Art Life Money #2

The Art Market // The Relentless March of Time // Links Worth Clicking // Emerging Artis Highlight // Crypto Retirement Accounts // ... and much more.

Jul 10, 2023

Hello friends -

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.