, any time. I will be the only one who has access to that.

Then the piano and the accompanying NFT will be auctioned with a Christie's evening sale next year. 

Wow, that’s incredible news. So you're going to build this custom skull piano, and someone's going to buy it, and then at any point it might start playing piano at your behest?

It'll play Mozart at 4:00 AM if that's what I want it to do. If I have to be up working on art, then they have to be up listening to what I'm listening to [laughs].

That's epic. And congrats on Christie's Evening Sale.

Thank you. I still have to make it, I have to build it. But as long as I build it they've given me the green light, which is great. 

Have you ever built something like that before? 

No, but once I set my mind on something I've learned that I'm capable of achieving it as long as it's physically possible. 

My father-in-law is actually a master woodworker. He can build anything. So I told him he was chosen for the job and so he and I are going to build it together.

We have a plan. I have the skull in 3D software, so I can export that as a certain type of file, an STL file and it'll give us layers of how to cut the tree. Then we’re going to cut down a tree to match the wood of the piano.

So yeah, we’re just going to start and we’re going to make it happen.

I'm excited to see that come to life. Make sure you take some photos.

Oh yeah. We're definitely going to document the whole thing. 

On Twitter recently, you mentioned that your favorite title of any of the pieces in The Broken Keys collection might be You Musn’t Pick The Purple Flowers. Can you tell me the story behind that title and that piece?

For one, it's my eight-year-old daughter's favorite piece of the collection, so that makes it stand out to me.

But also I didn't know anything about this work when I started creating. It was one of the pieces that I just discovered through experimentation.

I had this violin dude, and I knew I wanted him in a scene. And then I made some trees, and then I changed the fog to this dark red. And just I loved how the pale pink looked with the dark red fog.

Then I thought, you know what, let me add some yellow flowers in the center there. So I added the yellow ones, and then I added the purple ones. And that’s when the idea hit me that something needs to be picking these purple flowers because for some reason it's forbidden to do.

Then I created the only winged skull piano in the collection.

I just discovered the piece through creation, and it just came together in such a magical way and I really loved the final output. Then when it was done, I sat here and I came up with a little poem to go with it while my daughters were here with me, and the poem ended up being the title and the description:

You Mustn't Pick The Purple Flowers

Unless you wish to die.

You mustn't pick them, dare i say,

and mustn't ask me why...

Earlier in our conversation you mentioned that the piano was your first gateway to the muse. You also have mentioned that before, including in the description for the collection, in which you write “To me, the piano was my first gateway to the Muse. Just one key could open my mind and imagination to new ideas and themes to explore.”

Can you tell me more about the piano and your relationship with the piano and its connection to the Muse?

The piano was the first instrument that I loved to play because there's so much variability in what you can do. You don't have to be a studied pianist to play a pretty song.

Learning that early on helped me use piano to explore different thoughts and emotions. If I was ever having a creative block, the piano would help open that up. I would just sit there and play and then I would think of new ideas and get glimpses of art that could possibly be interesting.

Since I was a kid, the piano has always been there. I feel like the piano is the legit gateway to the muse for me. Whatever else is going on,  spending a few moments with the piano helps me with the creative process. 

How often do you sit down and play these days? 

Not often enough. I was playing Mozart the other day to make music for the OnCyber gallery I am doing as part of this collection launch. So I played a very slow version of Lacrimosa which is my favorite Mozart composition.

I don’t play as much as I’d like to, but occasionally. 

What other pieces or composers do you like to play? 

I listen to a lot of Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and Vivaldi. Those are my top four. 

I don't really like to play them because they're so difficult to play, but I like to listen to them. If I play them it's usually a challenge to myself or it’s a necessity.

But more often I  just sit down and play with my own melodies and compositions and explore that way. 

Do you think you’ll incorporate music into your work in the future?

So for this Broken Keys collection I was going to write a composition for one of the pianos, but then I decided I just wanted to focus on the visuals of all of them. I didn't want to do any music because I think music can be distracting if it's not done perfectly, which is hard to achieve.

So I reached out to a friend of mine who's a composer. He's the composer for Rick and Morty, and other things. His name is Ryan Elder. He’s brilliant. He and Hans Zimmer are my two favorite composers.

Ryan is great at enhancing a scene. Rick and Morty is a cartoon, but it still takes you on journeys and it gets intense and emotional and he's done so well at enhancing those scenes with music. I thought  if there's one person that could pick one of these scenes and write a composition for it, it would be him. So I asked him, and fortunately he said yes. 

He wrote a beautiful composition for one of the pieces, and that music will accompany the scene that he picked.

Can you share what scene that is?

I’ll share after the auctions.

To view The Broken Keys collection in its entirety and to place a bid prior to 10 AM PST on May 10th 2023, please head over to pianos.ack.art and play a song to enter.

Part 2 of this interview will come out next week, and will cover many more topics including ACK’s background, his relationship with money, his collaboration with XCOPY, his biggest fear, his future plans, and much more. Be sure to subscribe now to receive Part 2:

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The Monty Report is a publication and community focused on digitally native art and culture. We produce articles and interviews with top artists, collectors, investors, builders, and more.

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I also encourage you to check out my archives for more interviews and writing.

The Curiosity and Ambition of Emily Xie

A thing about life is that you never know what’s next.

Because of this unpredictability, we often end up constructing cinematic narratives of our lives in reverse (“this led to that which led to now”). Reality, however, is not always so simple. If you were to go back 10 years and ask your past self what your life would be like today, Past You would probably get it wrong.

A decade ago, Emily Xie probably could not have predicted that she would become a professional generative artist focused on blockchain based work.

Yet even if she didn’t realize it, Xie has been preparing for this career for her entire life — slowly acquiring all of the requisite skills and tools for a future that she had an inkling might be right around the corner, even if she couldn’t quite envision it. Like the protagonist of her own RPG, she was continually leveling up in pursuit of an actualization that she could sense, but couldn’t name.

The old cliche tells us that opportunity is where luck meets preparation. In Xie’s case, I would modify the adage slightly to say “opportunity is where luck meets curiosity and ambition.” During my research, and throughout our correspondence, I was struck by Xie’s insatiable curiosity and her focused ambition. Time and again she has demonstrated through her actions that when she is interested in something, she dives deep and she aims high.

Growing up, she spent hours playing video games, building websites, and doing art.

As a Harvard undergraduate, Xie majored in History of Art and Architecture, coupled with various Studio Art courses. She eventually earned her Master's in Computational Science and Engineering. (With the rise of digital code-based art, I predict it will become increasingly popular to study art and computer science in tandem, but in the early years of the 21st century, Xie was ahead of her time.)

While she was a student at Harvard, Xie ran a fashion blog called Books and Liquor which was one of the first venues where she could publicly indulge her interest in design and aesthetics (the blog is still up and is fun to poke around).

Professionally, Xie has worked engineering jobs at places like Sotheby’s, the famed fine art auction house, and Squarespace, the design-forward website builder.

In the mid 2010s she discovered a generative art course on YouTube and “immediately fell in love with the genre” according to an interview she did with ArtBlocks COO Jeff Davis last year.

And in 2016 she became an artist-in-residence at Pioneer Works, a non-profit cultural center in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood. During her residency, she dedicated herself to producing generative art and showing it to the public.

By the time that blockchain-based generative art begin to breakout in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, Xie had the experience and tools she needed to seize the moment and make some career-defining moves.

After many early experiments with generative and code-based art that attracted a niche following, it was not until her release of Memories of Qilin on Art Blocks in March of 2022 that Xie truly arrived into the collective conscious of the broader generative art community.

Since then, Xie has become a household name among generative art lovers, and has released a number of other works. Her most recent work is a collaboration with Cactoid Labs and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

In this conversation, Xie covers many things, including:

• Her childhood and career journey

• Her experience during Art Blocks mint day

• Her teaching philosophy

• Her take on AI

• Her favorite NYC restaurants and museums/galleries

• Grail pieces in her collection that she’ll probably never sell

• Her favorite video game

• …and much more!

Please enjoy this conversation with artist, engineer, and educator Emily Xie.

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A Conversation with Emily Xie

Where did you grow up and what was your childhood like? 

I grew up in rural America and lived a pretty modest childhood. My parents both worked in Chinese restaurants, so they were always tied up with long work shifts. This meant that I had an enormous amount of autonomy as a kid.

I ended up spending most of my time on the computer. Cyberspace offered so much more to explore than my small hometown ever could: online, I discovered the world of art, learned to draw, immersed myself in video games, and built hideous websites.

Tell me about your career journey. I’m always fascinated by people who make the leap from having day jobs to becoming a full-time artists.

I’d always identified as a creative: I loved to sketch, paint, and make collages as a kid. I was at my happiest whenever I was crafting something visual. However, as much as I enjoyed art, I never thought seriously about becoming a full-time artist.

Coming from an immigrant family meant that I carried a lot of the expectations that came of that, so I pursued a more practical path, which for me came in the form of software engineering. Fortunately, this was something that I also enjoyed doing given my lifelong love for computers. 

As a software engineer, I ended up working with a variety of tech organizations––from small startups to big tech companies. I bounced around in different domains within programming, working on things like developer tools, machine learning, and visualization. Engineering catered to my exploratory nature. And while it was a satisfying career for me, I always had this nagging sense that I wasn’t nurturing my creative tendencies to the fullest.

Sometime while working as an engineer, I discovered generative art. It quickly became my favorite hobby because it seamlessly merged my skills in programming and my passion for art. In particular, I loved the learning process around it: there were so many techniques and foundational algorithms in the generative art space for one to learn and master, and that really excited me.

“Once I discovered NFTs, however, it dawned on me that my favorite hobby could actually become my career.”

I took hiatuses from the tech industry at times to fully focus on generative art, and at one point somehow even managed to take part in an art residency at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. But generative art was always just for pure enjoyment––something that I did for myself as a pastime, and never truly with the aim of becoming an actual artist. I’d always returned to software engineering out of necessity, and would continue to pursue creative coding during my free time.

Once I discovered NFTs, however, it dawned on me that my favorite hobby could actually become my career. Early last year, I finally made the leap, leaving my programming job to pursue art fill time. It’s been an incredible journey so far; I feel like I’ve grown and learned so much––both as a person and as an artist––in a relatively short period of time. And I certainly plan on continuing along this path.

I think the term “full-time artist” is a bit opaque to people who are not artists. What does a day in the life of Emily Xie look like?

My day to day is super varied. I always start off the day with a cup of tea and I try to hit the gym as much as possible to keep myself sane and centered given how fast-moving and dynamic the web3 space is.

Overall, the reality of being a full-time artist is quite different than what one would expect given how much time we have to spend tending to matters outside of the art itself. I often find myself meeting with gallerists, communicating with folks over DM, answering emails, fulfilling print orders, attending art events, and writing or speaking about my work. 

While the business side of art can quickly become consuming, I find that it’s all well worth it once I get to sit down and enter art-making mode. I just try my best to cordon off large chunks of distraction-free time for this so that I can enter that flow state that I so crave.

Walk me through your art setup. What specific software and tools do you use?

Most of my artwork is generative, so I simply use a text editor to build my programs out. For the programming language, I write in Javascript, and oftentimes rope in p5.js as my library of choice.

Since coding is so time and energy intensive, I also find that it’s important for me to concretely visualize my ideas before implementing. For this rapid prototyping process, I tend to use Photoshop, Procreate, or a paper and pen to make rough sketches.

The Qilin is a legendary creature that appears in Chinese Mythology. Why did you choose the name “Memories of Qilin” for your Art Blocks Curated collection?

Yes, that’s correct! The qilin is a legendary being that has a dragon’s head, a deer-like body adorned with fish scales, along with a lion’s mane. Fundamentally, Memories of Qilin is a project that explores the concept of folklore and mythology. Because the algorithm produces various life-like forms, viewers are very much encouraged to interpret them. Just like a vague “memory” in one’s mind, the figures you might find in the outputs teeter on the edge of actualization. The “qilin” part of the title both reinforces the project’s mythological theme, as well as the chimerical quality of the series. 

And it was actually my mom who turned me towards the qilin reference. Over the course of the project’s development, I kept showing her the outputs, and when I finally asked her to help me pick a title, the first thing she mentioned was the qilin because of its shape-shifting nature.

That’s a great anecdote. Can you tell me more about what your parents' reaction has been to their daughter becoming a successful artist?

They are proud and supportive––and I think it definitely helps that it's been a fairly successful endeavor so far! 

Memories of Qilin was an Art Blocks Curated collection. What was the Qilin mint day like for you? Where were you? How were you feeling before, during, and after?

Mint day was surreal. I was just at home with my partner, along with some close friends and family. Memories of Qilin had become by far the most meaningful creative project I’d ever taken on. It took me 6 months to make, so it had become a large part of my life. And in that time, I matured significantly as an artist. I felt that I had truly found myself, my unique style, and what I cared about aesthetically.

Because of this, watching the dutch auction was almost unsettling. It marked the moment that this project — which had been mine to obsessively shape and mold for half a year — was no longer in my own hands, but released out in the world. I felt a strange mixture of vulnerability, excitement, relief, and even sadness of having to let go.

Do you have any personal favorite palettes from Memories of Qilin?

Yes! I like all of the palettes, but there are several that hold a special place in my heart. I love Blossoms for its unapologetically feminine nature. Dragon Dance means a lot to me, as it encapsulates the bold dynamism and energy of the traditional performance it alludes to. Intrepid is the most prevalent palette because I find the contrast between daring blues, reds, and yellows to be visually captivating––both audacious yet harmonious. Lastly, Hong Bao holds sentimental value for me due to its cultural reference and its confident usage of red, which might be one of my favorite colors.

Are there any works or collections (besides Qilin) that you are particularly proud of?

I’m particularly proud of Off Script, which I released with Bright Moments. When I first set out to do this project, I was interested in the idea of materiality and real-life textures, and I wanted to examine what that would mean in a digital context. And I also wanted to explore color, composition, and form in the purest way possible.

With all of these elements, I ended up turning to the concept of modern collage. I felt that the resulting series really managed to capture all of these interests that I had, and I felt that it looked convincingly like glued-together pieces of found material despite the fact that it’s all code under the hood.

I’m also pretty delighted about my most recent work called Thread Effects in Blue. I’m proud of all the detail that went into it; the piece is so full of moving parts that were painstaking to program. Being able to bring them all together in a cohesive way was a pretty fun exercise.

What’s your elevator pitch for long form generative art? Imagine you’re talking to a traditional art appreciator who has never gotten into digital art or NFTs. Why should they care about generative art?

Generative art is art that is produced by algorithms. It is one of the most definitive art forms of our generation because of its code-based medium.

We live in an increasingly automated and technology-oriented world. Since algorithmic art embodies so much of our present day society, collecting or creating it is an inherent dialogue on the modern condition! 

You just participated in a release that was a collaboration between LACMA and Cactoid Labs. Your piece, Generative Patchwork and Bullseye, is inspired by  the "Bullseye" quilt from 1896 by Martha Lou Jones in the LACMA Collection. A lot of your work has a textile-like quality and speaks to the relationship between the human and the computational.

It’s a beautiful piece, and I am happy to be a collector. You describe the piece as the “first release is a modified output from a generative mini-series that I will release later next month as part of the broader digital initiative curated by Lady Cactoid. Can you tell me more about the mini-series and what we can expect?

Generative Patchwork and Bullseye is a generative algorithm that’s capable of producing many different renders.

The initial edition for Remembrance of Things Future Vol. 1 was 100 editions of a single output from this program. This upcoming mini-series will be a set of unique outputs. So, it’ll be 1/1/x. The only difference from the release of Vol. 1 is that there will be more palettes, and I’ve adjusted the canvas ratio to help distinguish it.

When did you buy your first crypto? What was it?

I purchased an inconsequential amount of crypto in 2018 just to see what all the fuss was about. A couple hundred bucks of Bitcoin and Ethereum. To be frank, I had very little interest in crypto. The only thing that brought me to this scene in a real way and kept me involved was generative art!

Do you have any worries or fears about AI? If so, can you elaborate? If not, why not?

Absolutely. I feel both an underlying existential dread but also a sense of excitement. In terms of the anxiety, I’m mostly worried about the unrelenting pace at which AI advances and the effect that would have on our society. We all knew that something as coherent as ChatGPT would come along. But I think we just didn’t expect it to arrive so quickly.

I forgot who tweeted it, but someone on Twitter wrote that it won’t be AI that replaces you; rather, it will be a human using AI. That resonates with me. Productivity per capita will increase significantly, and what previously required large teams will be tasked to just a single person using AI. In the past, we’ve always observed that new technology displaces workers, but the new industries created in the wake of automation produced new positions to make up for it. I wonder, though, whether this wave of innovation will play out differently, and that perhaps the pace of AI advancement will significantly outstrip the creation of new jobs. 

For what excites me, I’m interested in the creative potential that AI unlocks. I’m keen to experiment with incorporating some form of AI in my upcoming work. And I can see how generative art and AI might intermix. Part of what makes generative art so exciting is that you are relying on the algorithm to provide some level of randomness and surprise. The same applies to AI-generated outputs––and I can imagine areas for synthesis between generative and AI art here. 

You have taught online courses in the past. What are your tips for being a successful and effective teacher?

Yes — I’ve certainly given some workshops and lectures on various programming topics, mostly designed for beginners! My philosophy is that the best teachers are the ones who see themselves as students. I think of myself as someone who is continually learning. And in reality, that’s everyone’s situation too: life is just a continual but slow process of growth.

As long as you know more today than you did yesterday, then everything will pan out okay. And when you have that mindset, it’s much easier to empathize and identify with students––even those who are completely new to programming.

Zooming out 10, 20 years - what are you hoping your career will look like?

To be honest, I don’t have a solid vision of what life looks like that far out. I only hope to be able to continually put a piece of myself out into the world through my artwork. As long as I’m continually evolving as an artist, and as long as I have created things that inspire and resonate  with other folks, then that’s good enough for me.

This has been a very enlightening conversation Emily. Let’s finish up with some rapid fire questions.

What did you have for breakfast this morning?

Leftover Chinese food. 😅

Favorite cookbooks?

Anything by Yotam Ottolenghi! The unexpected, bold combinations of flavors in his dishes are incredible.

Last recipe you made that you will definitely make again?

Thai steamed fish with lime and garlic. I made it for my friends and they loved it!

[Editor’s Note: Here’s the recipe]

Favorite video games?

The Final Fantasy series. I’ve played VII, VIII, IX, X, X-2, XII, XV, Tactics, and the VII remake. This series was such a huge part of my life growing up. I loved getting to know the characters, watching them develop, and getting lost in the expansive worlds. I can’t wait for the next installment of VII remake to come out (I might disappear for a while whenever that happens). 

Most aesthetically beautiful video games?

Aside from Final Fantasy? Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is stunning. 

If you could have dinner with any living artist past or present, who would it be?

There are so many artists throughout history that I’d love to get to know. But right now, I’m in the mood to kick it with Hieronymus Bosch. I want to know what on earth was going on in his head while painting such nightmarish scenes.

What are your personal favorite Art Blocks projects?

I love so many of them––how do I even narrow it down? Off the top of my mind are Anticyclone by William Mapan, Running Moon by Licia He, Screens by Thomas Lin Pederson, Chimera by mpkoz, Alan Ki Aankhen by Fahad Karim, and Skeuomorphs by ItsGalo.

What are 1-3 pieces you have collected that are in the  “hold for a very very long time and maybe forever” category?

Probably Folio by Matt DesLauriers and Screens by Thomas Lin Pedersen. Both of them have been inspirations for me over the years, so the fact that I get to own a piece from each brings a lot of personal meaning.

What are 1 to 3 pieces that are on your grail list to acquire if you get a chance - this could be a specific piece, an artist, or a collection.

I’d love a Light Years by Dmitri Cherniak or Fidenza by Tyler Hobbs one day. Both of these folks are also huge inspirations to me.

Are there any artists in this space you would like to shout out to help bring some eyeballs to their work?

All of the artists in the PROOF Curated: Evolving Pixels exhibition, are incredible and deserve infinite eyes on their work. (I’m admittedly biased because I helped curate it!) The folks in the exhibition are Lars Wander, Xin Liu, Nan Zhao, Helena Sarin, Fingacode, Juan Rodriguez Garcia, Entangled Others (Sofia Crespo and Feileacan McCormick), Cory Haber, Sasha Stiles, and Ivona Tau. Please check out all of their work. I can’t believe how much talent is in this single show. 

Favorite NYC restaurants?

My palette biases towards Asian food:

• Birds of a Feather in Williamsburg for elevated Chinese

• Yin Ji Chang Fen for cheap but outstanding rice noodle rolls

• Davelle Cafe for Japanese comfort food in an adorable setting. If you like seafood, get the uni spaghetti!

• Raku in Soho for excellent udon

• Soothr for Thai. Shoutout to Raptornews, who I’ve shared a few meals there with!

• Da Long Yi for Sichuanese hot pot

NYC Galleries or museums you would recommend to visitors?

Pioneer Works in Red Hook, bitforms gallery, Guggenheim, MoMA PS1, and Dia Beacon (a 2-hour train ride outside of NYC, but very much worth it!)

I accidentally made a 24-hour invite link for my previous email, and it already expired. Whoops!

This one should be good for 7 days: https://discord.gg/VZuW6Y8K

Enter The Hound Hound Discord

Sorry for the mixup.

See y’all in the Discord soon!

Monty

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Hi Everyone -

As you may have seen, Twitter has chosen to severely throttle Substack on its platform. This appears to be a retaliatory move in response to the forthcoming Substack Notes platform, which seems as though it will be a direct competitor to Twitter.

Obviously this affects The Monty Report, so I have been following it closely.

So what does “severely throttle” mean?

• Some Tweets that link to Substack - or even mention Substack - are hidden from the feed and are literally impossible to like or retweet or comment on.

• When you click on some Substack links, Twitter tells you the link is unsafe.

• If you search for the official Substack Twitter account, you can’t find it. Even if you type in their handle exactly in the search bar (“@SubstackInc”), their profile will not appear. They are effectively banned, since they can’t be found.

• If you search for the word “Substack,” Twitter changes your search to “Newsletter.”

• Twitter has made it impossible to embed Tweets into Substack articles. In the past, for example, I would embed clickable tweets directly into my interviews. I can no longer do that. Substack, unlike Twitter, does not restrict links. So I can still post a link to a Tweet (like this) or I can resort to a workaround where I post a screenshot with a link in the caption, like this:

• There are likely other issues as well, ranging from shadow bans of hounds like me who are promoting these links or surfacing these issues, and other behind-the-scenes authoritarian bullshit. Twitter seems to be introducing more throttles by the day, so the landscape is evolving.

If it’s not clear to you by now, make no mistake: Elon Musk does not actually care about free speech or censorship or “being a digital town square” (all claims he has made in the past). He has devolved into a petty and insecure marketer with a pathological tendency toward lying and a toddler-level need for attention.

Some context is worth noting here: I am not a long-time Musk hater. Until recently, I actually believed that Musk stood for things — good things! At this point, I no longer believe that he has any real principles (unless you count “whatever is best for Elon’s ego” as a principle). It is truly sad to see.

The thing is, all of this would be forgettable internet gossip if Elon didn’t have so much power. But because he does wield incredible power and influence, his pettiness and need for attention have moved from immature and ignorable to authoritarian and dangerous. Musk has transitioned from “weird guy who is definitely a net positive for the world” to “probably a net negative for the world.”

As I Tweeted a few days ago, “the rise of platform authoritarianism is deeply troubling, especially for a site like this one that should be public infrastructure.”

Now more than ever it is critical for creators and writers like me to own direct access to their audience.

Over the coming weeks and months, I will be working on fortifying The Monty Report from the whims of Elon.

1. The first step in this process is the launch of The Hound House Discord.

2. The second step is to join Substack Notes alongside thousands of other writers and readers. I hope we can make a good run in moving the digital art and NFT collector communities over to a new platform.

3. The third step is to figure out more aggressive strategies to grow this email list.

For today, let’s focus on step 1.

If you are a Hounder, read on for details and the link to The Hound House Discord.

If you are not a Hounder, you may become one by subscribing here, and then you will be able to see the rest of this post. (At some point in the future, we will also open some public channels in the Discord). If you want to subscribe, and pay in crypto, simply DM me on Twitter.

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The Monty Report is a publication and community focused on digitally native art and culture. We feature articles and interviews with top artists, collectors, investors, builders, and more.

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If you would like to join my membership community — The Hound House — and you prefer to pay for your membership in Crypto, please DM me on Twitter @montymedici.

I also encourage you to check out my archives for more interviews and writing.

Introducing Collector Interviews

Hello good humans!

Today I am featuring my first collector interview. (Many of the artists I interview are also collectors of course, but I am referring to how they are primarily known in the digital art space).

I decided to start a Collector Interview Series for a few reasons:

1. Top collectors are professional and methodical. I want to help my readers understand the psychology, habits, philosophies, and approaches that lead to great collections and high value portfolios.

2. Serious collectors spend a lot of time scouring the metaverse, and they are among the very best sources to hear about emerging artists. These interviews will help you (and me) discover new artists who are doing great work. Discovering great talent before others catch on can be excellent alpha.

3. Great collectors are often great investors in other areas, and talking to them provides an opportunity to learn about wealth building and investing in general.

4. Finally, talking to collectors is fun. And I like to do fun things.

The inaugural interview in the Collectors Series is with the digital art collector known as Protein Prosecco (@ProteinProsecco on Twitter), or just “Prosecco,” which is how I will refer to him from now on.

In summer of 2022, Prosecco burst into the collective consciousness of the digital art community when he acquired The Alien by Grant Yun for 136.9 ETH on the secondary market.

Since then, his collection has expanded to include a unique and original mix of established and emerging artists.

Prosecco was kind enough to spend some time with me and discuss:

• How he made his money

• His collecting strategy

• Why he collected The Alien by Grant Riven Yun and other favorite Yun works

• His ethical reservations about AI

• 2023 Year End price predictions on punks, ETH, the Memes

• Emerging artists he has his eye on

• What brings him joy

• And much more.

I learned a lot from my conversation with Prosecco. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Monty

p.s. Hounders — thank you for your feedback over the past few weeks regarding a community form for The Hound House. After reading all of your feedback and thinking about it, I have decided to launch a Hound House community Discord. I hope to get the initial version launched in the next week. Stay tuned!

Join The Hound House Today

A Conversation with Digital Art Collector Protein Prosecco

How did you make your money?

I spent about eight years betting professionally on sports, both at a trading desk for a large institution and also independently. But I've mostly left that behind. When you reach a certain level and begin betting a very high volume, the logistics make for some big headaches, which make it feel lot like a standard 9 to 5, if not worse.

For the foreseeable future, I plan to focus mostly on real estate. The inflationary environment will persist, eroding demand as rates stay high. All makes for a good buyer’s market, if you are in a position to ride it out.

Do you have a strategy or thesis when it comes to your investing and art collecting? If so, how would you describe it?

For short term investments like options I tend to focus on rare events and contrarian viewpoints. In real estate and art, you need to have a long term vision, imagining where things will be 5 to 10 years down the road, at a minimum, and trusting the process.

When collecting art, one thing I look for is artists who are highly invested in culture. Not because the memes themselves will persist and become museum-worthy necessarily, but because I think so much of this historical moment and technology is driven by social factors.

If blockchain backed digital art survives and thrives, it will be in no small part because of the camaraderie and evangelism of early adopters. So, an artist being a part of that establishes trust, in a sense.

As far as what art I'm drawn to... that's tougher to put into words. I collect from a pretty wide range of styles, and I favor a wholesome brand of contemporary art. Minimalism, glitch, surrealist photography, and collage are some of my favorites.

I prefer work that resonates with my own nostalgia, and stay away from dark content. I also avoid AI for now due to my own ethical reservations about the tech.

“If blockchain backed digital art survives and thrives, it will be in no small part because of the camaraderie and evangelism of early adopters.”

How and when did you get into NFTs? What was your first purchase?

I became interested in NFTs in early 2021, and at that point, was just trying to make sense of all the brand new information. My only exposure to crypto prior to that was Bitcoin. Despite being “in crypto” since 2013, I missed the early Ethereum ecosystem and DeFi wave – I was too focused on betting sports!

One of my main regrets to this day is not being aware of the burgeoning art movement that smart contracts unleashed. I can't bring myself to think of all the incredible art that I would have vaulted had I been paying attention then. It's painful.

But I digress. My initial NFT investments were actually with the VeVe app – these would probably be better described as "digital collectibles" – brand licensed walled-garden "NFTs" with a mass market appeal. This was more akin to collecting comics than art, and I was stacking rares as a speculative investment. At one point, I was holding 19 (out of 150) of VeVe's rarest item, “Donny the Unicorn,” a character in the Powerpuff Girls series. I also bought up a huge amount of #69 and #420 mints; for the lulz. But within a few months I realized that the real promise of NFTs would be community based projects, and – even more so – blockchain-backed digital art.

After jpeg summer I moved toward the latter, finding that it suited me better. I prefer to hold and build long term, and my aesthetic taste is more suited to contemporary art collecting.

How do you decide what to buy? There is so much out there.

I found it really hard to get a handle on it at first. Initially I was scrolling on Rarible and discovering new artists every day. Roger Kilimanjaro, John Karel, Bored Elon to name a few. I truly had no idea what I was doing, and was simply collecting artworks I loved.

As time progressed I spent a lot more time on an obscure social media site called "Twitter" and started connecting with other collectors and artists, seeing who I really vibed with, and participating in the culture. 2021-2022 was a pretty wild ride, and now that the wind has been taken out of the sails a little, I doubt we will ever see an explosion like that again.

For a while I was spending a few hours a day scrolling SuperRare, and browsing the works of collectors with good taste. Occasionally a friend would pass along an artist's work – I first heard about Luis Ponce (perhaps my favorite artist) and Patrick Amadon from KDean of the Medici family, whose taste I very much respect. Eventually you find people on the same aesthetic wavelength, and Twitter is a great resource to find artists' linktrees and begin exploring.

You own multiple pieces by Grant Yun. Why are you so bullish on Grant? What makes his work special?

I enjoy writing, and in that pursuit – especially poetry – you train yourself to be as tight with language as possible; it's always “show, don't tell.” The words should point to the thing, but should not aspire to be the thing. I'm also a minimalist with language, and gravitate to short, strong, staccato lines. That tight precision is a weapon.

Because of that it's no surprise that Grant's style resonated strongly with me from the moment I saw it. There is a minimalistic approach in his art, with familiar scenes that evoke a lot of emotion, wholesomeness, and nostalgia. But the simplicity of his work is deceptive – there's more to it than immediately meets the eye.

One of my favorites of his is Getting Ready For Bed, a nighttime piece from the California series. The setting is specific enough to evoke my own memories of travelling through the Napa countryside, but vague and pliable enough so that my memory does not attribute it to a foreign source, and instead claims it as "my own".

Adding to that effect is the universal human experience that the piece channels. Inside a house surrounded by the cool night air, an unseen subject is engaged in the bedtime routines that make up our lives' quietest and most secret moments. These rituals, perhaps the most private parts of our lives, could be mistaken for mundane – but in fact, nothing could be more meaningful and full of humanity.

As with the setting, the subject matter (and lack of it, in terms of the absence of human form) walks the tightrope between specificity and universality. This is "show, don't tell" done perfectly.

It's all in the eye of the beholder, but I imagine others find something similar in Grant's work – a perfect balancing act that creates a world of dreamlike nostalgia.

One of your most notable acquisitions was The Alien by Grant Yun 136.9 ETH back in July 2022. Why did you decide to spend so much money on this piece in particular?

When something is priceless, it is "Free" at any price.

In my opinion, this is Grant's best and most memorable work to date. And please know I mean no disrespect to "Cow" when I say that (it is also one of my favorites). But the scene, the subject, and the historical importance of The Alien are simply too big for me to pass up.

The palette, the composition and style of the piece are all perfection to me. But more importantly, I see it as one of the finest (and maybe THE finest) culturally-native works of "The Moment" we were all lucky enough to be a part of during the past couple years.

The crazy, explosive market cycle where technology, culture and creativity fused and were expanding in every direction, faster than anyone could possibly keep up. A moment like that may never happen again, ever, where the stars all align that way. Loose monetary policy and stimmy checks, lockdown-based ennui, technological innovation, artistic genius, and irrational exuberance. The ensuing blow-off top, the scams, the rugs, the villains, the memes, the protagonists...

The Alien, to me, is one of the peak works that came out of that cultural explosion and its still-barely-understood impact on the future of digital art. A classic, signature piece, created by one of the movement's true legends. So I wanted to lock it down at any cost. Although I missed the opportunity to buy it on primary, Aaron Bird was willing to part with it for the right price. (Much obliged, ser!)

Besides The Alien, what are your most prized works in your collection?

Primitive Agents of Change is definitely one of my favorite pieces. Luis Ponce is a generational talent – he has a unique, beautiful, and immediately recognizable style, is perfectly embedded in the current cultural wave, and has a passion like no other when it comes to bringing his work to fruition. Additionally, he is far ahead of the game in creating beautiful physical companion pieces for the collectors of his digital works. Although I personally believe the blockchain is king, I also cannot deny how much I love to hang a physical print or an AR-integrated piece on the wall. (Or setting a 200lb table on the floor, for that matter!)

Above: Primitive Agents of Change by Luis Ponce

Additionally, I feel honored that ACK's Muse selected me to be the collector of Crypto Art. As a grail amongst grails, this piece truly speaks for itself (herself?). I cherish it (her) and continue to be careful not to incur her Wrath. Or Envy. Or Greed. Or Lust. Or...

You are clearly a buyer. Are you also a seller? How do you decide when to take profits or to cut your losses?

Not much of a seller, really. Talk to me in ten years or so. For now I'm still focused on building the permanent collection.

What is your biggest NFT cope?

I mentioned it before, but not paying attention to what was happening circa 2017-2020. For one, I'd have immediately recognized the value and importance of XCOPY. That was the miss of a lifetime.

Do you think you’ll ever dox yourself?

Yes! Someday in the not-too-far-off future. (But not today, Fed...)

Who are a few emerging artists (let’s say folks who have work available under 3 ETH) that you have either collected this year or have your eye on?

I really love what SmashDirt is doing with LowFi, retro-futuristic animation – I think he will be very successful going forward.

VOIDZ is also doing some pretty wild "mixed reality" art and I can't wait to see what he does next.

Drømsjel does incredible work and is still pretty affordable.

LineofAKC is another artist I'd look out for this year.

And Samantha Cavet is doing stunning photography – keep an eye on her!

Earlier you mentioned that you have ethical reservations with AI tech. Can you tell me more about that?

The macroscopic, Newtonian world we see and experience seems straightforward. This projection of reality (get to work on time, pick up groceries, watch TV, repeat until fatal heart attack) lulls us to sleep.

But the true nature of creation is extremely bizarre. And even as modern science has accepted and grappled with that fact, proposing myriad theories explaining this incomprehensible strangeness, you'll still see the most ardent "I believe in science" folks carry on as if it isn't so in our day to day lives. 

Personally, one of the many factors in my conversion to Christianity - after pursuing answers from pure mathematics and the physical sciences as far as they would lead - was my acceptance of a veil between Creator and creation.

Much of this was driven home to me by the writings of Nassim Taleb, in tandem with my own experience in mathematical modeling. The gist is that complex systems (even seemingly simple ones with very few variables) are quite literally beyond our ability to comprehend, model, or understand.

It's not that we need a bigger computer - it's that understanding the system is probably not possible. So, when dealing with technology, experiences, or drugs that can harness things that are beyond our capacity for understanding (DMT, UFOs/close encounters) we open doors to influences from dimensions beyond the simplistic projection we inhabit. 

As for what this all has to do with AI - although some would claim that neural nets are "just linear algebra," my intuition tells me that the inherent complexity and designed randomness of current GANs marks a quantum leap that differentiates them, qualitatively, from something understandable, like a carburator.

Thus, my major concern and caution with AI models is that they open us up to contact with entities that are "behind the veil" (see the case of "Loab" - of particular concern to me is the role that iteration and negative weights played in her appearance). These entities may be good, demonic, or neither, but we lack the ability to determine which is which, and as someone who believes strongly in the Biblical definition of evil, my Bayesian prior is to tread with caution. 

What else do you invest in besides digital art? Can you roughly break down your total portfolio allocation for me?

I don't want to give any exact numbers, but aside from digital art, most of what I own is real estate. Very practical, very boring.

What real estate sectors/niches are you personally focused on and what are you most bullish on over the next decade?

Traditional multifamily rental properties in areas of high relocation - Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas will have the biggest growth populations over the next 20 years.

Although my dream is to eventually buy a large ranch in Texas or Wyoming.

In the past, you’ve mentioned that you used to suffer from work-related insomnia and whenever you managed to sleep you had recurring nightmares of being eaten alive by a bear. How is your sleep these days? What practices or routines help you sleep better?

Ah, yes. That was when I was working the night shift for trading in-play sports betting markets – 10 PM to 6 AM. Worldwide events meant that our desk worked round the clock.

The good part of night shift was that I never had to deal with anyone's bullshit. The downside was the insomnia and general life-disruption that came with it. I also had very unhealthy life habits at the time, which didn't help.

For a few months the only way I could sleep was to self-medicate. And the bear was always waiting for me on the other side. Fortunately after returning to a normal sleep schedule it all corrected. These days it’s early to bed, early to rise – I barely even leave the house after dark these days.

What brings you joy on a day-to-day basis?

A family dinner after spending the day at the trampoline park or the beach. It's the little things that make it all worthwhile.

The biggest piece of advice I have for people in their 20s is to remember that every day you spend "finding yourself" (that's not a real thing) or "waiting for the right person" (you've already met several – pick one and make it work) is one fewer day you'll have with your kids and grandkids.

Building financial security is important, and traveling is a lot of fun; I'm not saying don't do those things. But, just keep in mind that there IS a trade that you are making, and be conscious of the other side of it, because time is a thief.

When you're living out your final years, you won’t care about anything more than family.

You’ve hinted at an “artist-centered platform” that you’re building. Can you share more? Is there anything you would like people reading this to know (for example, if you’re hiring).

Yes! We are in the beginning stages of development, and have plans to fill some current (gaping) holes in the market.

The aim is to create a one-stop, customizable portfolio for artists, which seamlessly spans multiple chains, and provides organizational flexibility. We will enforce royalties as defined by artists, and provide much more flexibility in platform fees.

On the collector side, we plan to make bidding much, much easier (more on this soon) so that the secondary market is more fluid. And down the line, we will offer collateralization services, specifically tailored to fine art.

It also seems you may be an artist yourself. You have said you are anonymously minting work (multiple layers of anonymity!). Why mint anonymously?

We all have secrets.

If 2021 was the year of XCOPY, and 2022 was the year of Grant Yun and ACK, who will be the artist or artists that everyone looks back on in 2023 and regrets not collecting when they had the chance?

The market is very tough to break into at the moment, or maybe a better assessment is that waning sales figures have led to waning artist adoption. Either way, there haven't been a whole lot of artists moving in lately.

For that reason, I think 2023's superstar is someone we haven't heard of yet. Ironically, if you're an artist who works in digital mediums, now is a really good time to adopt and begin minting. Although there is a bit of stagnation in sales volumes, the market is also currently craving novelty, innovation, and a renewed fire in the belly. (There's only so many OEs we can take!)

Give me your best prediction of what the digital art/NFT scene look like in 2030.

For one, digital displays will come way down in cost, with customized aspect ratios and power supply issues being more or less solved. This will track the same way the plasma and LCD TV market did from the early 2000s until now. If I had to guess, there will be some surprises in the works too, allowing full holographic wall-sized displays of digital art in the home, at reasonable price points.

The importance of hardware when it comes to mass adoption cannot be overstated – art is made to be seen, and while the permissionless aspect of NFTs is great for accessing collections from anywhere, good displays are the most crucial aspect that is currently missing.

Another area which will improve greatly is mobile apps for personalized galleries. I think the UX for this will become so good that apps for it will be as ubiquitous as Instagram and TikTok are now. As a result, top digital artists will be as widely known to Zoomer normies as streamers are today. I suspect that the novel social aspect of all this will lead to a good deal of consternation among some (but not all) of the gatekeepers – much the same way that trad sportsball fans were enraged at the advent of professional esports ("bUt tHaTs nOt aRt!").

Meanwhile, the trad world will continue to flex its presence in digital art, with the main difference being more bleedover interest from trad collectors (with a lag as hardware improves). Although great progress has already been made by many institutions, the industry as a whole moves pretty slow, and we are still very early.

The dynamics at trad auction houses is still evolving, with interest in NFTs currently confined to native blockchain-savvy collectors. I think this will change a great deal as mobile apps bring curation to the masses, and the physical tech issues are solved.

If you had a spare 10ETH and you had to put it to work today scooping up editions (not 1/1s) where would it go?

Hmm, that’s a tough one. First priority would be to round out the remainder of a full Color Study set by ACK, for ~2 ETH (I'm currently missing four).

I'd pick up a second "FAKEPEPEGOD" by DeeKay for ~3 ETH.

Then I'd convert 2 ETH to TEZ and buy up a few more ACOFEs that I'm missing, from Luis Ponce.

Whatever is left over would go to editions by Samantha Cavet, Pho, and Smashdirt.

Finally, if you're willing to play, let’s do price predictions for 12/31/23 for the following:

Punk Floor
I think Punks will go slightly higher: my guess is it will flip BAYC and hit 80 ETH. [Editor’s Note: This interview was done before Punks flipped BAYC and the floor was in the mid-60s. Since then, the first part of this prediction has occured (flipping BAYC) and the floor is up to 74.8 ETH as of the release of this interview]

Life In Japan Edition by Grant Yun Floor
Life in Japan: these will be up and down, but likely range between 3 and 4 ETH for the next couple years.

The Memes by 6529 SZN 1 Market Cap
Memes Season 1 Market Cap: being much more liquid, this collection will likely remain the gold standard "entry point" for normies (and PFP flipoors) who get bit by the digital art collecting bug. But the higher churn will probably keep the MC around 45-50 ETH.

ETH
I think the downturn in wider economy – with labor and real estate falling – will drag it lower over the year, though it will still outperform most other risk-on assets. I'll say $1350 EOY.

Controversial opinion – I think this year (and most of 2024) will continue to crab along with little price movement.