How to make a living selling NFTs ? With Bryan Brinkman

Transcript

Speaker: Hello everyone and welcome back to the Polymath Experience.

Speaker: My guest today is a digital artist most in this space have at least heard of.

Speaker: He's an Artblocks curated artist and his art has sold at Sotheby's among other places.

Speaker: I just found an estimate of the value of his work currently on the market which was at 1600 ETH or 2.75 million which was mind-boggling.

Speaker: Yeah, tell me about it.

Speaker: And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Speaker: Yeah, he's not just a great artist, but he's also a supporter and a benefactor for other artists.

Speaker: And this is starting to be a recurring theme for this podcast, but he's an all around great human.

Speaker: And Cherry on Top is also a little bit of a degen at times, which we always love.

Speaker: Yeah, that's a great intro.

Speaker: Thank you.

Speaker: Welcome to the show.

Speaker: My pleasure.

Speaker: Glad to be here.

Speaker: I love to start where it starts and it's more specifically around art.

Speaker: When did you start making art?

Speaker: What did it mean for you in the beginning?

Speaker: Well, if you go way back, you know, I took like oil painting classes when I was in like grade school, like private classes or whatever.

Speaker: But I didn't really take to that.

Speaker: I wasn't really into it.

Speaker: And it wasn't until I got to high school where I started learning the Adobe suite and started making, you know, stuff in illustrator and Photoshop and video editing.

Speaker: And I got really into Adobe live motion, which made flash cartoons.

Speaker: And so I was making cartoons for websites like new grounds back then and kind of upload them and people would leave comments and rate them.

Speaker: And if they did well enough, they stayed on the site and if they were bad, they got removed.

Speaker: So it was this kind of fun challenge.

Speaker: And yeah.

Speaker: And so, you know, from that,

Speaker: At the time, I was looking to be a graphic designer, and I got accepted to two colleges for design.

Speaker: And then I realized I preferred storytelling, and so I got into two colleges for animation.

Speaker: I ended up choosing to go to college in Philadelphia for animation, the University of the Arts, which is a great school.

Speaker: My logic there was, when you learn animation, you learn animation.

Speaker: the soup to nuts workflow.

Speaker: So you learn illustration, you learn animation, you learn editing, you learn sound.

Speaker: And so you come out of the system with a large skillset.

Speaker: And I became kind of a jack of all trades by the time I graduated.

Speaker: So my early jobs were working as kind of, you know, an editor, a motion graphics artist, a website designer, you know, all these things.

Speaker: And, you know,

Speaker: throughout my, my, my career, I kind of took on any and every creative project I could, whether it was making music videos or concert posters or gallery show work.

Speaker: Um, and then, you know, working my day job and, you know, television, whether it was animated series or toy commercials or late night, uh, comedy shows.

Speaker: Uh, so, so, you know,

Speaker: That's all to say my career has always been kind of multifaceted in a jack-of-all-trades way.

Speaker: I think that gave me a real leg up in the web 3.0 world when I joined because I had all these different experiences between social media and animation and tech and all these other things.

Speaker: Yeah, that's what I was going to say when you were describing that Adobe tool and site, the dynamic of trying to capture attention online and keeping that attention is extremely relevant when it comes to Web3.

Speaker: And so that must have taught you a lot for what you're doing today.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, I think so.

Speaker: I mean, thinking back on like my early Adobe stuff, it was a lot of

Speaker: It was not very exciting stuff.

Speaker: When you start making animations, the first thing you usually do is make some comedy stuff.

Speaker: It's like Warner Brothers type goofy slapstick stuff.

Speaker: And that's always a fun way to go.

Speaker: But then you start to go, okay, well, it's easy to get a laugh.

Speaker: How do I get, you know, a serious emotion out of people?

Speaker: And then you start to like experiment and you're like, how do I tell stories that are more emotional in that sense?

Speaker: And I think that's, by the time I got into like the NFT world, I was able to kind of use both aspects.

Speaker: I've, I've,

Speaker: I don't have a lot of comedy in my NFTs, but I do have that level of storytelling and kind of emotional journeys in the work.

Speaker: But I use my Twitter for my comedy stuff.

Speaker: I feel like there's some comedy in it.

Speaker: There's definitely emotion because I was looking at your website as some of the making ofs and...

Speaker: it really captures you because it's even I not being American, I can relate to some of the stories that you're painting because it's, it's a new pop way because pop culture, it seems is the way you're describing your art.

Speaker: It's a pop puppy.

Speaker: I don't know how you say it way of painting those pictures that I think are really relatable to a lot of people.

Speaker: It can seem

Speaker: almost a little bit goofy from the outside or like very flashy.

Speaker: And then when you dig a little bit deeper, there's real depth to it and it just grabs you by the feelings.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And I think that might tie back to my background in like animation at college.

Speaker: You make these short films for festivals.

Speaker: And you, you know, if you do a short that has no dialogue, no spoken language, you can then send it to a festival in Germany and it will resonate in the same way that it would in America.

Speaker: And so I think a lot of my work in that sense doesn't have English language in it.

Speaker: It's trying to be universal.

Speaker: I think that, you know, that was just amazing.

Speaker: byproduct of back then trying to reach as many global audiences as possible with the visual storytelling.

Speaker: And you're also an internet child so of course you were imbued with that universal component to it.

Speaker: Yeah it is kind of crazy to think that when I was a kid the internet was brand new.

Speaker: I mean

Speaker: They had it.

Speaker: The army had it years before.

Speaker: But like thinking about AOL or CompuServe or like some of these old things, it is interesting to think about like how I've grown up with the Internet.

Speaker: It's kind of fun.

Speaker: It is.

Speaker: And when I hear you or I had Alex Frey on the podcast, the founder of Next Decade, and when I hear your guys' stories,

Speaker: You were pioneers.

Speaker: You've actually used that technology and you used it to grow and you used it to learn things and you used it to actively participate.

Speaker: I was just using MSN trying to talk to girls.

Speaker: and playing pool and using like the first versions of blogs and being very terrible at them.

Speaker: And it took me literally 25, well, no, like 10 something years to actually start to understand.

Speaker: So I'm a little bit jealous of you guys.

Speaker: I mean, there's some nostalgic and fun about how weird and open the internet was back then with like chat rooms where you could just talk to anybody and everybody and AOL Instant Messenger and like,

Speaker: Yeah, it was kind of funky.

Speaker: It was very unregulated and wild back then.

Speaker: And I feel like that's kind of what's fun about Web 3 is that we're kind of back in this Wild West world again where there's no real – everything's changing and everyone's learning it together.

Speaker: It's very much a – it feels fresh again.

Speaker: It does.

Speaker: There's that.

Speaker: And there's, I think the financial component, which is so great in one side of things is also kind of pushing our back against the corner because it brings out the greed in people.

Speaker: And so it creates that imbalance.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: That's interesting.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I mean, because our space is so financialized, it

Speaker: I don't know if that's the right word, but yeah, as much as, you know, it's like everyone's trying to make money, but how do you do it in a ethical way?

Speaker: You know, a way that isn't scamming people.

Speaker: I don't fault anybody for trying to make money.

Speaker: I mean, that's most people are,

Speaker: hurting in this economy and all this stuff and everybody's trying to make money.

Speaker: But yeah, I think that's the bottom line.

Speaker: It's like, how do you go about trying to make money?

Speaker: Are you actively improving the space or are you making it worse kind of thing?

Speaker: But again, I'm getting nostalgic here for what I used to do when I was a kid.

Speaker: I remember there was this website, Hollywood Stock Exchange, and you would buy stocks, fake stocks in movies or actors.

Speaker: And based on how their movies did and how they did, you would make

Speaker: For a kid, it was like stock market light.

Speaker: How did I miss that?

Speaker: Yeah, that sounds amazing.

Speaker: I don't know if anybody remembers that, but it was kind of a fun way to like, you know, I don't know.

Speaker: I've always been a fan of Hollywood and the movie industry and all that stuff.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: I can imagine.

Speaker: And then you kind of touched on it by, I'm jumping a few questions here, but by

Speaker: what was it like Saturday night live?

Speaker: I saw that you, you participate in, in Jimmy Fallon as well.

Speaker: They were really fun experiences.

Speaker: They were very difficult.

Speaker: I would equate them as like Ninja warrior for motion graphics, uh, where like you go into work and then it's like, we need this special effect made, or we need this Dr. Seuss illustration made and you have an hour to make it.

Speaker: And so you're just like,

Speaker: working as fast as you can trying to make something that looks good enough to put on tv and also something that will get a laugh um and so i appreciated that every day there was a new set of jokes a new uh bit that needed an open a new music act that needed a background or something and

Speaker: it kept me very fresh with my skillset because it's like you, especially with the shows like that, it's a lot of parody.

Speaker: And so it's like, we're going to do a parody of a Gatorade ad.

Speaker: And so then you start to like, okay, well, how do, what does text look like in Gatorade ads?

Speaker: How do I emulate that text effect?

Speaker: You know, and it's like, it's a lot of looking at things as inspiration and then trying to replicate it in an interesting, like alternative way.

Speaker: You know, I worked at those shows for,

Speaker: about eight years total and i you know i don't know i don't really use a lot of my skills from there in the nft space which is kind of funny like i don't do visual effects on video in this space even though that's like something i'm pretty good at but i i wanted my my work in the space to feel i don't know be uniquely me uh but maybe no someday maybe i'll play with that but uh i think that's always kind of the fun aspect of the space it's like

Speaker: There is no set rules for what my art has to be.

Speaker: I can try anything.

Speaker: Most people will be supportive of it.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And most people are in your situation, for you specifically.

Speaker: And that touches base on something that I find fascinating when it comes to art, which is you're describing two people.

Speaker: side of things where one, you're completely free to roam wherever your own creative process and inspiration drives you.

Speaker: And the other side, which I find extremely interesting is you're under insane pressure with, I'm assuming extreme deadlines as well.

Speaker: And you're still managing to be proficient in your art.

Speaker: How do you do art in such circumstances?

Speaker: Um, that's a good question.

Speaker: It's not always easy.

Speaker: It's sometimes it feels like you're trying to squeeze juice from a rock or something, but there's, there's kind of two ways the space works.

Speaker: Sometimes, uh, you have just an idea and you're like, I'm going to make a piece and then you make it and you're like, where would I put this out?

Speaker: Would it be on what platform?

Speaker: And then the other time that happens probably more often is,

Speaker: is someone will reach out and say, hey, we have this platform.

Speaker: This is its interesting angle.

Speaker: Do you want to make a piece of art for it, whether it's a video game or generative art or any of these?

Speaker: And then you kind of have a box to work within.

Speaker: And then...

Speaker: that kind of will help inspire the creative process because you go, okay, well, this platform strength is say a text message based minting platform.

Speaker: So I'll make a piece that talks about text messaging and alerts and notifications and all this stuff.

Speaker: And so some, you know, the other option is just me sketching ideas and making stuff kind of loosely and then figuring out where that lands.

Speaker: But yeah, there's kind of, there's kind of just two lanes to that, but yeah,

Speaker: being my own boss is not necessarily my biggest strength.

Speaker: Uh, I get distracted very easily, you know, especially when it comes to creativity, you have to kind of follow your creative juices.

Speaker: And it's like, even, uh,

Speaker: You know, if all of a sudden you find inspiration on something, you have to kind of chase that for a little bit and set aside the other thing.

Speaker: It's a lot of just time management and not overwhelming myself with deadlines.

Speaker: I've gone through waves where I do that, where I have like too much to do and then I get miserable.

Speaker: So I've gotten a lot better at saying no and kind of pacing myself.

Speaker: Good for you.

Speaker: And it actually takes me back to my previous next question.

Speaker: You're in flow.

Speaker: You seem to be, you're successful in your own terms, both subjectively, because you're creating great art that is your art, and also objectively, because you're having success on the market.

Speaker: Do you remember at what point you felt you started to really thrive?

Speaker: And do you remember the choices and the lessons you learned?

Speaker: that got you there?

Speaker: I will say I suffer from imposter syndrome.

Speaker: And so I never really feel like I've made it.

Speaker: I always feel like I'm not doing enough or whatever.

Speaker: But the point where I felt I could pursue this full time was January 2021.

Speaker: that was around the time I put in my notice at the NBC jobs.

Speaker: And there was a few things that happened in a row that kind of made me feel like,

Speaker: confident in that choice which was i just on my art blocks drop in january i just done like two other drops um and then i lined up my next nifty gateway drop for june and and then a few other things happened but i was like well i have this big nifty gateway drop in june i i should put all my effort into making that the best it can be kind of thing and there was also a point where my art was starting to have secondary sales that were mind-blowing at the time it was like

Speaker: you know, and one of my additions on Nifty sold for like $10,000.

Speaker: And I was like, you know, at a certain point you have this feeling of, you know, if these people believe in me, it would be weird to not believe in myself, uh, to the same degree.

Speaker: Uh, and so, and so that was, that all kind of played into me saying, okay, I got, I got, you know, I had saved up enough money for like a year of salary, um, from sales.

Speaker: And I was like, well, you know,

Speaker: we had just gotten the show back from COVID and was back in the studio and I felt like it was a good place.

Speaker: And I was like, well, I'll give this a try for a year and see how it goes.

Speaker: And if it doesn't work out, I can probably go back and work in TV.

Speaker: But if it does work, it's a chance for me to be an artist full time, which has always been the dream.

Speaker: And so it ended up working out well.

Speaker: And then I would say like a week

Speaker: I was working at SNL and they put a script out that was about NFTs.

Speaker: And that was a real eye-opener of like, oh, this is a publicly known thing now.

Speaker: It's not just a weird discord bubble that I'm in.

Speaker: So there was a lot of things that kind of happened in that month or two that just kind of gave me the confidence to try doing it full-time.

Speaker: That's amazing.

Speaker: Congratulations.

Speaker: It paid off.

Speaker: Did people at work know how well you were doing in Web3?

Speaker: Yes and no.

Speaker: Well, I think so.

Speaker: Some of them did.

Speaker: Jimmy was very supportive and congratulated me.

Speaker: Jimmy as in Jimmy Fallon.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Hopefully I hear, I hear a lawnmower outside.

Speaker: Hopefully it's not bad.

Speaker: Well, the NimBuds I did for Artblocks, I did that as a collaboration with my buddy Manny, who me and him both worked in the VFX department at SNL.

Speaker: And so because of that, everyone at SNL knew me and him were into NFTs.

Speaker: And that was why when they had that bit, they put our work in the background and they asked us for advice on how to show NFTs and stuff.

Speaker: Um, but yeah, I think, I think most people were, you know, most of the people on the show had no idea to be honest.

Speaker: Um, but the people that I worked with understood that it was going well and they were supportive of me.

Speaker: How are they, how was it perceived back then for them?

Speaker: Was it like, Hey, like this is super cool and this is serious and going places or is it, there's an interesting wave and we need to surf it and, and, and extract whatever there is to extract as long as it lasts.

Speaker: From those shows.

Speaker: From people on that side, you know, like we're in our little niche of weird nerds.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Um,

Speaker: Well, I mean, I don't think those... Well, SNL did do an NFT of their NFT bit for charity.

Speaker: And it came with tickets.

Speaker: And that was cool.

Speaker: For the most part, it was like their social media teams understood.

Speaker: But for the most part, it's such a different industry there that I don't think they really necessarily saw it as something that they needed to integrate or care about.

Speaker: Because those shows are...

Speaker: or marketing machines, essentially, for bands and movies and all sorts of other stuff.

Speaker: But it was cool, you know, a year or so after I left, seeing Beeple go on The Tonight Show.

Speaker: I thought that was...

Speaker: a real breakthrough moment, not just because of NFTs, but because the fact that an artist was a guest on a late night talk show, like that hasn't been the thing since like Salvador Dali in the seventies or something, you know?

Speaker: So like, I was just like, this is crazy.

Speaker: The fact that, you know, a digital artist can be on the same level as a, you know, a celebrity is really cool.

Speaker: So I thought that was a really neat moment.

Speaker: It's such a crazy era we're in.

Speaker: I was actually going to ask you about that.

Speaker: You having been in that industry, if you think that NFTs and decentralization and decentralized organizations will ever reach that kind of place, that kind of level, you know, like what is rug radio going to become?

Speaker: Is it going to be the future of NBCs and those kinds of things?

Speaker: Do you think that's possible?

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: Maybe.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: I think that's, I've,

Speaker: So like that idea that reaching that level is the goal, I think is a dated idea because, you know, rug radio would much rather be Mr. Beast than be NBC.

Speaker: You know, and I think what the future holds for the most part networks and a lot of these things will become content creators in the same way that anything else is on Tik TOK.

Speaker: And so if anything, I would say those legacy networks are going to move into our area versus us moving into their area.

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: Or it'll be a mix of both.

Speaker: What's Lily Singh, who became a host of like.

Speaker: Yeah, she was the third slot late night.

Speaker: The third.

Speaker: What does that mean?

Speaker: Well, there's Fallon, Seth, and then Lily Singh had her show after the after Seth.

Speaker: But she went from like YouTube to network.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It didn't last too long.

Speaker: I think they had like two seasons.

Speaker: But yeah, I mean, I think that's the interesting thing is we haven't seen a lot of YouTube people make that jump.

Speaker: And it's like she was stronger in her native format.

Speaker: And I think that's the same problem.

Speaker: I mean...

Speaker: I don't think it's a problem, but it's like everyone this week is like, Pachy Penguins is in Walmart.

Speaker: And it's like, that's cool, but it should be at Walmart should be in this space, you know?

Speaker: Um, but you know, I think it's a little bit of both, but there's this funny thing that happens in our space where like, for instance, with art, um, like you mentioned Sotheby's at the beginning for, for an artist, this space right now,

Speaker: Our end goal is getting out of the space into the trad art world in a weird way, which I don't think should be the goal, but there just isn't a prestige place yet for us to aspire to in the space.

Speaker: And so I think that's, we're just seeing a lot of that right now, especially in this bear market of our end goals are,

Speaker: going backwards versus building the future kind of thing.

Speaker: But, you know, I don't think it's necessarily bad.

Speaker: I appreciate being in Sotheby's and stuff.

Speaker: I think it's, it's very validating.

Speaker: It impresses my grandma, but I think, uh, I don't know if we've quite, you know, that, that shows me that we still have a long way to go in terms of building the fact that,

Speaker: we keep aspiring to go to the past things.

Speaker: But I think it makes sense.

Speaker: I think it's also a natural thing of when you're an explorer, when you're a pioneer, an innovator, you still want to have things that it's not like you're going from a completely, from one old place to a new place and that there's nothing in between.

Speaker: And so while you're making that journey, you know,

Speaker: it's comfortable to have something else to fall back on.

Speaker: When you're an artist, diving deep and succeeding in this space

Speaker: although you also have the validation of money, which is not something that is always the case, but it's nice to have legacy sources of validation, either as an individual or as a space as a whole, because it's a way to instill confidence in ourselves.

Speaker: It's a way to instill confidence in our communities.

Speaker: The level of support Pajie Penguins has got for going into Walmart is

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: He's extremely valuable, I think.

Speaker: For sure.

Speaker: No, I think Luke is doing incredible stuff.

Speaker: He's building the blueprint for a lot of people, which is really cool.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: The execution is like, I can't even imagine.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's insane.

Speaker: They're, they're so good.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I'd love to go a little bit deeper into like you and your story and your success and making art in this space.

Speaker: And one of the subjects that is really important that you brought up when we're preparing this conversation was the notion of supply.

Speaker: Because supply in the digital realm is really important.

Speaker: And so it's really important for an artist to understand.

Speaker: How do you personally approach the notion of supply for your art?

Speaker: And do you think there are hard truths or

Speaker: Do you think it's more to each their own and do whatever comes to you?

Speaker: I tend to look at my release cadence as like, I'll do a one of one here, a one of one here, and then I'll do a low edition, higher priced release.

Speaker: collection and then maybe I'll do like a noble gallery, which has like a hundred plus additions at a cheap price.

Speaker: I think it is important to hit different price ranges, especially in a bear market.

Speaker: It's much easier to make sales that are affordable versus like trying to sell a one-of-one, which, you know, I have the one-of-one sale this week, hopefully it goes well, but we'll see how it goes.

Speaker: But I do think, you know, there's different collectors want different things and you have to keep kind of growing the

Speaker: your your supply slowly and thoughtfully but yeah i think the the thing that usually boils it down to me is what is the amount of supply where it might not feel special to hold it and usually it's in like a couple hundred editions once you're above that then it doesn't feel cool to own it just feels like maybe it's like a

Speaker: a utility token for something else in the future or something, a burn token or, you know, so that, that's why I haven't done like open additions or anything.

Speaker: Cause I, I worry that if I sell something with like a thousand additions, it'll just become, you know, sold for a couple bucks, you know, which is fine, but you know, I don't, I feel like it would be a disservice to the collectors that have trusted me to like be thoughtful with my supply.

Speaker: So yeah.

Speaker: I've often said I would rather do 100, 100 edition drops than a 10,000 edition drop.

Speaker: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Speaker: Do you think there's validity in the... I think one of the arguments when NFT collections were launching their secondary collections, like Mutants, the Bardays and Elementals, is that...

Speaker: and Bean Suzuki as well.

Speaker: One of the rationales is you're opening up the community and so you're starting to kind of layer.

Speaker: Do you think that's a rationale that is true and that can be applied when it comes to art and artists?

Speaker: I do think it's true in some cases.

Speaker: I think the mutants certainly expanded the collector community of the apes, but we've also seen it

Speaker: with elementals totally jar people's opinions.

Speaker: So it has to be done in a way that feels right.

Speaker: And I think the thing that the mutants did that was right was that subjectively the mutants are ugly.

Speaker: They're gross.

Speaker: They're not, they're not cool looking.

Speaker: They're, they're nasty.

Speaker: And I think that allows them to be in this secondary tier.

Speaker: What I've seen is a lot of projects are,

Speaker: So like the, you know, they put out the secondary tier and it's as good as the first.

Speaker: And then you create a weird system where it doesn't have, there's an imbalance.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's a man.

Speaker: It's a really tricky thing to navigate.

Speaker: And what also really worked for mutants was that they were free for board apes, right?

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And that's a huge thing because it, it, it instills more confidence.

Speaker: Whereas, uh,

Speaker: Like the case of Izuki, because it's obviously very front of mind for us, the elemental drop would have been a hard build to solo.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: No, I think Yuga's done a great job, but now they've almost gone too big.

Speaker: They have so many games and so many tokens and stuff.

Speaker: that it becomes a little too disjointed.

Speaker: So I do think that you have to limit yourself.

Speaker: But I think they created an ecosystem where there's just an expectation of things that are gifted to you, which, hey, you know, I had a bored ape.

Speaker: I appreciated all the cool stuff they gave me.

Speaker: I bet you did.

Speaker: Yeah, it's really an interesting dynamic because I don't consider these brands as really Web3.

Speaker: Because for me, Web3 means that having tokens, you have ownership over the network, you have...

Speaker: some level of ownership towards the governance and all that.

Speaker: So for me, they're 2.5, like a new way of, of, uh, stakeholding in a, in a company, but it, it, it raises very interesting questions of can the centralized team do whatever they want and, and let that community in a state of expectation and a hope of hopefully what they're doing works out.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I think,

Speaker: You know, maybe this is a spicy take.

Speaker: I think the Bored Apes mistake was that they raised a bunch of capital and got a bunch of investors that expected them to do a bunch of stuff that they, you know, when you bring that kind of level of money in, that's when you get tokens that don't make sense.

Speaker: And that's when you get all these other weird things.

Speaker: I see that happen with a lot of popular PFP projects as they bring in a VC funding round.

Speaker: And then the vibes instantly change to this is a business and we have to make money.

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: Well, I'm rocking a clone X. So who, who can, who can talk about this more than I, it's still, uh, it's still, uh,

Speaker: Not a sore subject, but it's still an interesting point of conversation because I do think that CloneX will be a success because in five or 10 years, people won't even be talking about Web3 anymore.

Speaker: Having a CloneX will just be having a membership card to a really exclusive brand that gets you some of the coolest luxury nightly clothing.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: And so I don't think it matters down the line.

Speaker: I do believe in this, but it's still like I'm kind of a purist at heart still.

Speaker: I do really care about decentralization.

Speaker: And so the fact that they're so clearly disregarding their community, not really listening to what they have to say and like keep on keeping on going the way they want to go is not sitting 100% right.

Speaker: They look so cool, and their clothes are insane.

Speaker: I think Artifact is doing cool stuff.

Speaker: The Clone X, I haven't really followed.

Speaker: I know they have a new character world coming out soon, but the fact they got Murakami was huge.

Speaker: I think them selling to Nike kind of created a whole... put them in a different category.

Speaker: Put them in a clothing category versus a community PFP category.

Speaker: But

Speaker: I'm not too deep in the artifact world, unfortunately, but I do appreciate what they do.

Speaker: I like the shoes they put out, especially the artist collab shoes they did early on.

Speaker: Those are really cool.

Speaker: the space strips.

Speaker: They do really understand their community.

Speaker: They understand the creators around them.

Speaker: They want to have a, they're, they're very mindful about certain things.

Speaker: You can't take that away from them.

Speaker: And they seem not too mindful about other things.

Speaker: And I, and I think it's just because of the new corporate environment they're in now.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But anyways, one thing that's really interesting and that's probably very, like you're a really good marketer as well.

Speaker: And, and that's really important for artists.

Speaker: But it's hard to do because if you're a very good artist, it doesn't mean that you're a marketer.

Speaker: And sometimes wanting to be a marketer takes you away from your art and you're lost in between.

Speaker: When you talk to new artists who are finding their footing, what does that conversation, what role does that conversation play in it?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Well, I do think marketing is a part of the art because it,

Speaker: It's how you present your art and how people internalize it or whatever.

Speaker: Yeah, when I talk to artists, I usually give this advice.

Speaker: If people go on YouTube, I have a thing called NFT in America.

Speaker: If you search that, I did a whole 15-minute talk on advice for artists.

Speaker: But the big thing about it was dividing your time three ways between being creative, promoting your art, and connecting with people in the space.

Speaker: And you have to do all three of those equally.

Speaker: And yeah, a lot of people...

Speaker: try to bypass one or two of those things.

Speaker: But really, you have to build trust.

Speaker: And then you have to market your stuff effectively.

Speaker: And it goes a long way, like throwing your art on a fake wall image or something lets people understand that it's a piece of art that could be hung or something.

Speaker: I think it's the least fun thing to do, especially when you have to like write like an artist description or like, you know, come up with a name for the piece, you know, making art is fun.

Speaker: Describing art is a pain in the butt.

Speaker: I think it's definitely important.

Speaker: And you, what I've found is when I don't do it, people don't figure stuff out on their own kind of thing.

Speaker: So you have to kind of hold their hands and say, well, you know, this piece represents this, you know, does this.

Speaker: And then, and then they,

Speaker: it goes to this thing I talked about in that speech, which is it's all the art of show and tell.

Speaker: And so when someone collects a piece of art, like I'm, I think I'm going to collect a piece in the next few minutes.

Speaker: And the, you know, the thing I'll do next is I'll tweet about it and I'll say, I love this piece.

Speaker: But if that artist gave me information on how they made it or why they made it, that gives me so much more information to tell while I'm showing.

Speaker: And I think having that,

Speaker: information, like you mentioned, like my making of's, like those went a long way early on, not just in terms of kind of sharing my process, but it validated how I made it and that I made it, you know, that I wasn't just stealing art from the internet and minting it and stuff.

Speaker: And so as an artist, it's really important for you to kind of show your receipts to a degree, especially in this new age of AI.

Speaker: Oh, yeah, more than more than anything, it's going to be more about people and about communities for sure.

Speaker: This is so valuable and so simple as well.

Speaker: Is it something that came naturally to you and then you looked back and thought, that was the recipe for my success?

Speaker: Or is there any one of those three that you had to really figure out?

Speaker: I think it came naturally.

Speaker: When I joined the space early on, I mean, the space wasn't big when I joined.

Speaker: It was, you know,

Speaker: January 2020.

Speaker: And so it was like a discord.

Speaker: People would meet up in crypto boxes and be cold.

Speaker: And Sarah Zucker and Matt Cain and all these kind of OGs.

Speaker: And I would look at them and learn from them.

Speaker: I would see them collecting other artists' work, becoming a part of the other artists' journeys, looking at how they went about marketing and how they went about doing the auctions.

Speaker: Back then, there was no auction timers.

Speaker: So it was like you had a tweet and you'd say, I have a new piece.

Speaker: In 24 hours, the top offer will be the winner.

Speaker: And then you'd say, there's 10 minutes left.

Speaker: There's one minute left.

Speaker: And you'd say, all right, this one's winnings.

Speaker: And then you did it all.

Speaker: It was all manual.

Speaker: But I learned all that from watching like Coldy because he had this Coldy method, you know?

Speaker: And so it was a lot of learning from other people.

Speaker: And I still do that to a huge degree.

Speaker: Every drop in the space you can look at and learn from what does and doesn't work.

Speaker: And that will save you your own mistakes.

Speaker: And so a lot of people are like, oh, you're so hyper aware of the space, Brian.

Speaker: And it's like, well, it's,

Speaker: You have to learn from other people all the time.

Speaker: Again, like Luca, we're all learning from his successes.

Speaker: That will then influence more success.

Speaker: So yeah, I think that's just the general feeling.

Speaker: It's just we all make mistakes and we learn from those, but it's more of just kind of being hyperactive and aware of the space is a strength.

Speaker: And it feels like a big part of your awareness around this is also because you're in the shoes of the collector as well.

Speaker: So you know what they're expecting, you know what's needed, and you can observe that from both sides of the coin.

Speaker: Yes, yeah.

Speaker: And again, it goes back, I learned from, I think, Sarah Zucker, because she was...

Speaker: saying you know when i make a sale i immediately take x amount of that sale and use it to go buy another piece of art from another artist and like that mentality is just a great mentality uh and it trickled you know all success trickles down that way but again it was just from learning from others there wasn't a lot of resources back then there wasn't youtube videos on like what is an nft you know that didn't come out until like later that year or whatever so

Speaker: It was a lot of just DMing people, joining discords, going into crypto voxels and just like kind of immersing yourself in it, which was great because like a month or two after I joined the space, COVID happened.

Speaker: And I was like, I got no social life anymore.

Speaker: I'm just going to go hang out in crypto boxes with these strangers and become friends with them.

Speaker: That worked out well for you.

Speaker: What was your, you're a real early user of NFTs.

Speaker: What was your first interaction with NFTs and what did you do you remember your aha moment, your the thought process of, all right, this is going to be important.

Speaker: This is something I want to get involved in.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: I wouldn't say I knew it was going to be important.

Speaker: I just thought it was interesting.

Speaker: I collect art from Killer Acid, who's Rob.

Speaker: He's an awesome artist.

Speaker: I've collected his work for like a decade.

Speaker: He was one of the first artists on SuperRare.

Speaker: He had posted like an Instagram about a piece that it was on auction.

Speaker: And I was like, oh, he's able to sell an animated GIF.

Speaker: What is this about?

Speaker: I didn't know you could do that.

Speaker: And I didn't know what Ethereum was.

Speaker: I didn't know what NFTs were.

Speaker: And I kind of

Speaker: looked around super rare for a couple days or a couple weeks tried to learn about nfts and then i was like okay i'm gonna apply to super rare and see if i can get on this seems to me it was a continuation of like tumblr or like and you know anytime there's a social network app that is art focused i try to join and i make art and share it and

Speaker: That's just always been my vibe over the years.

Speaker: And I just thought this was the next wave of digital art communities.

Speaker: My NFTs were selling, I think, for about $200 for my one-of-ones, which I thought was incredible.

Speaker: And the fact that I could sell animation, I think that was the thing that was the unlock.

Speaker: That was the aha.

Speaker: Because for years, I'd done gallery shows where I

Speaker: Drew things in Photoshop, printed them out, painted them, did all this stuff.

Speaker: And I would turn my digital art into physical art.

Speaker: And then with this, I was like, I can work natively in the format I've always loved working in.

Speaker: And I can make that art, you know, you could never sell animation before.

Speaker: And so it very quickly like clicked where I was like, this is, you know,

Speaker: a world that allows me to make fun gifts essentially.

Speaker: Cause there wasn't video on super rare at the time it was all animated gif.

Speaker: Uh, and so that there was a fun challenge there of like making two to three second loops, you know?

Speaker: And so, yeah, I think, I mean, the aha moment was when my first one sold and I was like, Oh my gosh, there's, there's interest in me doing this.

Speaker: This is really cool.

Speaker: You know, this is so cool.

Speaker: I get this picture of, uh,

Speaker: you haven't been primed for it your whole life, like starting with Adobe, being that type of art social network platform thing.

Speaker: And then you like upscaling your skills for years and then boom, this movement started and just like blows everything wide open.

Speaker: Thinking back on like early on, well, one,

Speaker: Working at those shows where I had an hour to make a piece or two hours to make a piece with SuperRare, I was like, I'm going to give myself a week and I'm going to make one piece a week.

Speaker: And that was my challenge.

Speaker: And I did that for the first nine months.

Speaker: And it was just a way for me to learn new tech, new stuff, experiment, do weird stuff.

Speaker: And because again, I feel like when COVID happened and everyone went into lockdown, everyone's like, well, I'm going to better myself in some way, whether it's exercise or all these other things.

Speaker: I was like, well, I'm going to try and learn new technology stuff and

Speaker: 3D and watch tutorials and learn all these things.

Speaker: And so a lot of those early super things were me just trying to like get better technically at stuff.

Speaker: And those were just my experiments of kind of messing around.

Speaker: I need links because I want to pick up one of those pieces.

Speaker: If any of them are still affordable.

Speaker: When did you make your first $200 sale?

Speaker: That would have been February 2020.

Speaker: And when was the Sotheby's $95,000 sale?

Speaker: It was like a year and a half later, which is crazy.

Speaker: It's insane.

Speaker: It was.

Speaker: And that was my first super rare piece resold at Sotheby's.

Speaker: Can you explain that one?

Speaker: I didn't have the time to dig as much as I could, but it seemed really interesting.

Speaker: It's called Explode.

Speaker: And so, you know, as my entrance into the space, I was like, you know, super air was filled with grungy, grimy art from X copy and cold and all this stuff.

Speaker: And I thought that was all really cool and very like cyber punky, but I was like, maybe I can go at this with a more pop colorful angle.

Speaker: And so that idea was like here, you know, these clouds are like thought bubbles.

Speaker: And so it's like,

Speaker: it's an explosion of like ideas and stuff.

Speaker: And so it was kind of like, this is my entrance into the space is like, and it had, it had those kinds of colors, those rainbow colors.

Speaker: It had 2d animation and it had a gif loop.

Speaker: And when I applied to super rare, I made three pieces.

Speaker: That was the only one I actually meant to the other two.

Speaker: I like threw out.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It was like, I think that, that just kind of was the vibe I wanted to put out of like,

Speaker: I didn't see people doing traditional animation in the space.

Speaker: I didn't see people kind of, I don't know, having the cartoony.

Speaker: Later on, I saw people like Joy.

Speaker: I would say he was like doing poppy, colorful, cool stuff way before me.

Speaker: But he was not super rare, so I didn't see him right away.

Speaker: But I love his work.

Speaker: That's really cool.

Speaker: There's this picture on your website of you with like music video, pop culture, TV, crypto art of all the subjects that basically run through your mind and that you have to focus on.

Speaker: Do you see the one I'm referring to?

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: Listening to this.

Speaker: Yeah, that was my that was my original like, way of

Speaker: just kind of describing all the weird things I did.

Speaker: I ended up making a new version of it later on that was like way more complicated.

Speaker: Cause I was like, I, this is what I was doing a year ago.

Speaker: Now I'm doing all these things, but yeah, no, I think that that was the fun aspect was, and I still do a lot of these other weird side things.

Speaker: Like next month in New York, I'll be doing live drawing to standup comedy.

Speaker: which I still do on a regular basis.

Speaker: And every once in a while I'll do like posters for things like, yeah, even though I'm more of an like quote artist now in the end, you know, just being creative is so fun.

Speaker: And I think that's the beauty of where I'm at now is I just have the freedom to be creative in any way I want.

Speaker: And I don't have to like, I don't know, stick, stick to a path, I guess you were talking earlier and I've,

Speaker: For years, everyone was like, you got to do a PFP, you got to do a 10K thing.

Speaker: And I kept saying, I don't want to accidentally become a business.

Speaker: And I think if you go big like that, then you have to build.

Speaker: build a team around this PFP and then you have a business.

Speaker: And it's like, as long as, you know, that seems so not fun to me.

Speaker: I love the freedom to experiment and do weird stuff.

Speaker: And so that's why, again, going back to supply, keeping your supply low means that everything is a part of this bigger picture and you don't have to necessarily keep, you know, focusing on one project forever.

Speaker: Oh man, you're so, you're so aware of,

Speaker: of yourself and of where you want to go.

Speaker: It's actually pretty inspiring.

Speaker: Do you, are you mindful of actually, because you're basically creating a universe with every new piece that you put out.

Speaker: Are you mindful of that bigger picture of that?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I think

Speaker: There's a lot of symbols that I use reoccurring.

Speaker: And then a lot of my work, I try to do callbacks to previous works.

Speaker: And so my next drop I'm doing with AOTM is visually connected to pieces I did in 2020 on Super Rare.

Speaker: And part of that is...

Speaker: I want to tell the story and I can frame it in a similar way.

Speaker: But then it also is an excuse for me to say, hey, look, there's a continuity here.

Speaker: And it's like the wires I have are connecting all these things.

Speaker: And yeah, it's like, even my wife was like, I totally forgot you made those pieces.

Speaker: And I think it's important, especially in the space for you to keep reminding people about the stuff you do in the past.

Speaker: And if I can use my new art as a way to highlight stuff from the past, it just builds this awareness.

Speaker: Because the whole space, you know, the stuff I did in 2020, I would say maybe 1% of the space is aware of it.

Speaker: Because most people joined after it and don't deep dive into that stuff.

Speaker: It's up to you as the artist to educate people and re-highlight these things as you continue to grow and time goes on.

Speaker: And I think the most, for me as a more viewer from the outside, the most important thing in doing this is that you're going to make that one person feel so special.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: they're going to know these.

Speaker: And for them, it's going to be a throwback.

Speaker: It's not going to be education.

Speaker: And they're going to feel like, oh, I was there for this.

Speaker: And that's so powerful.

Speaker: Like I've experienced this reading books or watching TV shows or something.

Speaker: And the person, the character, the whatever is referring to something that you know only a few people are aware of.

Speaker: And it hits you in the

Speaker: Yeah, it does feel special.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's like, yeah, you have that insider knowledge.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: I do think building, like when I joined the space, I,

Speaker: I kind of slowly built up these things that became reoccurring, whether they're clouds or diamonds or ladders or whatever.

Speaker: And they all have these kind of like meanings that allow me to tell a story without, again, it's all like symbols and stuff.

Speaker: So that, you know, if you want to learn about what it's about, you can find that information.

Speaker: Otherwise it's just a fun visual.

Speaker: And yeah, I've always kind of seen my, my colors as a candy coating, the, the, the messages or, you know,

Speaker: I could so see your universe become like an animated series with its characters.

Speaker: Is that something that would ever excite you or that you'd be interested in doing?

Speaker: That's a great question.

Speaker: I've gone back and forth.

Speaker: So about a year ago, I was asked if I wanted to do an animated series, which being an animator in my career, I was like, you know, that would have been my dream for a long time.

Speaker: But

Speaker: Now, I just don't think it's my dream anymore.

Speaker: Again, it's building a business.

Speaker: I don't want to be responsible for a team of 50 people working on an animated show for a year when I could just be making art.

Speaker: That puts me in a position where it's no longer me making art, it's me.

Speaker: running a show.

Speaker: And I think, you know, it would be fun to do at some point maybe, but at this point in my career, I think it would have derailed my momentum to do that.

Speaker: Cause it's like, you know, you, you work on it for a year and a half and then, and then maybe it makes it to air or maybe they decide they don't want to do NFT stuff or something, you know, it's so much risk.

Speaker: Again, with the self-awareness.

Speaker: that's really impressive i gotta say i'm i'm much more delusional i i'm much more like all right this is a cool idea let's let's do it and and not think about the like physical implications of that having worked on animated shows i see the stresses that showrunners go through and you know i think part of the problem is i just don't have

Speaker: a strong idea for a show right now.

Speaker: If, if, and when I do, it might be different, but I felt like I would be like forcing an idea out of something that I didn't really know what I wanted anyways.

Speaker: It's like, I don't,

Speaker: For the most part, I don't really have characters.

Speaker: I have a visual world, but I don't have a show yet.

Speaker: Well, I'm going to say that your own creation, your own self-portraits are really good and could be a very good...

Speaker: You see, that puts me, I don't know if I would want to make a whole show about me as a cartoon.

Speaker: I didn't want to play anything like this.

Speaker: I just wanted to say that it's very memorable and that it looks good.

Speaker: Thank you.

Speaker: No, I appreciate that.

Speaker: Yeah, that's been kind of the weird thing is people in the past have said like, oh yeah, you should do like avatars of yourself where people can play as you.

Speaker: And I'm like, that's kind of weird.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Um, so I don't know.

Speaker: I, I, I like having my avatar as me, but I don't know if I want to make that a product.

Speaker: I don't want, I don't want me to be the product.

Speaker: I want my art to be the product.

Speaker: I get that.

Speaker: I'd watch the show, but I get it.

Speaker: One of the very interesting, other interesting things you were talking about was the expectations that come when you start to get some success.

Speaker: And I, I would love to, I was very excited.

Speaker: I wanted to ask you more last time, but I,

Speaker: How was your own encounter with that component of the psyche?

Speaker: In terms of like just self-awareness that I'm known to a degree, you mean?

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: And then how does it... Yeah, because I left out a part of the question there.

Speaker: In general, I'm self-aware enough to understand that even if I am notable within the space...

Speaker: I'm still very much an unknown in the big picture of the world.

Speaker: And that's to say a blanket statement about all artists.

Speaker: Like, does my mom know who Damien Hirst is?

Speaker: Probably not.

Speaker: You know, you have to humble yourself and remind you just remember that for the most part, nobody knows who I am and that's okay.

Speaker: But you do go to these like NFT conventions and people come up and they know who you are.

Speaker: And that's very exciting.

Speaker: And it's very kind of validating and it feels good.

Speaker: But yeah, I don't let it get to my head at all.

Speaker: And I think,

Speaker: part of that is, yeah, I don't know.

Speaker: There was, there was a time when like right after that, like Sotheby's sale, I worked at an SNL and I went to the after party and it was like, Taylor Swift was there and there's all these people.

Speaker: And it was just like,

Speaker: Oh, yeah, I am a nobody.

Speaker: Even though I'm having success in my own world, I'm still very much a complete nobody compared to all of these actual famous people.

Speaker: So it's good to, you know, having those moments humble you nicely.

Speaker: Relativity is a useful tool.

Speaker: And does it... None of them would be like, oh, you do NFTs?

Speaker: No one would care.

Speaker: Yet.

Speaker: That time will come.

Speaker: I could bet some money on it.

Speaker: And when it comes to the people that do know you, does that impact your creative process of, all right, like this has done this well in the past, the next few pieces need to do as well.

Speaker: Yeah, I mean, that's always going to be on your mind.

Speaker: You don't want to go backwards, but sometimes the market forces that.

Speaker: Yeah, I think the way I look at it, as long as I feel like the art is continuing to be

Speaker: to grow and continue to like get better.

Speaker: I don't care as much about like hitting all time highs every time.

Speaker: Like it certainly plays into my, my mind when I do a drop.

Speaker: The idea of the perception of it is a big thing.

Speaker: And so, you know, sometimes it's a matter of like,

Speaker: making sure something sells out in a minute just because that perception of success or something but sometimes doing that ends up getting you worse collectors because they're buying it for the hype and they're immediately going to flip it and stuff like that and so there's a back and forth on the the right way to do it and i think different drops work for different things and so i don't you know

Speaker: Like I did a drop with Unit London and that took like a month to sell out.

Speaker: But everybody that bought it really enjoyed it and wanted it.

Speaker: And so it was a better collector base than say something like, you know, a first come first serve quick sellout thing on Nifty Gateway, which immediately has like 10 listings or something.

Speaker: When you do these things, like you're really putting yourselves out there.

Speaker: It's not just posting a picture on your Instagram.

Speaker: It's like testing how the market is reacting to you.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Well, I mean, that's the whole other aspect of the space is that I'm doxed.

Speaker: I'm very vulnerable in that sense.

Speaker: I don't want to ever make people feel like I'm...

Speaker: I don't know how to describe it.

Speaker: I wouldn't want someone to be mad at me, you know, because they could find me, you know?

Speaker: And so you have to, you have to be aware in that, in that way of like, not, not being a jerk and like all these other things.

Speaker: Because yeah, I want to, I want to cultivate a world where I can continue to be an artist forever.

Speaker: And that requires thoughtful, methodical drops that are,

Speaker: you know, not extractive and all these other things.

Speaker: And yeah, it's always in the back of my mind of like not being negative and not being a jerk.

Speaker: I was going to say that you have two very important pillars of you're a good ethical person and you're very self-aware.

Speaker: And so you know why you do the things you do.

Speaker: so it it can't really go wrong because you're staying true to yourself and you're staying aligned but when you start to be like for example a bull market is going to come and you're going to have new upcoming artists that are going to start like getting some form of success and they're going to have all of these opportunities thrown at them they're going to be ideas from all around the world

Speaker: And there are going to be new metas because each cycle has its fair share of metas and you're very tempted to follow them.

Speaker: And sometimes that implies selling your soul a little bit.

Speaker: And because that art market has serious financial implications now, you're going to get whipped at some point.

Speaker: Like something's going to happen with that.

Speaker: Do you agree?

Speaker: Yeah, I think there's always going to be, whether it's working with a brand or whatever, there's always going to be trends that you want to follow.

Speaker: And the question is, right now the trend is like Frentech.

Speaker: I'm not jumping onto Frentech.

Speaker: But Ordinals was a trend.

Speaker: And now that Ordinals has died off, now I'm more interested in doing it than it would have been before.

Speaker: Because again, the perception, if I do it now, I can do it and say I'm doing this because the tech is exciting versus if I did it six months ago when everyone would have just assumed I was doing it to cash grab, you know?

Speaker: And so it's kind of like figuring out how to go about those things and how it'll be perceived.

Speaker: I love how you think because like what you were saying with open editions before, you haven't dismissed open editions.

Speaker: You just don't yet have...

Speaker: like you're aware that it exists, you're aware it's a possibility and maybe it feels like maybe one day you'll go there, but it'll be under your own terms for a very specific purpose, not because it is the ongoing trend.

Speaker: I appreciate open, I mean, I've bought so many open editions from artists.

Speaker: I find that open editions work well if the artist is emerging, small,

Speaker: Because then it mints out 50 to 100.

Speaker: If I did an open edition, I would worry that it would mint 1,000.

Speaker: And then that puts me in a position, again, where there's an expectation.

Speaker: Even if I don't say it, because artists in the past have used open editions as this roadmap of burning...

Speaker: people buy them with the expectation that there will be a future value.

Speaker: And that's what stops me from doing it because I don't want to accidentally imply future value in that way.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: That's the thing.

Speaker: I'm, again, it goes back to that ethical thing.

Speaker: The ethical thing is about, you know, not making enemies in the space, but also not making enemies with the government.

Speaker: You know, I'm in the U S seeing how the sec is cracking down on all this stuff.

Speaker: You have to be very aware of how you're marketing stuff and how,

Speaker: that you can't promise future value.

Speaker: You can't do any of these things or, you know, thankfully I'm not famous.

Speaker: You know, you talked about fame earlier.

Speaker: I'm not famous enough for the SEC to go after me.

Speaker: They seem to be going after celebrities more, but I don't want to be on their radar at all.

Speaker: You know?

Speaker: And so it's like, you know, you just have to sell stuff as art with no expectations.

Speaker: And then, you know, you can,

Speaker: do surprise things for those people later, but you just don't market it with those things.

Speaker: Market it that way.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Almost made me bring up our common quote unquote friend, but let's hit, I'm going to hit you with some rapid fire questions.

Speaker: Started introducing this recently, get funny answers sometimes.

Speaker: If you could only ever buy one NFT that you would have to hold for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Speaker: I own it, but I would say Gazers, the fact that they change every day forever.

Speaker: It's a great NFT for long term.

Speaker: I don't even know about that.

Speaker: I'll have to look it up.

Speaker: That's Matt Cain's Art Blocks project where it's a moon and every day it cycles.

Speaker: And over time, it'll become faster and more complicated.

Speaker: And it's an NFT that 40 years from now will look totally different than what it looks like now.

Speaker: It's very cool.

Speaker: Oh, that sounds awesome.

Speaker: How did I miss it?

Speaker: I'm going to look it up right after.

Speaker: It's pretty pricey now, but yeah.

Speaker: I didn't mean to buy.

Speaker: I meant to look at what it is and what it implies.

Speaker: If you can only buy one crypto for the rest of your life.

Speaker: I guess Ethereum.

Speaker: It's the most versatile.

Speaker: Makes sense.

Speaker: Not Billy?

Speaker: Billy.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I like the Billy logo.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It looked good.

Speaker: Who are your top three favorite people that you vibe with the most in this space right now?

Speaker: Sarah Zucker, she has the best vibes.

Speaker: Dave Krugman's got great vibes.

Speaker: He's, again, he's a curator of vibes.

Speaker: He puts together events and they're just really, really lovely.

Speaker: Vinnie Hager, I think he's got great vibes.

Speaker: I think every time I see him, it makes me smile.

Speaker: And he's prolific in terms of how much work he puts out too.

Speaker: Two very good qualities.

Speaker: Who are your top three favorite digital artists emerging who people need to know about right now?

Speaker: Well, I just bought a piece today from this artist named Luis Daisy.

Speaker: I think his work's phenomenal.

Speaker: And an emerging artist, Emily Edelman.

Speaker: She's a really great generative artist.

Speaker: Great person.

Speaker: She's like blown up.

Speaker: Alamo, big fan of him.

Speaker: Great.

Speaker: Again, great vibes.

Speaker: Great art.

Speaker: Awesome.

Speaker: Thank you.

Speaker: What's something about you people online don't know?

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: That's a good question.

Speaker: What secrets do I have?

Speaker: Most people don't understand that I play a lot of video games.

Speaker: I'm big into Fortnite and Rocket League and FIFA and all those things.

Speaker: And sometimes when I tell people that, they're like, you play video games?

Speaker: I'm surprised.

Speaker: I saw that Counter-Strike 2 just came out.

Speaker: Is that something you play?

Speaker: It looks good.

Speaker: I'm a big nerd when it comes to graphics, so I was watching videos of the water effects in the game yesterday.

Speaker: Yeah, I saw that.

Speaker: I saw that too.

Speaker: But yeah, I used to play.

Speaker: I was big into Counter-Strike when I was in high school.

Speaker: I was big in the Day of Defeat, which was like the World War II expansion or whatever it was.

Speaker: Part of me is like, yeah, maybe I'll try it.

Speaker: And then I'm like, I will suck so bad.

Speaker: It'll bum me out.

Speaker: I'm just not.

Speaker: I play, I play a lot of shooters.

Speaker: I've been playing payday three recently, and that's been pretty fun.

Speaker: Competitive shooters.

Speaker: I'm not, I'm not good at, I'm okay at Fortnite, but I have to play no build mode, you know?

Speaker: But, uh, yeah, that, that's where I will say, uh, as I'm getting older, um, it's a lot harder to compete with these kids, uh, with their reflexes and stuff.

Speaker: I can't.

Speaker: So, uh, you know, that's why I like rocket league and stuff like that, which is a little more, uh,

Speaker: It evens out a little bit.

Speaker: Man, I was looking at the... This video came up of the story of the Fortnite World Tournament.

Speaker: So it explained... Like, there were two or three main characters, like Kings and Booga.

Speaker: I was literally watching this two or three days ago.

Speaker: Like, top world players.

Speaker: I don't play.

Speaker: I wish I... But I don't get into games as much as I did when I was younger, and I miss it, and I wish I could, but my brain just doesn't want to anymore.

Speaker: But I still I'm interested in the world of gaming.

Speaker: The reflexes, the speed at which like their brains work.

Speaker: And it's almost like their autonomous nervous system has been wired to play video games now.

Speaker: And that everything just happens intuitively.

Speaker: It's nuts.

Speaker: I understand the no build.

Speaker: Yeah, I just beat.

Speaker: starfield which was great and so yeah i think that's the problem like what i've as i've gotten older i've my routine is i usually play like an hour or two of games at like night from like 11 to 1 or something and that's like my decompressing time or whatever yeah i i much prefer like short adrenaline bursts of like a quick game a competitive sports or something a lot of people play these like

Speaker: epic long games and stuff like that or like dark souls or something i'm like i can't do that like yeah i need something fun uh to give me that little rush and then i'm the level of commitment is is otherworldly i don't know how it's funny because my previous guests french one so you won't i i don't

Speaker: think you speak french not well not well well maybe you can try if it's if you have some basics i took french in high school that was uh that was a while ago yeah he was talking about starfield as well and was very excited about it it was a cool game i i enjoyed it i i also liked um fallout and skyrim and stuff so it was it was very much along those lines but yeah it was one of those things where i'm like

Speaker: Again, I get sucked into that and I play it like an hour or two a day and then I'm like talking about deadlines and stuff like that.

Speaker: I'm like, I can't, I can't put myself in these positions where I'm like obsessing over a game when I need to get stuff done.

Speaker: Not yet.

Speaker: Maybe, maybe the time will come.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Do you, I don't know why I put this one here.

Speaker: We're kind of done with the rapid fire.

Speaker: I wanted to ask, do you think NFTs are dead?

Speaker: No, I mean, obviously not.

Speaker: But I don't know.

Speaker: I had a conversation about it the other day.

Speaker: And I basically said like NFTs aren't dead, but maybe the name NFT is dead.

Speaker: I think we're going to start saying like digital collectibles and other things more.

Speaker: But they're certainly dead in terms of media appreciation.

Speaker: but it's like that's that article came out and it's like that same week there was like a lacma announcement a moma announcement a sotheby's a christy's like all the whitney like the the digital art appreciation is very much on the rise right now and not dead at all so for me it's more of just like it's dead and i'm kind of okay with people saying it's dead because it keeps the the scammers and the opportunists out a little bit but i do think

Speaker: NFTs as like PFPs.

Speaker: Yeah, those are probably dead right now.

Speaker: I mean, if not dead, they're down 90%.

Speaker: We're still seeing crazy drops from artists.

Speaker: I think what Ferocious has dropped made millions this week.

Speaker: So it's like clearly not dead.

Speaker: It's still very much.

Speaker: Yeah, it's interesting what you're saying because we're stepping away from the technology and stepping into the

Speaker: utility and, and yeah, the functionalities we're not talking about NFTs, but we're, or like NFTs are dead, but digital art is raising and NFTs are dead, but

Speaker: Web3 Gaming that is using NFTs is on the rise as well.

Speaker: And I'm pretty sure that in the next few phases, we'll start to see more and more applications that are utilizing the technology where you don't even feel like you are.

Speaker: My first guest was Tara Fung.

Speaker: She's the founder of CoCreate.

Speaker: And they've just come out.

Speaker: They have a tech stack that allows NFTs

Speaker: basically communities to use the tech and create applications that are so seamless for users.

Speaker: And they've put out an example where you go through claiming and minting and I think there was another utility.

Speaker: You don't once have to open your MetaMask.

Speaker: You don't have to pay for gas.

Speaker: You don't have to do anything.

Speaker: You're just as if you were going on Instagram and liking a couple of photos and putting a comment.

Speaker: It was that easy.

Speaker: And I think that's the future.

Speaker: You'll be buying art that you know is in limited supply that you can use to track to make sure that it is not a forgery.

Speaker: that it indeed belongs to the artist, you won't even talk about the fact that it's an NFT anymore.

Speaker: I think it's going to get really interesting.

Speaker: I mean, you're right.

Speaker: The mechanisms are confusing and dangerous right now.

Speaker: Everyone's getting scammed.

Speaker: It's only going to get worse before it gets better, unfortunately, because social engineering will get better probably faster than wallet security.

Speaker: Especially.

Speaker: It's going to get weird.

Speaker: To that degree, I don't even feel comfortable telling people to get a MetaMask without having a whole seminar on safety.

Speaker: So we're not in a good place for onboarding people.

Speaker: But that's okay.

Speaker: Right now we can build and then those solutions will come and then in a year or so we'll have our moments.

Speaker: But smarter people than me will solve those problems.

Speaker: Yeah, hopefully.

Speaker: Well, we're seeing better wallets and better

Speaker: UX, it will eventually happen.

Speaker: I also wanted to talk to you about royalties, but it's such a tricky subject to broach where I'm sitting between two chairs of you have, in the art realm anyway, you have people that buy art for the investment that it represents and for the speculative component.

Speaker: And you have people that are collectors and that buy art for the art and buy art for the artist.

Speaker: And for the speculation side of things, I understand the market making components and like it is so inefficient to have to pay 5% or 7.5 or 2.5% every time you make a transaction.

Speaker: And it doesn't fit that use case at all.

Speaker: So do you think we can actually grow beyond that debate where both can coexist, where you have collectors on one side that will be happy to contribute a portion of their sale because they care about the artists and they want to pay that?

Speaker: And where on the other side, you have the speculators and the market makers that don't pay it and where it's okay?

Speaker: Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker: I'm unfortunately kind of pessimistic about royalties.

Speaker: I think, you know, maybe in the bulls,

Speaker: I think it's a matter of how often things flip.

Speaker: You know, it doesn't make sense for a Zuki to have royalties because... Or at least, you know...

Speaker: to a degree because they're just flipping all the time.

Speaker: And then, but like, if it's a super rare one of one and that only sells once every two years, that makes sense then because it's like a tip to say like, thank you for continuing to grow as an artist.

Speaker: You know, there's also people that argue like you should pay royalties if there's profit.

Speaker: And if not, then no, there's a lot of different incentivizing ideas.

Speaker: I'm, I'm again, pessimistic that incentives won't be as interesting as,

Speaker: as 10% difference of money.

Speaker: In the end, money is the key to everything in this space.

Speaker: And you could incentivize people and say, if you pay this royalty, you get an NFT.

Speaker: But most of the time, people will take the money.

Speaker: But maybe you have that opportunity for people that actually do want the art.

Speaker: I don't know what the answer is.

Speaker: It's been depressing to see the marketplaces.

Speaker: Blur never bothered me because...

Speaker: 95% of my work isn't listed on blur anyways.

Speaker: But when OpenSea ran us around with all these things of like, make these contracts by this date to do this.

Speaker: And it made us all go through these hurdles.

Speaker: And they're like, actually, nah, we're just not going to do it.

Speaker: And that felt like a real slap.

Speaker: And so, yeah, I think it's definitely frustrating.

Speaker: But again, I'm very thankful that

Speaker: I've had a few years of royalties.

Speaker: I mean, it made a big difference.

Speaker: It's not for nothing.

Speaker: And especially like...

Speaker: NimBuds, which, you know, I sold those relatively cheap.

Speaker: And then they kind of ran seven months later.

Speaker: I made more from the royalties than I did from the initial sale.

Speaker: That's awesome.

Speaker: Yeah, it really feels like it was a huge betrayal, especially from OpenSea, because they benefited so much from those collections, from you guys as artists.

Speaker: And to see them

Speaker: like never drop a token, never.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And still take their cut.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And still take their cut.

Speaker: And, and because whether you do or you don't, they still do when you, when you use their, their platform, which is like, yeah, it makes no sense.

Speaker: I hope they get seriously dethroned in the next bull market.

Speaker: I think they will.

Speaker: I mean, they'll, they'll live as a Walmart of NFTs, but I think there will be,

Speaker: lots of other options for artists that will be, you know, so my, my general take is if you wanted to go buy my work, if I send you a link that has all of my stuff available and you can see it all and you can see what's available, um, your chances are you're going to buy from that.

Speaker: And, um,

Speaker: I equate it with like, so there's like thrift shops that are like curated to a degree of junk.

Speaker: And then there's garage sales.

Speaker: And so the garage sales, you can get things for super cheap, but you got to go around, you got to find the best deals.

Speaker: You got to dig through all these things, or you can go to the thrift shop and buy things.

Speaker: And most people will go to the thrift shop and buy something for 10 times more than they would at the garage sale because it's there and presented.

Speaker: And I think the same thing will be, you know,

Speaker: if I have a secondary marketplace and that's in my bio on Twitter, people will go there and buy it.

Speaker: And if there's incentives there or royalties built in there, most people will not, you know, people can go, some D gens will go find the best deal, but most people will just buy it based on ease.

Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker: And also it will depend greatly on how we,

Speaker: grow to consume digital art.

Speaker: Because if that changes, if the platforms change, because you can always gamify interactions and you can verify in the smart contract if a royalty has been paid.

Speaker: And so if on that, let's say on cyber becomes the main go-to, it makes me think of that, the toilets.

Speaker: That was hilarious.

Speaker: That was really funny.

Speaker: But if on cyber becomes the norm, it's very easy for them to add something to

Speaker: this buyer has paid or like in that transaction, royalties were paid.

Speaker: And because art is still very much a status thing, it's something that you want to show others.

Speaker: And if you have this thing that becomes mainstream of art,

Speaker: yes, that person has paid the royalty, then the diehard, the real collectors, the people that care about this, will look for the sellers that are going to pay that resale price.

Speaker: Yeah, I agree.

Speaker: Hopefully, let's build this.

Speaker: Let's manifest it in our future.

Speaker: Yeah, I'm noticing my video is starting to glitch out.

Speaker: Yeah, I saw that too.

Speaker: It added some cool... Yeah, it's an ex-copy collab.

Speaker: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker: You're doing virtual effects without even trying to now.

Speaker: Your superpowers have activated much more.

Speaker: Man, thank you so much.

Speaker: It's been a blast.

Speaker: I love talking to you.