TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #252: Content monetization, art, and NFTs with cryptograffiti

Episode Date: May 18, 2021

Join Marty as he sits down with prolific Bitcoin artist cryptograffiti to discuss: - Using art to convey Bitcoin's revolutionary nature - Content monetization under a Bitcoin Standard - Why NFTs are so popular - Is art subjective or is there objective beauty? - Cutting out middle men - Artists working directly with collectors - much more Follow cryptograffiti on Twitter Check out his art Shoutout to this week's sponsors. Cash App. Start #stackingsats today. Use the promo code: "stackingsats" to receive $10 and contribute $10 to OWLS Lacrosse when you download the app. Lend at Hodl Hodl is a new non-custodial bitcoin backed lending platform, that allows peer to peer lending and borrowing between users, globally, anonymously & on your own terms. Create you offers & set your own terms on lend.hodlhodl.com Compass Mining. Compass wants to democratize bitcoins hashrate and give everyone the ability to strengthen the network while mining bitcoin profitably. Thanks to Compass, it’s never been easier to mine bitcoin. Check them out at compassmining.io Braiins. Braiins are leaders in the mining industry; running Slush Pool, creating firmware to make miners more profitable (Braiins OS+), and building out Stratum V2 to help further decentralize mining and make Bitcoin more robust. Check out their mining profitability calculator.

What's up freaks, it's your boy Marty Ben here to introduce this episode of Tales from the Crypt. I sat down with CryptographyD to talk about art, Bitcoin, content monetization, creators, NFTs. What does the future of this brave new world look like? Controversial topic, particularly the NFTs, but I think you guys will like what our boy CryptographyD has to say. about the state of the market where it can go in the future and how you can build this in second and third layers and if so why even care as a bitcoiner you don't need to participate in it others can and you're talking you're listening to uncle marty who's still a bit of an nft skeptic but if there's going to be a market

for it why not bring it to bitcoin go check out cryptography these art too making incredible pieces this rip is brought to you by good good friends very good friends a cash app cash app let's help you stack sets send sets receive sets sell sets if you so please we're saying sats sats sats sats sats sats sats are the standards 100 million sats in one bitcoin you don't have to buy a whole bitcoin you don't have to buy a fraction of bitcoin you can buy whole sats you can stack whole sats sats are on sale right now after this week elon talking about dumping his coin jack dorsey get behind it saying bitcoin's going to change everything hope you guys saw that over the weekend you can dca in the sats you can set it and forget

it by daily weekly bi-weekly if you want to just ease into it be aware of the withdrawal limits be aware of the withdrawal limits you don't want to have too many sats on the app at once actually it's a good time to sweep your sats right now if you have a considerable amount on as the price is lower uh they're working on that from what i understand they have their boost program they have their cash card accepted anywhere visas accepted get paychecks direct deposited into the app they're they're building very interesting product over a cash app we like it if you haven't downloaded it yet make sure you use the code stacking sass it's s-t-a-c-k-i-n-g-s-a-t-s you're going to get ten dollars and ten dollars going to go to our good friends at owls lacrosse

that's owls lacrosse owls lacrosse that's a coffee bug there something went down the wrong pipe this is also brought to you by good friends at HODL HODL HODL HODL has a product for you American freaks listening to this this is a global podcast

and this is open to anybody using this but particularly to call out my American, my fellow Americans by fellow americans this is one of hodl hodl products and it's available to you to lend it hodl hodl it's a new non-custodial that's why it's available to you it's non-custodial big back big back bitcoin back lending platform that allows peer-to-peer lending and borrowing between users globally anonymously and on i can't speak you guys know that anonymously and on your own terms if you're short of funds you don't need to sell your bitcoins get some liquidity by borrowing

using your bitcoin as collateral and the great thing is that you don't need to entrust someone with your funds your collateral always remains locked in escrow and you control one of the keys you hold a key your counterpart holds a key huddle huddle holds a key when you use your bitcoin as collateral you get stable coins liquidity you can go spend wherever during the duration alone since you have a key you can maintain a sight of vision on those stats make sure they're not being re-hypothecated if you have some stable coins laying around you want to enter the other side that order book you can put them up for a little yield create your offers and set your own terms at lend.hodlhodl.com that's lend l-e-n-d.hodlhodl.com this rip was also brought to you by

good friends at compass mining compass mining is trying to democratize i don't want to say democratize this is a very not a very good word in the bitcoin space but they're trying to get the individual little guy the average joe the common man into bitcoin mining at competitive electricity cost the way compass mining works you go to compassmining.io if you want to get into mining they allow you to buy a a miner so you pick your favorite model your favorite price point for the miner compass mining is going to acquire that for you they have deals with the manufacturers so they have these miners in stock so you pick your miner and then they have a plethora a plethora of hosting facilities with with competitive electricity costs so you pick your

hosting facility where you want to send your miner you buy your miner pick your hosting facility compass mining takes all the complexity out for you they get the miner they plug it in at the hosting facility and then they're streaming sats to a wallet of your choice you're trying to get more individuals into this really admirable mission and they're doing it compass mining.io go check it out c-o-m-p-a-s-s-m-i-n-i-n-g dot i-o last but not least this rip was brought to you by our good friends at brains brains brains b-r-a-double-i-n-s that's b-r-a-double-i-n-s and they are the team behind slush pool their team behind brains os plus firmware they're putting out incredible content but today we're going to talk about their mining farm management system that

they just launched brains uh so first up it's a brand new product brains os plus manager an online platform enables miners to remotely monitor and manage all their asics running brains os plus this can help miners improve uptime keep their farms running optimally without the hassle of needing to be on site 24 7 the manager is and always will be free for brains os plus miners again brains os plus is their firmware that allows you to stack more sats get more hash get more stats for your hash from a hash you get more hash which gets you more sats more hash for your buck your cuck buck if you're paying a cuck bucks security and efficiency were top priorities brains os plus manager uses stratum b2 for smaller and

less frequent data transfers with all asic configuration and telemetry data being sent via encrypted connections this is important this will protect against eavesdropping a man in the middle attacks you don't want people hijacking your hash rate and stacking sats with your hash rate it's a problem many people don't know it so the encrypted connections and data being sent in the encrypted connection protects against these attacks for details on the manager and how to set how to set up uh with your mining operation go to brains bra iins.com slash blog and check out the brains os plus manager launch article again that's brains bra iims.com last but not least slush pool is going to get its first major update of the past couple years and we'll have some new

features industry first features for bitcoin mining pools the update hasn't been launched yet but it's going to come with ultra flexible payout system customizable customizable mining rewards splitting and best of all dark team 24 7 hash rate monitoring that's easy on the eyes follow slush underscore pull on twitter to see the announcement when the pull update goes live edward seriously dude when when's what when what's minor when when get on it ed thinky so i heard ed actually told me he doesn't like oysters either over the weekend it's a sick fuck ed ed evenson is a sick fuck no cheese no oysters Live a little, Ed. Live a little, you uncultured swine.

bitcoin wins in the world of fiat currencies bitcoin is the victor i mean that's part of the bull case for bitcoin if you're not paying attention you probably should be recording what is up freaks welcome back to tales from the crypt happy monday very excited for this conversation cryptic graffiti how are you doing doing well happy you uh dm'd me yesterday so i guess the context for this interview is i sent out a thread yesterday morning basically saying like hey like what is the the monetization path of content creators and artists of the future is it streaming sats value for value many people helping an artist or content creator monetize with small micro payments or even larger chunks

of payments giving however much they wish or is it like an nft model where you have uh art collectors in the digital world um paying big money to to grab a digital like art piece or content piece that is cryptically signed by the artist slash content creator um i'm happy you reached out and said hey i've got some nuanced views on this let's jump into it so that's why we're here today um i guess for anybody who may be listening before we jump into the the meat of a conversation. If you can basically introduce yourself and explain what you've been doing in the space for some time now, because you've created some incredible pieces, one of which is posted behind me, if anybody is watching this live or on YouTube.

Thanks, man. Yeah. Thanks again for having me, Marty. Long time Bitcoin artist. And so I got into the space thinking that there'd just be a need for different types of content that appealed to different types of people because it was very programmer centric and libertarian centric and not a lot of design and art. And so art helps spread movements. A lot of people are just visually minded. And so I heard about it early enough and it was complex enough to know that we would need some ways of simplifying it for certain people, myself included, to really get our head around it and art has a way of doing that uh distilling things down so more people can can grasp it um so yeah so my work uh i tend to repurpose banking materials but um i also like

to try and involve the protocol and the tech in projects too so really really excited about um stuff that's happening with layer two um a big rabbit hole moment for me involved micropayments in learning about hash cash. And that for me was like, I'm not big in the finance space. I don't know much about econ, but this creative take on how payments could potentially thwart DDoS attacks

and open up this new era that could possibly get us away from this ad-based era that we're living in, which really is detrimental in a number of different ways. That for me really resonated it and i thought okay uh i'm creative maybe i can do some stuff pertaining to that uh and so i dove in and several years later uh here we are in loving every minute of it that was streaming

sets to you we're not streaming i was just tipping you while you're doing a live set was that three fridays ago four fridays ago at this point gosh maybe even longer than that yeah april 9th so yeah been so um yeah man so kind of a a more uh pointed take on on what's going on with with sphinx um more specific to this particular thing that i'm interested in which is which is djing um but also goes back to what we're talking about with with getting away from from these ads and um And for electronic music, which is everywhere nowadays, especially during the pandemic, we saw all sorts of live streams and the issues that come with being encroached upon by platforms that rely on ads and antiquated copyright models. so this was a look at at doing a different take on that that cut out middle people and and similar to sphinx meant like direct payments and splitting the payments so that um the producers can get a

cut uh and rather than have to do things like um you know throw ads in in the middle of a music set which is like just not not ideal whatsoever um this would would provide an alternative and to be a a big undertaking to be ground up and really kind of hit at everything that's been built already for the whole royalty space which is a mess but uh i think it's the future i think i don't think people want a uh the the twitches and the facebooks and the youtubes to just like shut down and not have your art heard or b the djs have to do where like they'll pitch down the track considerably so like the vocals are nothing like what the producer wanted or envisioned in order to get around these bots

that will arbitrarily shut down the streams. It's just a total clusterfuck. We're just used to this ad-based system that robs us of our time. And there's all these hurdles that we're now just accustomed to, but we're going to look back 20 years from now and think, what the hell are we doing?

So excited to see things like Sphinx and what you're doing on the podcast side of it um and yeah on the music side really anything that involves uh digital content creation we're starting to see a bunch of experimentation nfts being part of that um streaming stats uh i think they all kind of go hand in hand and so when you posted about this idea of i think was it was there like a an obfuscated angle to your tweet too was it like oh like people would like reveal the artwork with the donations with that yeah there was a there's also like the the paywall model where you put a paywall in front of your content before it's consumed whether it be music written content maybe even art as well um like hey you have to pay x

amount of sets to to view or consume this art um it's another model you can throw in there yeah and i think they all kind of speak to the same thing which is like the current models are broken right so people are thinking of ways to try and hide what you made and and piece it out and get paid for piecing it out or um to get get paid on the fly like more like the sphinx side or uh just get paid to say that you own it like the nft side there's there's there's a lot of stuff that's happening and i think they're all kind of like close cousins to one another and i think people like rightly so with with a lot of the the hubbub that's happening with the nfts and the crazy valuations like there's there's a ton of of validity and saying that there's there's

scams going on and it shouldn't shouldn't be receiving some of the attention that that it does but there's also some some cool stuff too and so i'm sort of at a crossroads because you know i'm i'm a bitcoiner and and i know there's a ton of pushback um but there is there is some cool stuff happening with with like a programmable art where people can say that they own like one of the layers and there's like several different layers to this artwork that then changes with with smart contracts you know so maybe it looks there's a different color palette that happens around dusk so that it better matches like your view out your window like certain shit that's that's unfolding where it's it's early days and um you know some of the the big valuations are

are purported to be because you're owning let's say the first of blank and so there might be some validity there because if if this does end up sticking around in some form and to have the the early editions quote unquote of it um um you know might make sense in in some respect uh but yeah it's uh there is there is some cool stuff in there along with a lot of the the fluff uh so i think there's going to be a big shake out um but hopefully what does come out of or artists being able to sustain themselves because up until this point, it's been very difficult from the musicians with Spotify's

or just like them collecting royalties for like public performance stuff. Like there's these nonprofits like ASCAPs and BMIs. And like if your music is played in like a restaurant or a venue, like the process that you're supposed to go through to receive your royalties is so cumbersome and likely like purposefully so like some of these sites are like visiting the dmv they'll charge like a monthly fee to these to these restaurants in order to have to be

able to play the music and then um you know it's just all it's messed up it's it's it's outdated and so i think what we're seeing now is is with with some of these these new uh approaches um um you know all sorts of of good stuff but people try to take advantage of it too so interesting days for sure yeah and so let's try to break this down for the freaks to separate and try to help everybody who's listening or watching to visualize this let's start so let's start with like the because there's right there's different types of art slash content like this is a podcast right audio content people come to learn or get entertained you have the newsletter that i write written content um you have what you did last month

on april 9th or 7th i'm sorry um the the you basically did a live set on youtube um and you had a tip um qr code for anybody watching i was watching on my tv and i was able to just scan your qr code on my tv and send you stats over the lightning network and then you have digital art being created uh that has a cryptographic signature from the artist and that can be sold as an nft to individuals that they can hold basically say hey i own this one of one or n of x um a piece of art created by this particular artist so there's different ways and of monetizing for these creators and artists and like do so before we even get into like different ways to monetize and do you think we should separate the different types of creators

from content creator artist and does the separation of those creators have uh does that mean they can monetize differently in your mind yeah i think eventually um it's all it's interesting because it's all kind of converging into one where like i think we're all content creators now because you know your your tweets are going to perform better if you put an image there and and um there's we're creating content whether we like it or not if you're on social media and um and then i think it's only a matter of time before payments are going to be everywhere you know like jack's alluded to it happening with twitter i think i think it'll be the same game theory when one of one of the big platforms does it with the other ones because why wouldn't

you want to earn some random sats if it's done elegantly because that's that's like the big thing like if it's obtrusive i don't know if you remember back when reddit took over dig they had like dig version four i think it was where it was just a mess right and so because it was a mess like everyone was like oh look at this really sleek thing called reddit which is it's ugly but it just focuses on the content um so i think that's kind of how it'll unfold like someone's gonna do it people will get paid it'll it'll be talked about too much and everyone will be annoyed because everyone's talking about the payments but then eventually it'll be this elegant solution where if someone digs out this this fact that you were looking for and you send them a thousand

sats and and it's done seamlessly um then well uh for that guy that created the the meme that you laughed at and you sent the sats there someone else is just going to want to be like hey i now own it look at my collection of memes and boom there's your nft it's kind of a close close cousin of it right and it's also like jesse powell tweeted something recently where he just sees it like uh uh an even closer cousin of philanthropy because he's uh he's supporting the arts he he owns a gallery he supported my work and and it's just another way of of supporting and it's kind of like when you if there's like a kickstarter or something and you you check that box or don't check the box that that shows publicly like did you support this thing on one hand it's a little

feed in the ego if you do but on the other hand it's also uh there's the network effect of showing your your friends and family that you supported this and maybe they're also going to support it right so if uh if people want to like have this collector's mindset um or just innately do and then they have this clean page where it's like hey show these things where i supported these different artists and you should too and you know it's really tough for digital artists nowadays which i don't think it's talked about enough um then yeah i think there's going to be the tipping everywhere and then there's going to be like a very clean version of like okay you can now own the thing that you you help support too and um if it's done in a in a clean fashion um i think

and once a lot of this other stuff dies out with with the crazy crazy valuations um because there could only be so many firsts which i think is is uh is driving some of it um but i don't i don't think it will die out because there's also the whole money laundering aspect of it too but yeah yeah i think it's here to stay and i think there's some some good that that could be done with it yeah so where i get hung up i've been very vocal about this like nfts particularly for me as a form of digital like i don't get digital art at all and again value subjective obviously there's a market for all this stuff people are throwing a ton of money at it whether or not it's because people want to be first and the novelty of being first and the potential value

creation of of having the things that dropped first um is an investment decision for these people but when you compare digital and physical art the the hurdle that i haven't been able to get over is like physical art like a painting done by an artist the proof of work is there you can see the paint strokes you can see everything there's like a depth to it a physical nature to it um where the the original is obvious that it's original the print is obvious that it's a print where in the digital realm and the only thing separating the original from its copies is that signature and is that signature equivalent to the physical uniqueness of a physical art piece and i don't even know if this framing makes sense or this is a problem that others are having but

how would you describe the digital art being similar to physical art yeah it's like the whole like should this token represent the art thing is is a hang-up for a lot of people and i could i can totally see it um but it's one of these things where like if if uh the artist wants to say that yeah you know if if by calling this token the art it then enables me to to support myself as an artist because you're appreciating the art that's that's quote-unquote tied to the token sure you know there's crazier stuff that's done in the art world um for a lot of people it makes enough sense to to want to to support and dive in um but i get it it's a it's like a little a little bit removed and part of that is because of the bloat that would come with actually trying

to have the full artwork in the blockchain itself, which would muck up the works, right? So there needs to be some sort of workaround and this is kind of it. And if it's from a purely like investment perspective, then it gives more credence to like, this is crazy talk because anyone for $69 million can just have the JPEG.

Uh, but if it's more altruistic, um, and there's, there's someone that is doing something special with the work that wouldn't otherwise necessarily be done. And it's, it's either driving emotion or, or people to do something, um, that they wouldn't otherwise do. And there's some, some reaction from it, good or bad. Um, and that, that means you want to pony up some, some money. Um, yeah, maybe it makes more sense. like for me it sort of hits home like with for instance this this um split payment thing that

i did because there's there's projects uh that i'll do where like i don't like make money from so even though i'm not a digital artist i do i do physical work but there's uh from time to time i'll do projects where like i won't make any money from it but i think it's it's either cool or important to try and show as like a use case um and then i'll be in the hole like a decent amount money and so if there's a way of having something represented uh that it it sort of becomes a construct for patronage that might not otherwise already be there and so if it means having something collectible um there's a marketplace for it uh then it's that it's easier than just like asking for a handout which is something i don't like doing um so it's it's like uh yeah

it's a built-in way of of getting some sort of uh uh return uh for for what some people might might see as doing good yeah yeah but i'm still like digital art how would you describe digital art like is is a meme a digital art piece is like it does it like so and compared to physical art like a big pain, like the Sistine Chapel or something like that, or Menae. It takes like very, like the,

the thing, this dollar United nodes of Bitcoin PC did, that was very painstaking. We're cutting up all this and putting, putting it into this physical art piece, like proof of work in the physical art world versus the digital art world. Like people like million dollars. is like is that is that like uh i don't know now we're getting i mean i'm really getting into like

a philosophical art conversation here but like is art in the digital world the same as the physical world does it have the same value or aesthetic nature or subjective beauty i guess is what we're trying to get to subjective beauty yeah um objective beauty excuse me not even subjective object of beauty really one of these things where it's it's the whole beauty is in the eye of the beholder um because different people um and there's a lot of i i know safety is is speaks to this too and uh like for me like my personal style like if you looked in this room right now i'm like very uh attuned to aesthetics and in design and interior design but i wouldn't go for like the ornate style which which is more proof of work i like uh more like mid-century where it's it is

proof of work in that it shows like the the steel beams and like you can literally see how the thing was constructed but it's not necessarily the same right so these are two very different aesthetics different time periods that speak to the same thing but they're just different with digital art um it's like if if you're a digital artist you might be more attuned to the different types of like filters that are being being used and this this i think like the knowing that you don't know like how it's done i think can be an issue for for some people who aren't doing digital art myself included you know because it's like oh are they taking some shortcuts in certain ways and sometimes you'll see on twitter where there there might be talk of like oh he just did this this tweak to it

and that's how this effect happened um but um i i don't like i like performance art you know i don't think i look at at like what uh the quinn sign guy did is like a form of art and that uh is just very different but also for me is i love it i love all all different types um of stuff um you know some of the activism work that that i way way does to push back with the chinese government and you know where it's it's a it's a different um a different form that maybe it's less time on a canvas um and maybe some of it's quicker than than than other pieces but there's there's a message there's like a strong message and it's not a a strong layering effect with a bunch of different colors coming together but uh the art can be just in the message itself um i i love how

like i don't like spending a ton of time just being like what is art like i'd rather like try and like make it because i got a bunch of ideas and stuff but i love how it questions everything like i've had a couple scenarios where um like i just did this thing down at the well it's been a while now but uh down at the mexican border and like i i have some of the of of the wall and i was trying to bring it back over um for for this project and i got stopped three times and then each time um the the border patrol they look back there and they're like you know this is and then you know and i'm like yeah and then once i was like it's for art they just like let me go right so like it's just sort of this extra thing same thing when i did the the silk road um where

it was made out of drugs uh like when i was researching that i was like am i gonna like catch heat for this if i in doing the research for there's like other artwork that was made out of cocaine and they just like let it slide like because it's art and so it just sort of like falls into this other category where people there's less rules uh there's it pushes boundaries and people can assess it however they want and internalize it however they want um and so digital art for me it's like in i think long term betting against us staring at these rectangles all day isn't a good move um you know i've i have a uh a my significant other does ux related stuff and has worked with some big uh technology companies where they're like already making these walls of screens right

for the home and so um some people won't be into it some will um but having uh the dematerialization that we talk about so much um happen right in front of us and then trying to to think that you know it's it's probably not going to head in that direction with art too is i don't know it's a bloodite thinking yeah i mean i i don't want you said it i don't think it's a lot i i just think it's happening whether we like it or not you know yeah and i i'm one of these people has been uh apprehensive skeptical but it makes a lot of sense like this behind me again it that's what i love about your art you mentioned the silk road piece the uh the what's his real name not satoshi nakamoto but um dorian nakamoto uh piece the how finney with uh cut up credit

cards uh the the billboard campaign that you that you worked on you added a vr aspect to it that was beautiful. Those messages were very concise and powerful. For anybody who's not aware of that, can you explain what you did with the billboard campaign around the country? Yeah. So that was actually going to start off. I'd created the backside of the dollar that's behind you and was just looking... I'd used that to teach people about Bitcoin 101. It was in an exhibit and people just gravitated toward it i saw how you know people like money and um so i would use it to teach and talk about what what nodes were and decentralization and um and so i wanted to do something similar with with the back side um and just go bigger with it and so the idea was

to just have one um kind of nearby the mint in san francisco and then when i thought of all the different messages that can happen and have it be this teachable moment. Well, there's plenty of messages, so why not try to do more? And so then it turned into this bigger project where there was a billboard in each of the Federal Reserve Bank cities. And so the idea was just to get people to head back to social media. So there was an at BTC versus Fed landing thread where they could learn about what's going on with inflation and topics like the Cantillon effect and how our money is broken and Bitcoin can be a way out. And it was right around the time when institutional attention was really at a fever pitch. And so I think we need to get the word

out to all different walks of life. And so these were in working class neighborhoods to try and, like we talked about at the start of the conversation, just sort of distill what's going on down to to something uh that's more jargon free and and um easy to digest so people can can wrap their head around the importance of this thing yeah it was very powerful and the vr aspect was cool too so that's like a form of digital i was like all right this is like the the physical and the digital world interacting with each other well like how you could put your phone up and the some of the billboards would animate correct yeah yeah so um it's it's it's technically ar augmented reality that can be used and or is um so it's it's part of another like

big movement that's happening with this metaverse which um you know i've mixed mixed feelings about that too because we already spend so much time in front of the computer and then to then have i saw you tweet about this at one point too i was like yeah it's uh i think the goal is eventually to not have to be in front of these things and the the whole vr world sort of goes against that um but people people are into it and in especially in times like covid where they're stuck at home whether they like to be or not um it's a it's a way of of interacting with one another and um yeah so people can go in and and see these different galleries and and claim ownership of of real estate and in view artwork and in buy and sell artwork and it's a it's another

big uh movement that's happening right now with with other platforms other chains yeah it's like what is it algor land where you can go in and buy literal real estate like if people are buying up land in outer land thinking that the vr world's gonna have that as their shelling point right yeah in the uh is algor land another one it might be yeah i'm not um i haven't that's crazy there's been iterate like you said earlier um like we were discussing earlier the uh the fact that some people want to get nfts it's like they want to get him first um like being around since like 2013 2014 like i if i have rare pepas from counterparty is that the actual first nft that people are going to want to value more than the crypto kitties or the crypto punks that came

after many years after is that like a sneaky good investment right now getting rare pet based counterparty it actually is very hot right now um it is so uh shout out uh dj skrilla um early bitcoin artists he him and uh theo uh goodman and and others uh joe looney who i know you on the show uh they've been helping push the these telegram auctions um and so it's like these things are going for a pretty pretty penny now man so if you're sitting on some uh i have someone an open dime downstairs right yeah so people are starting to discover it because um you know there's being the whole first is is obviously driving a lot of the value and so people are taking that that claim whether it's truthful or not unfortunately it's they call it greenwashing

when like people just conveniently leave out the pepe's out of the whole so yeah pepe's there's there's projects even uh before pepe's too um but yeah it started with bitcoin and then because of the true decentralized nature of Bitcoin and not having the deep pockets of like a consensus that would fund a lot of these marketplaces. You know, it was, it was guys that were developing on the side of their, their day jobs and didn't get as much traction probably because of it. There's other reasons too, you know, like I personally was like worked on my own stuff because it was more like, there wasn't like the, the theme of having it be like frog related. But, but now there's a lot of attention that is being paid to it because it's surfacing. I think it's Sotheby's

or Christie's is about to auction what is dubbed to be, I believe, the first NFT on Counterparty from 2014. I want to say it's called a monograph. There's probably people yelling at the screen right now, but someone who just kind of got some more shine recently because of all the activity that's happening in the auction space for for early crypto pumps and stuff so finally getting some some due um for really being the pioneers and exploring this stuff uh early on um it's good to see yeah now if you freaks want to learn more about counterparty rare pepe isn't the first iteration of nfts on bitcoin go seek out the episode with joe looney that i did gosh we were still recording at barstool when he came on it had to be early 2018 um it's a fascinating

bitcoin history lesson uh that many don't know about everybody's like oh nfts are new craze like uh bitcoin's missing out because we can't do this it's like well it already has done this um but as you mentioned uh the limitations of the protocol level of bitcoin sort of limited the growth um of of nfts on bitcoin but another interesting rabbit hole we can dive down like considering the nature of the second layers and potentially third later layers and rgb that are being produced on top of bitcoin could we see a shift of nft markets back to bitcoin because again i may not be able to see the value of nfts and i may not be spending money on it who knows maybe maybe my mind will change in the future but there's obviously a market for this and as

bitcoiners what is your opinion should we be trying to bring this market to bitcoin whether it be be a second layer like liquid potentially a third layer like rgb down down the line um what is what is the future of nfts and and bitcoin will be something that is just completely um disregarded um there is interest in it there's a lot of uh negative feedback too um so especially with with counterparty and like doing it on bitcoin you know those guys catch a lot of heat for it clogging up the network and um so but there is interest you know like i get people asking when are you going to do nfts and there's stuff in the works um you know jacomo's doing and others are doing with rgb um also blockstream is soon going to launch a liquid-based nft platform

and so there's going to be options out there which will provide a lot of the same features that i think is really driving this for digital artists which is namely you know the secondary sales and then hopefully some some community comes around it too because That's that's a big component of this, too. You know, if you look not to rehash a lot of the digital art conversation, but you look at where they were prior to this, it's just doing contract work, stuff that they're not excited about. But now they're they're able to kind of let loose and do some what I think is some really cool, cool stuff. And so if they're able to do a lot of the same things on more Bitcoin centric platforms, then I think long term it could make sense because as Bitcoin continues to eat away at various stores of value and the artists want to keep their earnings in Bitcoin, regardless, it seems like it would make sense for them to want to gravitate toward Bitcoin should they want to do the NFT stuff. um you know they're they're already experiencing a lot of the same scaling issues with ethereum

and having to result to other solutions um as a result of the high gas fees um and so yeah i mean if they're if it's out there and it's it's feasible with bitcoin and there's a market for it um you know why not i think um for me the biggest thing is that i that i just hate to see is have Bitcoin artists that need to get by. And so they're going to where the money is. And so they go into a more Ethereum-centric ecosystem because they just need to make ends meet. And so it might change the course of their work, which might be more Bitcoin-focused prior to this. And so if there's different options for them, that would mean having more creative culture closer to Bitcoin. And I think it's good because we need we need to have this and not have just everyone see a lot of the cool imagery happening elsewhere,

because regardless of where you kind of stand in terms of the whole like, does Bitcoin need marketing thing? It's good to have a bunch of different types of people involved with the project. And if it's kind of like what happened with San Francisco, where all the artists had to leave and go elsewhere, I would just hate to have that happen. Right. So we have we have we have artists now that are dedicated. I would like to see that pool grow. And if we can speak to them with different mediums that can let them explore more in whether it's physical or digital, I think it's good. yeah guerrilla marketing is okay this is some great guerrilla marketing behind me it's uh it's powerful and it's very organic right and i would it would be a great shame to see that that's it's like i guess i don't know if we'll be be called a blasphemous maximalist here but

yeah you don't want to drive people away if you don't have to and that's like i guess the point of this discussion is like hey if it can be done on something like a liquid at rgb and it's not clogging the chain but you can get you can get into a debate if they're the spam exist like if somebody wants to use the bitcoin blockchain for something are they not allowed to um who's to decide that but if you can even avoid that conversation um holy by moving it to to second and third layers via liquid and rgb like who cares like right like if if if you can build it and you can do it it doesn't bother anybody else like what's what's the big problem yeah i agree it's i think trying to appeal to everyone is isn't gonna work um and

so there will be strong opposition to it and it's all good everyone everyone can uh can run with what they what they want and and mute what they want and it's you know part of part of this i i just kind of cringe when i see people try and speak for all bitcoiners because to me that totally goes against like the ethos of what this is all about too you know and so um yeah just just let your freak flag fly and if that means supporting uh art in ways where other bitcoiners aren't aren't into it fog it just do uh do you um and if it's not your thing all good too because because uh i think i think by having all these varying takes on as good it just means that ecosystem is growing and we are getting all different types of people in it so it's uh yeah this is this is panning out

how i i would expect it to you know yeah and bitcoin the network actually has no fucking idea how anybody's using it whether it's for money for art so that's something you can take into consideration it's just a an apolitical dumb protocol tell me a little bit more about sphinx dude now that you're how many months in um give me a give me a hot take let's see um let me see hot take i like it more people need to use it so i can tell somebody was listening to an episode of tftc three hours ago on sphinx they were streaming me 10 sets 10 sets a minute listen with uh 10 going to the devs of sphinx chat and podcasting 2.0 i believe um i love it i love there's many aspects of it you can stream sets which is just incredible value for value

being able to get monetized directly from my listeners is incredible uh it's pretty meta that some people listening to me speak these these words right now over the next two minutes we'll be streaming these ads on some apps uh the the community nature of it is a really great aspect to having the tribe on sphinx and being able to interact with the freaks on a day-to-day basis conversations lively in there um which is good um and then listening to podcasts like i listen to my favorite podcasts that are that are linked up to podcasting 2.0 and have tribes on sphinx shut i listen um and try to contribute back to them myself so i can see it like at scale like just to be open and transparent with the freaks that we we joined um sphinx i think in november

or we officially like create our tribe in november maybe i forget exactly what it was but um since then a combination of sats being streamed and and people boosting we've made almost 5.1 million sats which is right now it's like three thousand dollars um subtract all the sats that i've spent listening and boosting other podcasts let's say about 5.5 million sats and we have about 800 freaks in the tribe and i don't know if that many are coming in and interacting or listening to the podcast every episode that way um but considering the small scale of it i mean we've and we've got hundreds of thousands of downloads a month so if you figure only like less than one percent less than a tenth of a percent of um our our monthly viewers are actually using it via this

model it's i think it's a it's a good amount of sats to have accrued over the last six months um and if you think of if that gets to a greater scale and it becomes more commonplace for people to interact with podcasts and support the creators this way it could be a material amount of money um if we get to like a million dollar bitcoin this five million sats would be what like fifty thousand dollars so somewhat of a salary within a six month period could be scalable love it dude a big respect for you and matt and uh also just having this conversation like a lot of a lot of people aren't too into even like brushing the subject of the nft stuff but uh yeah you guys walk the walk it's it's admirable

i mean thank you number one but like if i want to brush this subject i want to brush it with you somebody who's been actually making legit art in the space and you're an artist that i respect i love your your pieces i've got um i don't have any originals yet which bums me out but i've got uh i've got a few of your um your prints um get that free jpeg behind you yeah it's a free jpeg behind me um my office will be littered with crypto graffiti art uh prints and hopefully original pieces at some point in my life um yeah i gotta move out of my my father-in-law's bedroom first and then they can actually uh decorate a studio and do it correct but yeah no i mean that's the other like it was again that thread i posted yesterday morning

i was over like i don't see it yet but there's obviously a market for it you're an artist you're in the space like you know the monetization pass of art yeah better than me so instead of just being an asshole tweeting something he may not know about and figured let's have a con well let's a conversation about it and again if the market is going to develop there obviously seems to be so let's jump into that is the market just like a huge money laundering thing like a lot of the nft stuff could be seen as like money laundering and how would that work which is just not saying that it is i think it's an interesting vehicle um the mechanics of it um so maybe that's something we could touch on right now yeah happy to not be a an expert on that but something that's like

you know the way that is done in the traditional art world which like when i jumped into this i kind of had the option of going like more traditional or down this path which was infinitely more interesting and i was trying to get away from these shenanigans i got like artists in the family and seeing some of the the issues that that they had to deal with with with the more traditional art world so now like seeing some of the downsides of it creeping in is like all right well it's it's here um but yeah man i think it's it's gonna happen it's happened like for for centuries right so it's it's uh kind of unavoidable um i don't know i can't really speak too much on that i think it's i think if uh really the focus is just trying to to to support

and like throw out these these crazy edge cases then um then there's a lot of good stuff in there like and not to like keep rehashing it with the digital artist stuff but like it's this construct like because i don't know you and like a lot of the listeners anyone who's who's like enjoying the art online like are they tipping there's really not like an easy format to do it um and this this is just an easier way to do it and so like the what you hear from a lot of of people with the pushback is oh well they should just like be doing merch but then they're they're doing physical work and some some of these artists just prefer to stay in the digital realm and not have to deal with like the issues with with shipping especially in times of covid

where stuff's been been more difficult and um yeah so it's there's there's just this this new era i think that's that's upon us because the tools are getting better too with with the digital art and the quality of it is is getting better and there's just more people doing it and um so yeah i don't know i'm kind of circling back to what we were talking about earlier but i think i think there's going to be a lot of this uh shenanigan wash trading type stuff and uh in higher valuations and things that mimic the traditional art world um and it's going to be unavoidable but um yeah if the focus is really to just try and and support people that you think are doing good then then that option will be there too yeah how does this change

the future of the art world or content monetization like what does the landscape look like like so let's focus on your dj set and so what you did is you had a lightning url um an ln url qr code that anybody watching via youtube or streaming to their tv could scan and tip right away and so you your set had a bunch of different artists from all over the world and you had it set up where um people would tip you and it gets split um sent to the artist the producer um you can make your split up as as unique as you want to and considering this model is coming to disrupt the traditional uh royalties model if you will like what what does that do like what kind of middleman does that cut out and what does it allow artists and producers to do

moving forward does it really free them up in any regard yeah i think if it can be done like grown kind of like sphinx like from the ground up where it's it's built around some of this tech it it'd have a a lot more impact than like trying to convince like a youtube to to totally change their ad model right um but it could mean uh cutting out middle people and if if the the platforms themselves get a cut um then it can mean getting away from from the ads right um so the producer is maybe there's a vocalist that's in on it uh the dj who kind of an unsexy way of saying it becomes like a referral like marketer in a sense um they they get in on it like initially had thought about it from like a live venue so like like like an audio fingerprinting if you're

in a if you're in a like a concert or a club and you shazam and then you get it and then you can immediately on the spot tip the venue for hosting the whole damn thing and then some of it goes to the dj some of it goes to whoever um so there's different formats that it can take but i do think that it it would it would probably mean someone who's who's in the space that's that's willing to to have a go at doing a more ground-up approach that's really tailored more to it but that if you look at the alternatives and like some of what i was describing earlier with like how these royalties are paid out and in some of the the roadblocks to um getting getting either paid or having your music heard and having to deal with the interstitials and like this random stuff that

that gets in the way of the art it's a no-brainer i do think it's one of these things that we're going to look back on and so part of it was just wanting to to hopefully inspire others like i just got off a call right before this with a a known record label who's interested in it and they it would it would take it would take a concerted effort was and i i don't like it when like you know you rely on like influencer type stuff but it does help in certain situations so if you had like a a recognizable name label that was willing to partake uh and you had some some people on the inside like bitcoiners that are willing to build it out because they can see the the potential impact of it and also it could be profitable you know the royalty spaces is multi-billion dollar

industry um so yeah i think i think it could it could be a pretty big like tectonic shift from the current way of doing things but it would just be a lot of work and so for some of my stuff it just means like throwing it out there and giving like a glimpse of what might be possible and then hoping that others will run with it because i can't like do it myself but been fortunate to like be around long enough to where like if i propose something then i can get some collaborators to like build like a mvp type thing or proof of concept right it feels like the next progression yeah we talk about order of operations a lot but in the in the music industry production has been completely disrupted with the internet age you don't need to spend a

see an amount of money to to rent out a studio anymore a lot of people can just make their art in their in their rooms in their homes and have a pretty good end product distribution similarly soundcloud other ways to distribute your your content even rss feeds um is is disrupting that model i mean chance the rapper um and really paved the way in that as as well as some other artists uh who decide to go independent for production and distribution and now the next stage monetization seems ripe to to finish that stack out correct yeah it does and it's it's hugely important especially like the the genre of music that i like where like the these underground uh electronic music artists aren't aren't making a lot and so like every little percentage point

that can go back to them is like hugely important because if if it can help fund them to really just focus on the music then the purity of their art and their music is is not jeopardized and it's something that has like really taken over like like underground house music started in like gay black clubs in chicago new york and it was just it was it was because these these people weren't allowed to get into to the white clubs and so they they created their own thing where everyone was allowed and they all and it was just pitch black and just the focus was on the music and then if you if you look at it like what it's evolved to now where like you're only going to get booked if you have this big social media following and it's really it's all about c and

b scene and the music is it's it like you're literally like watching the antics of the dj rather than focusing on the music it's it's it's kind of there's a lot of parallels to what's happened with all coins versus versus bitcoin i've tweeted a couple of times or like bitcoin is the underground because it has this this focus and it wants to do one thing and it wants to do it well and i think that's kind of what's happening at least with this the space of music that i follow where there's all this this sideshow stuff that that is distractions and and so if if we can fix the money for them too then they can they can focus more on on the quality rather than have that be beaten away at are you not a big fan of stevie aoki throwing cakes at people

no man not like not just because i'm trying to avoid sugar like it's uh yeah it's so weird that people like openly get on shoulders to get a whole cake thrown in their face there's a bit of a sideshow yeah i mean it's to each their own i don't want to like just poop on what's fun for some people but like it is like i saw these these djs that really produce like good music are like no longer getting booked because they don't have this the social media following and it's no it's no longer about like the music and and uh for people it's one of these where like if you already start out with with money there's a lot of like djs who are like born into the money and so then they they can just buy the following and it's like it

it's sort of uh yeah it takes away from the whole the whole thing and like the roots of it and um you know it goes it does sort of like speak to what you were talking about earlier about like good art being easily recognizable and that's that's kind of kind of uh heard also with like at least with this electronic music space there's there's stuff where it's like okay this is obviously commercial and just meant to to be the background of like poolside at at a party or something that with with people with bottle service versus people that really care about their craft and i think if if the for the people that really do care about their craft if they can have more time like focusing on the music because they they have to worry less about about the money

because there's less middle people involved who who can take away from it for a number of different reasons um you know not just just the money but also the direction of it you know that's that's another big thing like it's the whole trusted third parties or security holes like whenever you involve others with with your art or your music it's they may have some restrictions that they want to put on it and yeah so the more peer-to-peer we can get with this stuff the better yeah it's it's bad time i'm sorry i was typing there because i had to look up his name when david solomon the ceo of uh goldman sachs is booking more dj set sets than an actual artist it's a it's a it's a bad state of of the dj world it is all cloud chasing you better be using that

money gun too or you just like shower people that was that's a weird sign of the times goldman sachs ceo uh moonlights as a dj on the weekends yeah model service there well it's like staying on these like dj sets though like not even dj sets like i'm like you can go to kingston mines in chicago you you wait in that line you pay that 20 fee to get in to go see blues late at night like imagine if it was just like a lightning network invoice and automatically you paid the venue and then you split the sets to the artist for the night too bang bang boom payouts immediately fairly transparently the artist wanted to go audit um the venue make sure they were getting paid they could easily do so yes because collecting that check you always hear the

horror stories with comedians and musicians they got to go back to the room and get the fucking payment and usually it's less and um yeah man that's what led to uncle uh uncle ben parker dying um spider-man went to go collect his check for for wrestling they didn't give him enough money he let them get robbed and the guy who robbed them ran out and shot his uncle oh man bitcoin could have saved uncle ben oh my gosh uh that's it's crazy how it's all gonna get disrupted or it is getting disrupted i mean i'm seeing it right now with podcasting it's still very early days though i guess that's the next question is like not for you but just like for the space in general is when does the public begin using these tools that allow people to

monetize this way like i think i would love for all the freaks to listen to podcasting 2.0 listen to the uh the podcast via podcasting 2.0 platforms and stream sets hopefully we can go next year to a completely ad-free model and do that um that's like one thing that's always in the back of my mind um is when we do that i think are there going to be enough people that come with us um to help us monetize and the best way to do that is make it as easy as possible so in this transitionary period you have to like tell people who don't want to spend sats to like download strike and do it that way it's like how or is it simply like and if you build it they will come type situation where we're just so early right when you saw the drop off with rogan just

from from people just going over yeah i hear you man it's it's it's why like why i think like it or not the whole like leaning on the influencer stuff does does play a part there where like i think like with mastodon you know like if there's like exclusive content that's only happening on on the one platform type of thing um that might help drive it they need there's got to be a little hook um something they're not getting elsewhere that's what like i'm not gonna say it bums me out but it's like ah especially these artists all these music artists pushing nfts like kings of leon doing that i'm like how would you just like do the stream sats model um or try to blow that up right like it'd be great because especially when

you think about royalties and being able to distribute that seems a little bit more clunky would be more clunky selling nfts as opposed to like streaming sats or paying a lightning network enabled paywall that immediately splits the the payment to all the members of the band the producer manager never maybe um a lot of efficiencies to be gained yeah yeah because it seems like a lot like a lot of what's happening uh on the music side with the nfts is like exclusive access type things that aren't really like you know you don't need an nft for um but also still kind of early days like that programmable art type thing i referenced uh that um their async art is the and it's really kind of driving that um they're they're doing it with music too where like the

different layers the different stems can be ownable so maybe like this sort of speaks to this new uh dynamic with collectors and artists where like when you remove the middle people you have like a closer relationship with them right and so like whether it's art or music uh they want like involvement they want access and so if that means like you give them the option for this like one drum pattern versus another one where you know that either one of them is going to be good uh and they get to choose it they may like eat that up right they get they they get ownership over having the ability to choose via this nft that the music is going to ultimately the finished product is going to sound like this that might appeal to some people um but

it is it is like a lot involved versus just like a streaming saz type of model right so it can get uh granular in terms of how how it's approached but it's some of the ways that it's currently being done like i don't there isn't a need for an nft for it's like more straightforward i think king kings of leon may have been this too or did they just sell like a track or what was the i think they sold a whole album's worth of tracks um as i don't know if it was one nft or like a 12 nfts one representing each each track but yeah that's all it was was somebody owns the the latest kings of neon album right right um yeah this dynamic of of wanting to like i have like collectors who i'm like friends with on on twitter and you know this close relationship where

it wouldn't have happened like you know 15 years ago when you have the art dealer in between and and there's uh positives and negatives that come with that but um it's when you are closer and you're dming with these people uh the idea of ownership of stuff um is is easier for the ones that aren't just trying to like flip it and make a buck you know it's like a this more intimate thing where you know stuff about their kids and it's like okay well yeah there's this thing that that you're doing that represents some other work that you did and that you didn't get paid for. Maybe, maybe all, all, all support it. Yeah. It's a, when you take out the middle people in,

in all facets of the process, not just payments, it's, it's, it's making for these different experiences. And I think that's also what's, what's driving some of this is the the idea of being a patron slash collector um is easier if you're like closer to the the art and artist this may be going too far but in some sense you become a collaborator yeah yeah and if and when i say for better for worse it's like because the whole trust third parties are security holes right like i've had some like weird commission requests

and then and then because you're that close it's it's harder to you worry jeopardizing the relationship right but it is yeah the idea of of a patron becoming a collaborator because they're in dms like with ideas too like very frequently and then and it's it's almost like a dj that gets gets requests some are some are great others like well you don't really throw in uh kings of leon after this this is steve aoki makes right yeah yeah yeah i get i mean not that i'm an artist or anything yeah like just recommendations for episodes topics it's like yeah i like curating i like curating it's um yeah it's a fascinating future would you say it's a blank canvas i had to make a nice art pun here i like it it's uh is it exciting time to be

an artist yeah man um it's really like kind of mind-blowing to see all this happen now where just just even just bitcoin just everywhere like oh my gosh it's it's ron paul gif it's happening i just i feel blessed to just be able like i think what like for me it's it's less about the money it's more about just waking up and being able to do whatever i want um and being being unbeholden and i think like you and and matt embody that too like you write and you get up and like what am i going to put in the bin um very much the same like and to uh it's just the best freaking thing in the world like i feel so so fortunate to just like have a concept like all right i'm gonna run with this thing i think i think it's important or i think it's it's gonna

be cool and to just have that freedom and um and to have it go towards a cause that i believe in is just like this magical freaking thing it's so so so awesome so like seeing you guys doing what you're doing and and putting the truth out there um totally respect it and um i yeah i want i want to do the same i want to like feel like my online online persona is the same as offline and like not have to like pull any punches there and just work on what i want to work on and try to move this thing forward because like to me like bitcoin is freedom and bitcoin is truth and so somehow like embodying the protocol in in my work and in life um and having that like like translate is is huge and so yeah so when i see guys like you keeping it real and doing doing it in a similar fashion

it's just awesome it's uh it's un uninhibited and i think what this is all about no thank you and i have to echo your sentiment i feel extremely fortunate to be in this position and be be able to do this as a living it's pretty insane to think about especially considering there's a lot of people out there who are still looking for their passion and stuff like that so i feel completely lucky fortunate and um just to be here doing this and i mean the stuff that you're putting out is is incredible extremely thought-provoking and drives the message home so like i think you're hitting the nail on the head in terms of what you're trying to accomplish with your art i mean again pointing to the piece behind me for anybody listening at home

uh the united nodes of bitcoin uh is indicative of of bitcoin really embodies what this is trying to get out for anybody who's watching on youtube and hasn't seen the back it's uh george washington and uh looks like a jedi like a robe or whatever your garb yeah i'm happy to be uh on this this weird front line of of trying to bring bitcoin to the masses with you i appreciate the work you've done i appreciate you for coming on and having this conversation with me i know bitcoiners hate nfts a lot of them do well that's the thing i think we shouldn't speak for all bitcoiners um there's a very loud contingent of bitcoiners that that hate nfts and don't understand digital art i mean i wouldn't say that i hate nfts um but it's something that

certainly i'm still trying to grasp my head uh around and and really understand the nature of it and how it could catch on or accrue value and i think um i think this conversation definitely opened some some synapse pathways for me in my brain to to understand where you're coming from particularly having this conversation with an artist is um certainly illuminating um so thank you for answering my dumb questions and for making the work that you do where can we find out more about you and what do you got coming up anything you're working on that you want to make the public aware of yeah uh cryptography on all the different socials um two f's one t no one can pronounce it or spell it and that was my fault um coming up i've got a i'm gonna do

like a doc um so if you're coming to miami or just in general if you have a good origin story um everyone tells their like 60 second version at the beginning of the podcast but oftentimes it's just like kind of how you were introduced to bitcoin i want to get the three to five minute version um that dives a little bit deeper like was there something that radicalized you um really what like primed you to be ready for bitcoin when you first heard about it And then if you want to like dovetail that into how you're introduced to it, too, if you have an interesting story, reach out because I want to compile them all. And just that's just it, like just these stories and have there be like one one place to go for people to hear. Because I think they can be motivating just learning different people's perspectives on how they initially got into it and why they got into it.

So, yes, I got that coming up. I'll be doing some recording at the conference in Miami and a couple other art projects, too. um so yeah yeah some just random work um so excited for for things and thanks again for having me morty i feel like a complete asshole cryptography oh dude it's potato potato i don't give a fuck it's i brought this upon myself it was supposed to be this this this fun play on cryptography and graffiti and it's just shooting myself in the foot i will i will be pronouncing it correctly from here on out it's not potato potato you had intention cryptoc graffiti all right thank you appreciate it thank you i will see you in miami hopefully all right that's all we got today freaks peace and love