The Pomp Podcast - #507 Beeple on Becoming The World’s Greatest Digital Artist

Episode Date: March 8, 2021

Beeple is one of the world’s greatest digital artists. He started as a graphic designer and animator, but has seen his digital art NFT grow to become worth millions of dollars per piece.  In this conversation, we discuss digital art, creator tools, NFTs, alternative asset classes, the concept of everydays, physical tokens, his ideation process, and the recent Christie’s auction.  ======================= BlockFi provides financial products for crypto investors. Products include high-yield interest accounts, USD loans, and no fee trading. To start earning today visit: http://www.blockfi.com/Pomp ======================= Remote makes it easy for companies of all sizes to employ global full-time employees and contractors. We take care of international payroll, benefits, taxes and local compliance, so you can focus on growing your business. Learn more about Remote and their new Remote for Startups program at http://www.remote.com. ======================= Choice is a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you are listening to this, you are likely part of the 7.1 million bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not bitcoin. I was in that situation too. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax-advantaged dollars to do it too. Absolute game changer. https://www.retirewithchoice.com/pomp =======================

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Beeple is one of the world's greatest digital artists. He started as a graphic designer and animator, but has seen his digital art NFTs grow to become worth millions of dollars per piece. In this conversation, we discuss digital art, creator tools, NFTs, alternative asset classes, the concept of everydays, physical tokens, his ideation process, and the recent Christie's auction. I really enjoyed this conversation with people, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up

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Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. all right guys bang bang i am super excited i've got people here with me thank you so much for doing this sir hey thanks for having me super appreciate it absolutely all right we've been trying to do this for a while we finally got it scheduled we're finally both here i finally didn't cancel yeah okay it's like we keep kind of playing funny it's like bullshit dude you keep canceling your mother listen we've been talking for a long long time uh and i i really really

wanted to do it but we had one incident come up where i had to reschedule it but we're here now um all right let's start with your background everyone knows you as this amazing digital artist probably the number one digital artist in the world today uh and they're like who the hell is people uh where did you grow up what is your background and how did you get sure so just long story short i'm from wisconsin um and i you know a small town in wisconsin went to school for computer science about halfway through the degree realized i don't want to be a programmer kind of was like okay let me just get through this stuff and like i during that time in college i was spending all my time making weird little like short films and art stuff and this

is back in you know 1999 to 2003 so i'm 39 this was a while ago um and so after i got done with college i got a job doing like web design again this is back in wisconsin um for like a smaller company in in wisconsin there and really sort of putting all my sort of real kind of like energy and passion into like you know the personal work outside of that job um and so three or four years after I started that job, I started the every days. And from there I saw a big sort of, you know, kind of, uh, boost in, in sort of just output of work that I was doing. Um, and, uh, just the amount that I was learning, you know, very, very rapidly. Um, and so, uh, after starting every days, I started also releasing, um, these creative commons sort of like VJ clips, which were

basically custom little VJ clips that abstract sort of like loops that anybody could use for anything. And so from there, I started getting a bunch of like concert visual, like music artists sort of looking for custom concert visuals. And so that was like a huge part of the sort of like freelance work that I did over the last, you know, 10 years or so. And, you know, since then, it's kind of really just been sort of a slow, steady progression and people sort of like noticing my work and sort of um you know uh bigger and better sort of clients coming to me and looking for work um and then obviously fast forward to you know four months ago with the nf came to the the sort of nft and crypto art space and that's when it really just what the fuck is

going on so yeah it's been really pretty slow and steady up until the past uh uh three four months here then it's been a motherfucking rocket ride it's been a rocket all right so let's talk about uh the every days um when did you start this way you've done 5 000 or more of them what was the idea behind doing the every days and how did you get started sure so those started in um may 1st 2007 was the the first every day and i saw an illustrator out of the uk named tom judd who did a sketch a day. And I thought that was a really cool idea. And I wanted to get better at drawing. And so the first every days are actually drawing. I wanted to get better at drawing. So it's like, okay, I'm going to do a drawing every day. And after a year of that, I realized I learned a lot

about drawing. I was still very, very bad as I still am today. Very bad. That's not like I'm actually really bad. And so I thought maybe I could take that and use it to teach myself a 3D program which i didn't know any 3d program um and so i started doing a render every day that's what it's called when you sort of make a program in a 3d program or make a picture in a 3d program um so i started doing a render a day using cinema 4d um and then i kind of just you know again kept doing that for the next 12 years and so the every days are again a picture start to finish every single day i'm not like banking these up um it's about two hours per per day roughly you know it sort of varies wildly depending on what's going on that day um but yeah that's kind of you know

sort of always been the case and it's got to be posted somewhere online before midnight and that's sort of the the kind of boundaries of the where do you come up with the ideas you've got some absolutely epic things you've created you've got some gruesome things some inappropriate things There's some nasty things, some nasty, nasty shit. Where do you come up with the ideas? So it's one of these things where I come up with the idea is a lot of looking at other people's stuff. Like I'm very much inspired by other people's work and sort of looking around and seeing different things. And it might be, you know, a different shape.

It might be like, oh, I never thought of making, you know, a creature like that or, you know, having this sort of scale or this sort of perspective. So it's really pulling from a bunch of different people, sort of a bunch of different digital artists work that that's a big piece of it. That is definitely a huge inspiration. And then I would say the other thing is just like current events. Like I'm very much into, you know, current events and sort of what's going on and inspired by politics and sort of Internet culture and sort of what's going on in the Internet. and um you know financial happenings and and you know the tech companies and their sort of relationship with people so there's a bunch of different sort of things you know themes that that kind of come into play each day but i sort of look at it as being almost like a digital cartoon or a political cartoonist sometimes but instead of you know just doing a sketch i i'm using like

the most advanced 3D tools to make something that, you know, would in the past take, you know, a bunch of time. Now, because the tools are so powerful, I'm able to do it, you know, just in a few hours. Yeah. And so when you think about this, why go from doing like this amazing digital art that obviously you're very, very skilled at to then the NFTs? Was it something that you saw with the technology uh with the market like what caused you to uh want to try the nfts rather than just continue to post the the digital art on instagram and other places well i think with the nfts i mean one it was sort of like okay well people are making a lot of money on this if i'm being totally honest like that is definitely uh it was and they're selling something that i never

even thought you could sell and so it's kind of like oh this actually makes total sense to be able to collect my very digital artwork in a digital way. Because before I would sell prints and stuff like that. And it's sort of like, that's one thing you can kind of, you know, take my work and print it out. But like, my work is digital. And so it's meant to sort of be viewed on a screen. And so being able to sell it and collect it in a digital way, you know, is something that to me is very exciting and something I didn't really see sort of coming. That wasn't really like, oh in the future there will be a way to sort of like you know collect this and have it it be feel very natively digital that that definitely was not on my radar as i don't think it was pretty

much anybody's um so that to me is is very exciting and then just like nfts in general really sort of um like touch on all of the things that i'm interested in it's got the art aspect obviously and a bunch of like crazy possibilities with that um it's got the technology aspect i I feel like I'm finally sort of using my computer science degree here. And it's got the investing sort of aspect of it, which is something I'm also also have been very sort of interested in just in terms of different market dynamics and this and that. So to me, it feels like, you know, the most interesting combination of all the things that I'm like super, super interested in. Yeah. And so you first started looking at the NFTs. What's the first thing that you did? so the first thing is a bunch of people sort of kept sort of uh hitting me up and being like oh

you gotta look at the sanity thing you gotta look at the sanity thing so the first thing i did that i remember and this was in about mid-october um is i i sort of looked at super rare and it was like what the hell like people are paying like huge sums of money for stuff again that i did not think you could sell at all and so the first thing i did was i talked to uh pac who is you know sort of like you know a friend and i saw he was the top selling artist on super rare and i was sort of like what is going on here and so he was nice enough to sort of give me kind of a refresher course of or sort of beginners core you know sort of introduction to the different platforms how the technology works for minting you know why people are paying this much for it um and sort of trying

to understand like you know just a base level what's going on here and from there i just dove like head, head down, just, you know, down the rabbit hole, as they say, and really just started reaching out to anybody, um, I could, who would, you know, jump on a zoom call with me and sort of like explain, uh, you know, where they saw this going, what the limitations were, what people have done, what people haven't, haven't done, um, from the CEOs of all these platforms to collectors to artists in the space to anybody sort of pushing in some direction i i jumped on a call with and like you know sort of picked their brain got it and so when you think about the technology stack right now maybe walk through people uh how you create the digital art right you talked a little

bit about kind of the cinema 4d uh and the rendering but then also what the different platforms are that you're using to actually mint this stuff and kind of your experience with the various platforms in terms of either auctions uh open sales or limited editions sure so in terms of making the art yeah like you said it's it's done in cinema 4d primarily um the renderer that i use is octane uh otoy makes that and they also have a render thing where you can sort of render it in the cloud um and they have a token for that as well um so that's the tools that is used to sort of make the artwork along with Photoshop, I usually do some sort of paint over at the end to kind of, you know, some compositing. So from there, I have the every days are done and, you

know, kind of ready to be minted. In my case, I sort of take those every days then and then have sort of make them into videos that kind of sort of loop through and show the picture in a bit more detail and add a bit more information um and then from there you know i honestly have only sort of done two drops through and they've both been through nifty gateway so i i've done actually three now counting the makers one um but so in those cases in all those cases it's sort of you know it's one of these things where you kind of okay here's the artwork you give it to them and make you know have sort of handled that um you know with places like wearable obviously you can sort of do it yourself but it's really one of these things where you upload the artwork you

say the description you pay the gas fee and she's on the blockchain so it's not a super huge lift to kind of get it up there but um you know each of the platforms obviously has their own uh you know sort of drawbacks and and strengths and weaknesses the one thing i will say is i'm pushing all of these motherfuckers to get fucking accept credit cards, because I really strongly feel that, you know, making this as easy as possible to bring in new users is going to be key. And the people who do that the best are the people who are going to have, you know, the most success moving forward. Absolutely. And so when you think about the different ways you could sell your art, right, there are the limited editions, the open editions, and then also these

kind of auction-based drops are there pros and cons in your mind to each one of those or do you prefer one over the other there's absolutely pros and cons and i think it it sort of it it changes too over time um so there's there's and that's another sort of piece of this that to me is very exciting is because you i have all this work i have a bunch of different work um and i'm making it, you know, literally daily, making more and more of it. But the way you sort of split it up can make a big difference for how much it sort of sells for it. And it will make a big difference, you know, long term in terms of your career in terms of scarcity and a bunch of different things. So that to me is something that I really think a lot about and things like the dollar edition of

100s, you know, trying to do things that people have never done before. That's another piece of this that, you know, is very exciting to me, looking at sort of, okay, what have people done in the past? Okay, I'm gonna try and do something different that nobody's ever seen. That's, you know, sort of structured like that. And so that is something that, you know, really, there's no right answer. It sort of depends on how much artwork you have, how much you want to put out at that time. But I will say that the things that I'm very much thinking about with that is, one how can i keep some level of scarcity and two how can i return as much value um back to collectors immediately as possible um and so that's one thing i i you know i see people doing

massive open editions and i think that's great you're smashing on a lot of numbers but when you have a massive open edition and you know seven eight minutes whatever at the end of that everybody who wanted one got one and so there's not really that much scarcity left over so that that's one thing i would definitely sort of take into account is if everybody who got wanted one got one you know secondary sales and stuff like that you you've sort of removed some of that piece of the pie from from sort of collectors being able to immediately sort of see some level of return on what they just bought. So I'm very much trying to make it so that my work is like, like a no brainer. Like, it's like, okay, if I buy this thing, I know it's instantly like worth more

than he's selling it for. So that's what I'm always sort of trying to do when I when I price things. And when I think about how many additions to put out. Got it. And so when you think through this, why is the NFT market taking off so much? Is this just a bubble? Is it unsustainable? But like, what's your analysis as to why there's so much interest and so much demand right now in this market specifically? I think there's a couple of things. I think there is definitely a lot of hype. I think there's no way to not be like, okay, there's people are, people are going of shit. So I'm not, you know, so naive to think that that's not a piece of it. Yet at the same time, and so I think there's this thing where it's kind of, it may be a bubble, but it's sort

of one of these things where I also see a huge amount of legitimate long term value for this, this is an asset class and i think we've only scratched the surface of um different mechanics for how these can work um different utility use cases because a lot of the utility use cases you know could be dependent on things that happen in the real world and right now the real world's kind of you know everything's got a big asterisk around it because of covid so we really haven't even been able to see a lot of these utility use cases really sort of um you know played out um i look at people who are sort of like oh you know this you know if you buy this nft it gets you some backstage you know concert well those concerts aren't able to like happen yet so we haven't really even seen

that kind of play out um but i think there are just so many uses for this stuff and i think it's such an interesting new um you know way to to sort of store value that i think you know people are seeing that and i think sort of long-term like macro high level looking at this as an asset class i think this could be something that really sort of appeals to um you know younger sort of uh investors. And I think there's nothing really written in stone that investors, you know, right now, for the last 50 so years or whatever, the predominant way that people sort of invested was like equities. And nothing that says that has to just keep going forever. And I think a lot of younger investors that kind of hate corporations, they really don't like companies. And so to think

that they're automatically just going to invest their money in companies moving forward like i don't know that i would that's not set in stone like they could look at other things that speak more to them in terms of asset classes and i think nfts could be a huge huge um you know piece of that moving forward that they would rather invest in in something that you know they have a bit more ownership over um and they can sort of do what they want with a little more and they identify with more than sort of okay i grew up let me put my money in ge and ibm and all this fucking shit that i don't give a fuck about or like this doesn't speak to me and it um you know it isn't really something i want to support in some ways so i think that well there is a lot of hype right

now i think um it also feels like we're we're still very much at the beginning of this so when When you think through kind of what's working, what's not working, are there specific things, whether it's in kind of your formula for success or other things you've seen in the market where you're like, this is definitely kind of a winning strategy from the artist's perspective? That's a good question. I really think there's a lot of different like things. And obviously, like, you know, it's not just me who's seeing a tremendous amount of sort of you know growth and success in this space so i think there's a lot of things that that people

are trying that are are you know working quite well um and i i don't think there's one sort of like this is the path and i think um you know it's evolving very quickly too i i look at like the hash mass thing and like that you know had like a massive you know sort of moment and then And I think you're going to see a bunch of generative sort of projects happen from that. I think there's just a bunch of different mechanics that people have not tried yet, too, with the smart contracts and making these sort of gamifying the ownership experience a bit more of the collecting experience. So I think that's something that, you know, there's still a huge amount of potential there. um but yeah i think that that to me is it's sort of the fun part of this is it feels like we're at the beginning and we're writing the rules and so i i don't think there's necessarily one like this

is what you should do at least this kind of this and also because each artist is different like i have 5 000 you know pieces that i spent two or three hours on and some people have like oh here's you know i've got five pieces of work that i've done but i spent two years on each one of them you know, how do I sort of split that up? So I think there's really a bunch of different, you know, paths to success with this stuff. What did you sell your first piece for as an NFT? You remember? So the first drop that I had was in October. And I had sort of three pieces, two videos, and then the addition of 100 for $1. And so the two videos, one of them sort of uh, changed based on the election. It had sort of an initial state and then it was going to

change. And this was again, uh, about five days before the election. Um, so if Biden won, it was going to change the one video. And if Trump won, it was going to change to a different video. So it obviously ended up changing to the Biden video and that's kind of how it will stay from now on. Um, so that piece, those, both of those pieces, then I did another piece, um, you know, with that for auction. And both of those pieces went for $66,000 to Pablo. You sold them for $66,000, but you also did a drop of $1 for the other pieces. Yeah. So those were $1 and it was an addition of $100. And so obviously those sold instantly. And then people can sort of flip those immediately right through sort of nifty. This was done on

Nifty Gateway. And so people can immediately flip those. And so my thinking with that was, okay i know they're worth more than a dollar but i i figured maybe they'd be worth like a hundred dollars and so immediately within 45 minutes somebody had flipped the flip one for about a thousand dollars and it was like oh my god like somebody sold that for a thousand dollars that's crazy and then by the end of the night somebody had sold one for six thousand dollars and it was like what the hell like that is you know was just absolutely insane to me fast forward now you can't get one of those for less than $150,000. One went for $300,000. Like it is like insane. Again, those were a dollar in October. So when you think through going from selling $1 pieces

to one of your pieces just sold for $6.6 million. Yes. One of those 66,000 pieces went for 66,000. you know trump in all his glory with no clothes on laying in the uh yeah i'm gonna get straight up fucking murdered by one of these q anon morons what happened why didn't it go for so much who bought it why like what is going on with a 6.6 million dollar nft well i think like it's one of these things where the whole space is like you know i'm going crazy like this is not sort of happening in a vacuum and I think people are are sort of seeing again obviously the Christie sale was a huge impact of that and people are sort of um you know seeing that that this could be a massive massive um you know kind of thing and me being one of the like you know most popular

artists in the space I think they're sort of attaching premiums to that but there's also been different things that have kind of shown the price sort of there's been different sort of metrics i think the 6.6 if you're looking at an addition of 100 and those are going for 150 000 each then you can take the fully diluted value of those 100 and it's like okay well that's like you know 10 million dollars for that piece of artwork or whatever 15 million dollars and so So looking at that in the context of that, you're like, oh, okay, I guess 6.6 is not just out of nowhere. And then if you factor in like the B20 token, which is this whole other, like, you know, I don't know if you want to get into that, but that's a whole other sort of thing that also right now is about $100 million divided by 20 pieces. There you kind of, you know, are coming to a similar number. Explain what that is for everyone. so the b20 is uh kind of a a long story you kind of need to know about about defy to some degree

but i'll try and sum it up you know kind of quickly here but so basically what it is is um in my second drop the i did like a 2020 collection and part of that drop i did 20 individual one of one um pieces and so what happened is um somebody bought all 20 of those pieces kind of sort of secretly throughout the weekend and kind of you know sort of tricked everybody and ended up getting all of those pieces and uh he did that for a very specific reason because he then took those 20 pieces and built virtual museums for them in somnium space and the central land and a few other places built virtual museums bought land they had museums built specifically for those 20 pieces then he took and bundled that all together into a smart contract locked it into a smart

contract and fractionalized that into 10 million shares so the amount with the the pieces that he bought which was about 2.2 million dollars and the land all said and done he spent about 3.5 million dollars and as of right now that b20 and then he split it into 10 million um 10 million uh uh you know sort of fractions and made a token out of it and so right now that token is valued at 91 million dollars if you take the like thing and this was one month that he did this ago he did this june january 23rd and so it's been on sale a little over a month five weeks or so and is now worth $91 million from that initial $3.5 million. So, um, yeah, it's very like, it's great. It's securitization. It's virtual worlds. It's digital art. It's all this wrapped

up is what is why some people are so excited about this. Uh, but then you, you, you weren't satisfied, right? You're literally the best digital artist in the world. And then you said, I'm going to go take on the man. I'm going to go, uh, get in bed with the incumbent. And you went did this Christie's auction what did you do why did you do it and how did it work sure so the the Christie's auction came through maker's place actually they were the ones who sort of like brokered that deal and sort of like organized that then they reached out to me and were sort of like you know we we want kind of uh sort of the leading person in the space to kind of you know represent this and be the first and so I was super honored um and I look at it as as sort of uh recognition

And the reason I wanted to do it, um, is because I think obviously this, this, there's some validation from, you know, selling something on Nifty Gateway, but I think there's a different level of validation from selling something, you know, a digital piece of artwork, um, that has no physical component, um, through a 255 year old auction house, um, that is selling you know rembrandts and you know warhols and you know two years ago they sold a you know leonardo da vinci painting and just crazy shit like very much obviously a historical uh you know something that is is very much part of art history over you know centuries um and so i think that brings a different level of validation and something that um i think will will really

helped boost the entire space and to be quite honest i think it already has helped boost the entire space just since that's been announced you've seen a fairly marked uptick in in like you know other nifty gateway sales and and you know across the board sort of interest in this stuff what are what is the auction like how does it exactly work yeah so the auction is it started on um thursday of last week and it goes until march 11th um 11th or 12th i think 11th um and so it's like a 17 day auction or whatever it's on christy's you know website you need to be sort of vetted by them um and so the the piece that i'm sort of auctioning is kind of all 5 000 of the first uh every day's the first 5 000 days of every day's in sort of one giant mosaic image

um if you look at the very upper left hand corner you see the very first every day and the bottom right hand corner you see the 5000th every day which was just last month um and so it's one jpeg one massive massive jpeg that encompasses all of those images so i mean it's something you could literally look at for hours upon hours upon hours and never like really sort of be able to kind of see everything guess what it goes for what do you think the winning bid is not guessing bro not guessing a lot of people are trying to get me to guess i'm not guessing what do you think what is it at right now we've got three right now three million yep 50 okay so here's a little context if it goes for more than 20 it will be in the top 10

highest uh um sort of highest uh grossing or whatever highest sold artworks by a living artist ever if it goes for 20 it will be in the top 10 ever like most expensive artworks by a living artist so we're getting into some whack 50 motherfucker we're getting into some wacky numbers here um so it is very yeah listen why can't it go for 50 i'm not stopping it i'm not gonna stop it from going for 50 it's just like hearing that and and to be quite honest you're not the first bird who says that i was doing it like right before it opened i was doing a clubhouse with um cz from buying binance and he kept you a hundred million hundred million like right at the end of their like clubhouse he's like okay great it's gonna go for 100 million buy it's just like

jesus christ no cz he's rich he can buy it for 100 million what the fuck is going on but at the same time like i look at it and it's like that sounds crazy but it's like i don't know i also see like just so much potential and i just feel like this could be a really like just not not just art like this really truly could be even if if nfts captured a tiny fraction just like with bitcoin even if they captured a tiny fraction of the traditional sort of like equity market you're talking about literally a hundred if not a thousand times from where we are now in terms of total market cap i mean the total market cap of nfts is maybe 250 million or something like that like it is that is a drop in the bucket of what it could be

talk to me about uh the physical tokens um before we talk about kind of the investment case the physical tokens uh that you created this is i think you're the first and only person to have done this so far uh for those that are just listening and not watching mike just got up and walked away now he's back now okay i'm back now all right so this physical token is yeah so these are the, the, you know, sort of physical tokens that were sold with the last drop. And this is something that I think is, is to me really interesting and something that I'm excited to sort of explore more, because I think this is something that for a lot of people can be a great sort of entryway into this stuff, because it's one of these things where it's like, what the fuck,

why the fuck would I buy a JPEG? What the fuck is this stuff? It's like, okay, you don't really need a, you don't even, let's just take all those arguments off the table. What am I buying? You're buying this thing okay that's it i get it like it's one of these for those people who are just listening basically it is uh maybe a one foot by one foot uh give or take uh almost looks like plexiglass but inside of the place yeah it's sort of like it's like a it's kind of like uh looks like sort of a um like a kindle fire type thing you know encased in acrylic um and so it's it really just keeps looping through the video it's a video screen and it sort of keeps looping through it and it's something that you can just put on your put on your bookshelf and you know plug it

in it just keeps playing there's no interface there's no buttons there's no turning it off changing the video um it's got a signed uh this one's not signed or whatever but it's got a signed number titanium backplate so that it shows you know your edition number um and then it's also the video itself has a QR code. And what that QR code does is if you scan that, it goes to peoplecollect.com that has, you know, additional information about this artwork and immediately shows who owns the artwork and immediately shows how the artwork was made. And it's just something to sort of like a community to kind of tie the sort of, you know, collectors together, people who like own this stuff and so you know i i wanted to do something because the people have

done sort of physical um you know sort of things in the past tying nfts with these but it always seemed very you know sort of separate like okay you get a print with it well which is worth more the print or you know the nft and i wanted it to be something where they were very sort of tied together and they felt like one cohesive um very digital product um that that you wouldn't really sort of think of separating so along with that we we did wanted to do some really like cool packaging and something that would really sort of you know get people excited about you know getting this stuff and so we did these um you know boxes that that really tried to put like a bunch of sort of like time and energy and into making something that

would be really fun and like exciting for people to, to unbox. So what's in the box? What's up? What are the things in, uh, in the box? So the box has, you know, obviously it has the frame and then it has, uh, another certificate that sort of, you know, has the token ID and has some, some extra sort of like details there. It's got a cleaning cloth and then it also has a hair sample. What is the hair sample? it's not pubes a lot of people are saying it's pubes it specifically says there it's not pubes

so i'm just gonna why is there why did you put a hair sample in the everyday box um so the reason is my has gotten up and left again hold on my name my name um people actually comes from this toy from the 80s that you sort of cover its eyes is it not doing it now you cover its eyes and it beeps okay now it doesn't want to be but it's it um this is actually a people like this is what i named after this is what i named myself as a designer after you know 20 years ago or whatever and so that's this is what the hair is from it's not goddamn pubes you freaking perverts so this is its hair shaved off of this like you know for people listening to this like it's like an ewok looking uh little sort of toy um that you can get off of ebay for like 20 bucks they're not

really that like you know i love it but that's that's a people and so that's what the hair is all right so when you think about all of this uh you started out you know whatever 20 years ago uh trying to figure out how to be an artist how to use a lot of these technologies and you've now kind of grinded your way to the number one digital artist in the world. What's changed? Like, did you go and buy a private jet? Did you order a bunch of dominoes?

You know, what's changed about your life? Honestly, nothing, because it's sort of like, I really still like see a huge amount of room for improvement, you know, each day. I think the pictures could be much better. and um you know i think there's a bunch of different areas in that that i think would be better from color composition form i mean really i think there's quite a lot of room for improvement so that that's something that really sort of keeps me going and now i i think bringing

in the the physical aspect that is something that i'm super super excited about to start exploring and something that, you know, as a digital artist, I never really thought of. And I think it's ironic that as a digital artist, this NFT technology pushed me into making physical art. And I think it's really going to do the opposite for the other side. I think it's going to take physical artists and they're going to look at this and be like, OK, how can I make my work more digital? And so I think you're really going to see this massive explosion of creativity from

both sides sort of pushing you know the the technology in different ways and i'm you know super super excited to sort of be a part of that and i think it's also going to be um you know i think this technology is going to open up a new chapter in art history and sort of uh i think there there's going to be people sort of going back and looking at this digital art that's been made over the last 20 years and sort of really recognizing that as a true art form and something that you can now collect absolutely uh when you think of this as an investment class kind of like an alternative asset you got a bunch of thoughts there is this something that sustainable you know institutional investors eventually have a digital art allocation how does that work

i think it would i absolutely think it will be i think um again i think it's it's one of these things where i think collectibles in in general um and art in general art does pretty well like blue chip if you look at the like higher end you know art year over year returns on stuff it does quite well versus versus other asset classes so i think it's something where um right now there's a lot of speculation it is very speculative and i think one thing that people do need to be careful of on this is to be quite honest a lot of these nfts will go to zero like that's just if you look at like uh traditionally art the very top appreciates quite well and the the bottom 90 like they do not do well and they will will probably lose money so

it is something that you know just because somebody made an nft out of something doesn't mean it automatically has value like that's that's definitely not the case anybody can sort of make an nft out of anything that there's no promise just because oh it's an nft like it just magically has any value um so it's definitely something where i i would look at at people who have you know sort of been around a while and sort of uh you know that it's not just getting caught in the hype of of you know the shiny new thing um so i think it's it's something that you know looking at like that the the b20 thing it's sort of like this guy bought these nfts and then he was able to sort of use them to do this other thing to actually make more money so you really have a

high degree of ownership over these things versus if you have a stock it's sort of like well you know you that's it like you kind of you don't have a bunch of like you know things you can kind of do on top of that to to do do what you want with it and and as we're seeing with like the GameStop thing is even the rules that you thought you had about owning that stock can change on a dime and And so that's another thing that I think people are going to look at with this as an asset class and be like, maybe that, you know, could be something that could be, you know, an actual store of value in some respects. What do you think about your portfolio? Is it all crypto? Is it all digital art? Is it in traditional? Like a bunch of people were asking online just in terms of how you think about investing and allocating your own portfolio. it so i'm honestly quite new to crypto and like again like i before this i had bought

a little bit of ethereum in 2017 just like everybody in their freaking grandma did and saw it go up saw it go down never really thought about it just you know of just a small amount to kind of you know jump in the game a little bit here um since i've come to this space i definitely started allocating much more of my, and I understand crypto now, and I understand the value proposition of both Bitcoin and Ethereum much better now. Now I've allocated a much bigger proportion. So now it's about 33% of my portfolio is, you know, currently portfolio is sort of allocated to like crypto. The rest is mostly in traditional sort of like stocks. And like, to be quite honest i'm not that uh you know sort of aggressive as a investor i'm very much sort of

like set it and forget it and sort of you know something that will just grow incrementally over time um and so most of that stuff is regular equities and mostly like tech stocks and some uh etfs and stuff do you buy um art from other artists or do you basically say look my exposure to art is through my own work and um and then you just kind of cheer them on from the sideline i have not bought any other art to be honest i actually don't think i've bought a single nft and i think it's one of these things where i just don't have this like i've been so busy like sort of uh you know building my own stuff that it is i haven't had like a chance to sort of like dive in from like a collecting aspect to to sort of you know start start investing in this

stuff um so it's one of those things where i also kind of feel like i don't know like i feel like there's so many i have so many friends creating stuff like i i feel like once i open that i'm a little hesitant to open that can of worms it's like well why didn't you buy my thing why didn't you buy my thing because i have a million friends creating digital art that it's sort of like i can't i can literally you know wouldn't be able to sort of buy all the amazing stuff out there so it's definitely, you know, I think it's, it's, it's super cool, but it's something I still need to process how I'm going to sort of like me personally, you know, I'm going to approach that. All right. I've got five questions for you. We're going to run through these before

lightning round. What do you consider your biggest personal achievement? uh the christy stick oh all right that's great it's ongoing it's live let's roll okay i don't know we were quick second uh question is what is the one artist that you would most like to collaborate uh apex to air oh that's a great suggestion third question what is the most important book that you've ever written? The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. That is a book that I would say probably I never read books. I almost never in the last 20 years, I've maybe read two to three books. So I just don't read books. I like reading the news. I like reading. I just don't like reading books. That book was very sort of like inspirational and something that I think

was I read it right when I started the everydays around there. So I think that was a big, big sort of part of that. All right. Next question comes from our friends over at Eight Sleep. I got to imagine you're like me. Last year, I've slept very, very little before the pandemic hit, like five, six hours was horrible. I got myself an eight sleep, which is this like thermoregulated bed. I turn it real cold sleep on it like a baby. Now I get nine hours like a new man what's your sleep schedule and how has it changed um yeah it honestly is not it's very a bit all over the place because i'll wake up after like three hours and it's like i've got a million ideas nfts what the fuck like what's going on like it's it's such a freaking crazy

rabbit hole that i maybe i need to get one of those whatever that's how they're called Eight sleep, eight sleep mattress, better art with eight sleep. That's what, that's what I'm going to start telling people. I'm going to say people makes better art when he sleeps on an eight sleep. All right. Last question. Very important question. Then you get to ask me one to finish this up. Alien. Are you a believer or a non-believer in aliens? Yes. Probably there's probably some sort. I mean,

i don't think there's aliens that we've seen but i think there's probably aliens out there i don't know i would say yes ish yes what is your question what do you think i think there's aliens but they're too far away so we're never going to actually come in contact with them during your my life so it doesn't really matter that's probably what i would say as well that is probably what i would say like existence and communication are two really big different things yeah you could be on the other side of the universe that's kind of like cool yeah don't come over here we won't come over there and we'll all be good we're pretty far away we could be pretty far away from the next verse all right you could ask me one question

what do you got for me um what technology in the crypto space are you most excited about i'm going to bid 50 million dollars on this people piece at christy's okay good answer good motherfucking answer okay i like it that's a wrap we're out no you heard him you heard him he's fucking committed 50 million dollars you owe me 50 million dollars now no somebody's gonna cc is gonna bid 51 million so the bag's his uh what uh where can we send people to find you on social media find the everydays online and find more of the work you're doing with the nfts um i think if you just google people you'll find you know instagram and all the other goodness there so there's no shortage of places to you know

you've arrived when you just tell people google me yeah except i still don't have a goddamn wikipedia fucking page if anybody can uh give me a wikipedia page watching this there there's your homework assignment get with people a wikipedia page all right people wants a wikipedia page that means if you downloaded the podcast or the video you listened all the way to the end and you have the ability to create a wikipedia page if you hook people up with it and tweet at us he'll probably do nothing other than say thank you he'll do a lot more and say thank you but yes awesome man listen thank you so much for doing this you're absolutely killing it it's so fun to watch And we'll talk soon.

Awesome.