EXCLUSIVE: A Guide to Collecting Digital Art ft. Batsoupyum

31:09But the key there is you pay the gallery as 50%. Here, you are having a lot of the work done for you. That's what a network is. That's what the fundamental difference between a network and a non-network piece of art is that the work is being done for you across the medium. so I can go to Twitter and see how many views this latest X copy had. See, you can read all the comments about it. You get real-time feedback on whether or not people like it. Now, whether or not the masses are correct or not, you know, they're wrong a lot, and I'm certainly wrong a lot, is less relevant than the fact that it is a part of the network now, and the masses can see it in real time.

31:52Unlike an oil painting, for example, that gets sent to a gallery. Yeah, the gallerists can put it online. The gallerists can put it in their magazine and so on and so forth. But the number of people who are going to see that and care is a fraction of what you have here. So what you have here is, you know, 6529, who's a colleague of mine, and I talk about this a lot. Samantha in Tennessee, who loves butterflies and has been doing a butterfly photography collection her entire life can literally put that as an nft collection put it online and people who are super into butterfly photography can find her almost instantaneously that is literally impossible to do in a traditional art world um it takes months takes years to build up that kind of following we do see it with culturally relevant artists that are at the apex of culture so warhol dali damien hearse great examples because they produced um a pyramid structure of work with the expensive one-of-ones down to broader whether it's prints or signed that was done by a factory essentially they all had a factory of people doing this stuff and what happened was it became mainly in person so the in-person people would go to the factory see the art talk about it both to their friends It networked through society really well.

33:13And then it became part of pop culture. And the music bands were there and the Stones were hanging out and the Bowie was hanging out and all of that. And then it got onto TV. So they they use the medium at the time pretty well, but not that many people did. There's literally a handful of artists that use that network model. And they're still the most successful artists of the period. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think Damien Hirst is a particularly good example because he's actually, as you mentioned, done a digital art drop, an NFT drop. And we can talk about that in a second. But I think the really interesting thing that you just said is sort of like it's Warhol on steroids, right?

33:53You are taking digital culture and spreading it far and wide from the get-go. Now, that implies a couple things. Number one, everyone here can do that. So super competitive. I mean, just because you have ability to network your art doesn't mean it's going to become a successful part of the network because you're just the competition is fierce. And we're still only in the top of the first inning on this. Right. So it just keeps getting more and more competitive by the day. The second thing is implies, which is super counterintuitive to a lot of people and myself. I will include myself in this early on.

34:27You want your art in as many hands as humanly possible. You want as much of your art out there to as many people. I encourage artists to do free, you know, edition drops once in a while just to get it out there because the value of the network increases exponentially. The more nodes in the network. It's Metcalfor. Exactly. A node in this instance is a person. It is a collector. I just, there's a really interesting artist slash business person in this space. His name is OSF. And I recently had a conversation with him. Ovi's here all the time on Real Vision. He's here every week. He's fantastic.

35:03He's like one of the smartest people in the space. I hope he's not listening because I don't want him to get a big head, but I absolutely love him. And he's an artist, but he's created this drink brand called Rekt, Rekt Drinks. And the interesting thing about Rekt Drinks is it's a Web3 native. It started in Web3 and it moved outward. And he really gets this idea, which is get Rekt Token. He has a token. He has an NFT. And then he has the physical drinks, among other things in the ecosystem. them. Get these things in as many people as possible because those people then become your evangelists. That's the point of a network.

35:35That's the fundamental difference. If I could sum it up, you know, simply that is the difference between networked art and non-networked art is that these people become your biggest fans and become your evangelists. There's a phenomenal essay. I'm sure you're familiar with it by a gentleman named Kevin Kelly. Thousand True Fans. Yeah. And Chris Dixon adapted it to Web3 a few years after that, which is also just a phenomenal essay. And the fundamental thesis of that essay is you find your 1000 true fans and they become your evangelists. They do the distribution work for you. They become your Larry Gagosian.

36:13They become your, you know, name your top five gallerists out there, right? I mean, they become the people who are championing this for you. One of the difficult things is, okay, fine, so you say get as much art out there as possible, but you need to be careful not to just keep diluting the same holders, right? The game is actually to broaden the number of holders as opposed to just keeping dumping you art on the same holder base. Absolutely. And there is the balance and the tricky position. You can see a lot of artists on Twitter, on X now, struggling to get exposure or attention to broaden their social network, their social graph.

36:54Yeah. And I think everybody will have a slightly different view of this. My view of this is that there are multiple ways to distribute in this network. The smallest way is at the top, which is a one of one. There's only one. It's very unique. It's highly rare. the next smallest way would be like a one of five and what we call an addition and that could be five identical pieces or it could be five pieces that kind of all are in under the same theme and then you can just grow it from there where you have a one of one thousand with a thousand identical pieces identical pieces we do um at you know i work with six five two nine group right now which i should have mentioned earlier you know we do something called the memes every week we drop three different artists and each meme drop has roughly 300 identical additions to it.

37:43At a minute, you know, forgetting all the things that you can do with one of those cards, it is a piece of art that is one of 300. There are 300 new collectors typically, you know, there's probably some existing collectors in there, but for every single artist there, there's 300 brand new collectors. Those people are now a part of your network. They're one of your evangelist. So I get that the supply concern is there that you have to be careful and manage your supply. I would just say that as a counterpoint, supply matters, but it depends on what kind of supply. Is it one of one supply? Do you have 2 ,000 one of ones out there?

38:21Or do you have 100 one of ones out there and 10 ,000 additions? That's a much different type of supply than having, you know, the former versus the latter. So I think there's, you know, some thought to be put in there. But my view on this is that you cannot get enough additions into enough of collectors hands in this space. It costs very little to produce. And I realized most artists cringe at the thought of giving their art away. But that's, that's how you increase your network. That's the value of what you're doing here. That's the network. The two most famous examples of different ways of using network effects.

38:57I think the the god of doing it has been x copy which is astonishing multi-layering of the impossible to buy one of ones this massive competition for the one of tens that people that social consensus has deemed to be the ones yeah and i'm not even sure he did this on purpose but i agree please continue this is a fascinating conversation but then over time i think he's understood because then he's produced these larger series these super large series and now he works within that framework quite clearly and then he can experiment with different types of art because his social graph is so big that it allows him freedom to to do different things because a lot of people don't get that freedom because their collector base is too small it's been astonishing to watch and then it's been astonishing to watch things like one of ones basically don't trade anymore correct yes really basically don't trade so the next one trades will be like 10 bucks and then the next one will be 20 bucks it's almost impossible and so what we're seeing is like these one of tens which i think is super powerful this is jedi wolf's idea is that if you've got a one of ten that is a desirable from a desirable artist we will all fight over them because you have a one in ten chance of getting one out of somebody's hands absolutely and so they actually become super desirable.

40:18And because people talk about them because you've got 10 times the multiple of people talking about it. And I think that this took me a while as well to get my head around. Like, I mean, I think the one of 10, the most famous one of 10 series in this space is called Last Selfie by XCopy. Which I've got. And have you got one as well? Yes, I know, I know. I don't. So I know. Thanks for rubbing it in. I appreciate that. So that's probably the most famous one of 10. And the interesting thing about many of these editions is from a financial perspective, if you add up the market cap value of the edition and you compare it to an average to above average one of one, the market cap of the editions, not even just for XCopy, for quite a few artists, tends to be higher.

41:00And that has persisted over bull markets, bear markets. I mean, again, I've been here about five, six years and I see it all the time. And it always confused me. I always thought this doesn't make any sense. It's your Metcalfe's Law multiplier that's working. Exactly. That's exactly what it is. And it took me a little while to understand that, but that's what's going on. It's what you just said. There's a food fight over the best editions and it becomes a Metcalf multiplier. You have a 10 node network of a highly, highly sought after piece and people are willing to pay a premium for it because it's so well networked.

41:34Because if you think about it, for the one of ones, there's Cos and 6529. And that's about it that actually even displays them and talks about owning them. Yeah. I mean, of the 50, whatever, 57 or whatever one of ones of X copy, literally, they never get shown. They never get talked about. You never see them. They never change hands. I think he talks about them more than we do, actually. I know. I agree with you. It's kind of a shame because the whole space misses the joy of these things. You know, at least Cos has kind of made his character around them because he was such a big collector in the 6529 collection as well.

42:11It's just like, it's a shame we don't see more of them. So the whole game gets played out in the one of tens. I agree. But I also think there's a good reason for it. I mean, I own a couple of ones of his and I generally don't post about them for two reasons. Number one, there's a humility aspect here where it is a bit of a flex. I mean, the average XCopy 101 is probably over a million bucks now. So, you know. And the rest. They're more. Yeah. I mean, it's just. Probably double that now, really. At least, you know, and this is probably for not even the most sought after piece. So it's a bit of, you are definitely identifying yourself as like a heavy hitter in the space.

42:48And I think like at this point, I'm not really, I don't need that. Like for me. The bigger reason and the second reason I think is because a lot of people, and I think this is a good reason, a lot of people perceive that X in this space, at least, has already made it. And it would be good for us to promote for the health of the ecosystem to help the others. um so i spend a lot of time just trying to help the others promoting them you know posting about their own on the space because i feel like the x posting at x at this point is more of a flex than it is a helping out x i agree but i do it because it is what pulls up the whole space right you all need to anchor on something right and you see the aspiration of you know we know many people who've gone from buying a piece of x copy for a hundred dollars and it's worth unknown amounts five million dollars plus i mean there's a lot of people in the space and it's aspirational i mean you know i've met x copy he's a super down-to-earth shy introverted guy and it's like and if he can do it somebody can do it and absolutely both as an artist and a collector it's it's inspiring and it gives i think an entry point so that's why i care about it because it gives an entry point because he's got this really well crafted social graph but whatever your budget is you can basically afford an ex copy which is mind blown that's a great point i mean that is i made a triangle and in many years ago um that some people know about and and the entry point into the space and And I think this is still true today for many people.

44:28We must make sure Nico puts this triangle up as well, because it is really good. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. It was sort of on a whim. And, you know, it's, you know, blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while, right? So, you know, the entry point, I think to this day is still PFPs. You know, a lot of people will see, you know, the next great whatever PFP drop, profile picture drop. And they're generally really cheap. You know, you can get these things for 0.01E sometimes or whatever. Ha ha, that's interesting. They'll go to zero, but whatever, I got into the space. And then it becomes a little bit more sophisticated after that.

45:01And it would be really interesting to get people interested in the space through something like an X-Copy edition rather than a PFP, because actually that is a far more interesting and I think enriching experience to go through rather than just buying a kitten and getting rugged and then deciding whether or not you want to stick around. And using AI or some sort of algorithm, somebody can produce a large number of difference. So they're one of one of 10 ,000, as opposed to one of 10 ,000. Well, I mean, punks are that and stuff like that. But there's stuff that can be interesting that can be done that are not PFPs.

45:41Yeah, I agree. I don't think anybody's done, actually, have they? Well, I mean, a little self-promo here for a second. Chromie Squiggles, I guess. I think the memes by 6529, which I work with heavily, I think that to me is one of the best entry points in the space, simply because it's, you know, whatever,$100 or$200 per drop per card, you gain access to an entire ecosystem, which we don't have to talk about necessarily on this call. But at a minimum, you're getting access to an entire network of artists at a very accessible price. And then it becomes an interesting exercise in what's next. And as you kind of continue to explore, we've done a lot of the hard work for you.

46:22There's traits. The artists are clearly identified. We have a whole website dedicated to it. That's a really good research resources. Even if you never buy another meme card again, it's really interesting too. and it's also a way of discovering art because that's the hub we'll come on to the whole discovery thing but it's a it's a great way to discover artists it's a great way to discover people because we're all scattered around the world living in random places and generally the people at your dinner table are not interested in what you've got to say about any of this but so you want to meet people who hang out with them online and so so generally so that you're The number of times I've been called an idiot at my own dinner table has been astonishing, let alone, you know, with friends and other family members.

47:07So, yeah, the whole memes community thing, I totally agree. And there's others, too. I mean, clickcreate.io is a great one as well. I've done curations with them. There's, you know, I mean, there's so much to look at. There's so many interesting things. You know, follow Roger Dickerman on Twitter. I mean, he's always got interesting things to talk about. fantastic because you see what is what is trading what is happening when he curates somewhat to make sense of it um if that's a really great place to start i just want to talk about the other social graph before we go into this whole discovery part is the other mechanism which is the opposite has been people which is another super clever way so he produces art every day which he doesn't sell and he sells a few of those as one of ones to private collectors then he put basically a couple of collections and that's it and they just trade on secondary at higher and higher levels as the social graph just gets spread and people compete for him and now he creates these kind of physical digital ridiculously expensive beautiful pieces so he doesn't even actually sell the lower tier art he just shows it because he i always think of people as the person who ties the bow on the internet the end of every day i always love to see his final posts because it's like that was the internet for the day we can all go to bed now i agree with that like 95 of the time that five percent though sometimes it's like oh man like the one with p diddy recently i was like cover my eyes man i can't look some of the ones with spf in the in the just they were really bad yeah yeah but but all the other ones yes i mean they're a joy to look at yeah and i just think it's a different way of approaching it so he's he's actually using exclusivity the whole idea of right click save and then exclusivity and there's actually quite a big leap that wasn't in the beginning because they were cheaper but now they're getting more and more and more expensive yeah i mean there's two things about people who i absolutely love he and his brother scott are just gems in the space you know there's two things that are different about him i think they're kind of anomalies to me in this whole idea of networked number one is he's been networked for decades.

49:17I mean, he, he had a shit ton. I've even gone back and looked, but a shit ton of followers, even before NFTs came around. I mean, he predates crypto. He predates many, many things, you know, so he already had his network coming into the space. The thing that really supercharged it though, I mean, not to be like too blunt about this. But if you make a$69 million art sale, you're in the pantheon. I mean, period, end of story. There's no need to build out your network. That is your network. Andy had it already. So I think he's in a unique position of being able to dictate his market in a way that others simply cannot.

49:57But I think it's a really good example. Yeah, because there is not one size fits all, is the point we're trying to make here. There's interest you can come in through different mechanisms so let's talk about discovery so oh yeah we'll talk about how broken it is and what we need to do to fix it but talk me through your discovery journey so you come in you buy a few things but how the fuck do you find anything what's value what's got social consensus does it matter how you know this is all i get from everybody is please help me i gotta open currency it's just like i don't know anything i end up just buying some stupid shit that's worth nothing how did you approach it and then we'll talk about how people should approach it because we've all made the mistake as well oh i mean i make mistakes every single day it's you know you're going to lose money so you have to accept that i mean you are going to come in here it's like an angel investing portfolio you are going to take a few shots and a couple of them are not going to work out you like if that doesn't work it's just like the stock market you're gonna buy 10 stocks you'll be lucky if six of them work out you know if you bat 55 you're in the big leagues in the stock market right now so you have to think about it that way i i approached it you know this is me everybody's a little different some i'm like you know ready fire aim type of person i've noticed it's not a single day where you haven't found a new artist and bought it my feed is every day you buying something discovering somebody and it's not even the same style every time it's like oh and here's a photograph and here's this and here's generative and here's some i'm like okay this guy's broad yeah i you know i i used to have a team of people working for me when i ran a hedge fund and the stuff and this they hated when i did this but i i'm a true believer in this style Somebody comes to you with an idea, you put it on the books immediately.

51:54You do not wait. You put a small position on immediately because what it does is it holds everyone else's feet to the fire to work on it. Okay, now we have a, you know, a short position on in Palantir. You better get your ass in gear and decide why we're short this thing right now. You know, I'm not talking huge. I'm not telling people go out and spend a million dollars on an X copy right now. Like, go in small. But go in. And what that does is it forces you to do the work. So go buy a meme card by an artist you've never heard of and then back into it and do the work. The worst that's going to happen is you spent 200 bucks or 150 bucks.

52:29And it's still a piece of art at the end of the day in a pretty liquid market. You could always sell it if you change your mind. The price isn't going to go to zero. But what it does is it gets you your feet wet. It gets you in the ecosystem. After that, after that, then you sort of start doing research and taking the next steps and deciding what you like and don't like. And that's where it becomes a challenge. There's, this is a double-edged sword. Our discovery here is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it is miserable. It is outrageously bad. The typical process for discovery is getting a Twitter account and following artists and collectors on Twitter.

53:05That's a shit process. And, you know, I don't want to bag on the platforms because a lot of them have gone out of business because it's been so bad. But, you know, we haven't gotten a lot of assistance from the platforms. I think Super is doing a much better job lately. I think, you know, again, 6529 memes do a good job of networking this type of stuff to create. But it's really, really hard. It's super hard. So where does that leave you? surfing feeds at super rare and our meme cards and click create and things like that is a really fun way to have a cup of coffee in the morning and spend the morning another even easier hack is follow the super red bot yeah see what trades on super rare with your coffee in the morning that's a nice one to do um and the roger dickerman 24 hours of art yeah follow roger for sure exactly and that's a pretty good place to start saying okay what are the types of genres what trades what trades are what prices it's pretty useful i would say follow mando minutes as well my friend mando uh he does a mando's on real vision every week as well every yeah he does a great email it's a daily it's fantastic as well um uh there's a gentleman out there called tyler um and i'd have to get his um his twitter handle for you but he does a daily email it's really really good.

54:28I read it every day. So there's different periodicals. So that's the one edge of the sword. You kind of have to piece this together. You kind of have to start following people and then go down the rabbit hole of the next person. There is no easy way to just hit the ground running. It is really, you have to spend the time to do it. The other edge of the sword is, and this is the good side, is that because of this, because it's such a pain in the ass because people don't want to bother with the friction. There is opportunity. Again, I mentioned earlier, like an idiot like me who has no art background whatsoever has been able to amass what I think is a phenomenal portfolio of digital art.

55:09And that window is still open. That window is still open. We are nowhere near. I mean, I don't even remember what the market cap is of NFTs. I think it's something around$10 billion. The market cap of crypto, I think, is approaching like 3 trillion? 4 trillion. 4 trillion. It's nothing. Zero. I mean, it's not even like a rounding error, right? So if you think about it in those terms, we have so much more room to grow into this. So you think about that as well. Like if you're willing to put in a little bit of effort, you can take advantage of this window of opportunity we're in right now and discover these just amazing artists who are being basically, you know, we're all kind of being left for dead because everybody thinks we're crypto bro idiots, which could not be further from the truth.

55:56I just think of this, like the magic of tokens is that, you know, we're rebuilding the internet and you can own a new share of the new infrastructure. Again, we go back to culture, cultural movements. If you could have owned... everything that came out of the cultural movements of the 60s or the 70s punk scene or whatever all of these things or the 90s i mean we've talked about that as well even even as early as the 90s yeah imagine if you own sort of all the stuff that happened in the betha you could only share what happens with oasis and blur and what happened in in new york and what happened you know why did the strokes come out because of the music that came out of london and think of the artists so all of that you get to own a share of culture that's how i i've always approached it to me art is almost a great representation of culture and often technology and particularly where those two combine it's also interesting but it's that you get to own that and how valuable is this going to be well if you're glued all day on x it's very valuable to you because this is your memories this is what you're going to think about for the rest of your life is oh my god do you remember when i didn't sleep because i was in the trenches doing this and that this is it i totally agree i I used to be, I was a big fan of video games and punk rock music when I grew up.

57:17How would you own a piece of that culture? That's right. You know how you do it? You know how I've been doing it? You go on eBay and you buy these sort of like rated, I forget the name of the rating, the company that does this, but you know, they grade all these different like Atari cartridges and Atari systems and Game Boys. And then they grade, you know, like, you know, Sid Vicious's guitar from back in the day with the Sex Pistols or things like that. That's how I get access to that kind of culture. That's how the traditional world can get access to that kind of culture. That is non-networked collectible.

57:51Very much going to be valuable someday, I think. I think a pair of original Air Jordans Game Worn just sold for like$5 million in Sotheby's. Obviously, this stuff is super valuable. The interesting part about here, which I think you really nailed, is you can own a piece of culture digitally all around the world and take part in this right now. Right now, you can get and become a part of this while the window is still open. I mean, I don't know if the window is going to close on all of this or anything like that. But this sort of movement, this early-ish digital art movement window, which I think is going to end up being quite valuable with the proliferation of AI.

58:28And we could talk about that later if you like, too. But it's still open. It's still here. And you can own the meme culture. You can own the digital art culture that you just described in a way that you couldn't back then. yes there's a lot of stuff that trades over one eth and you start to think about it because not everybody has a lot of money to allocate but there's so much stuff i mean yesterday i bought i don't know how many 15 pieces of pindar van armen who's this amazing cutting edge right at the forefront of technology culture everything for 0.3 i think i bought right yeah it's like this is this was insane it was insane it was the wrong price but insane and i bought a whole bunch of them.

59:11But the point being, there is opportunity for everybody in this. Absolutely. And let's just discuss real quick Pindar. I mean, he is literally an OG AI artist. I mean, the guy was doing this back before NFTs as well. He's one of those folks who's just been around doing it for a while, doing AI paintings. I mean, this is just an example, again, of what's going on in this space. How valuable do you think early, early, early, early AI type stuff is going to be 15 years from now when we've achieved ASI, which I think is going to happen. And, you know, machines have dramatically changed everyone's life.

59:48And we have these cultural relics from a time right before it all happened, right before the singularity. Phenomenally valuable. Are you kidding me? Like people of the future are going to look back on these types of artworks and be like, that is, you know, that's an early Babe Ruth. That's an early Mickey Mantle. That's an early Jim Brown card. I mean, that's like these types of cultural objects where they're going to become super historic. And you could get one for 0.3 ETH. Are you kidding me? You know, it's like, we're going to wake up at one point, like 15 years from now and be like, I cannot fucking believe this happened.

1:00:23You know, like this was the biggest arbitrage in world history. And you know what, for people that understand about Pindar is, is he's got robots building art with AI, both digital and physical, right? It's like, and this - I have one hanging on my wall right here. I have a Pindar, yeah. And I have the digital - This is where the future is going. The world where ASI and where AGI moves to ASI, this is where the world is going. I had a long chat with ChatGPT about this, about the music industry as well, because I chat to my ChatGPT because that's the world we live in. Yeah, way more interested in talking to me, that's for sure.

1:00:59And I talked about the music industry. I'm like, you know, we're kind of missing. We haven't had one of the big cultural waves for a while, probably since the 90s. It's kind of been lacking because we haven't had a big rebellion. And so I'm looking at rebellion and I'm like, I can see where the rebellion is about to happen. It's about technology versus non-technology. And we're going to split and we're going to go three ways. One is the people who want to have the mosh pit, human, whatever experience, whatever that may be, or variations of it. It can be classical, it could be anything. then there's another part that will be the slop where ai just gets involved in the process and then there's going to be a few people who are the kind of david bowie of the space brian enos who are going to experiment and create unknown sounds and then ai itself is going to create unknown sounds in new ways and it will be able to tour because of holograms because ab has been on tour in the uk for five four years now nobody realizes that because of holograms so we've got this we're going to have this rage against the machine and the machines themselves and then the people who are the transhumanists the kind of people who adopt the technology will drive it we're about to go through a really really fascinating time in culture i think i agree i mean i i agree and i you know without expounding too much on my views on on the world we're heading into, which, you know, I think you hit it really well.

1:02:27Balaji wrote a post about this recently, which is just, everybody should read it. It's fantastic. And basically what he said in it is that blockchain is going to end up being the only source of truth in the future because you can't hack it. And it has, it's a public record that's unhackable over time since its creation. And now we're going to go into this world of AIs and ASI where who the hell knows? I mean, you think an ASI cannot complete an exact perfect replica of Rembrandt's Nightwatch, which I just saw in Amsterdam, which is probably the most spectacular thing I've ever, you know, work of art I've ever seen in my entire life.

1:03:07Absolutely. Like it's, it's a no brainer, like down to the crack. So what is real going into this world? Well, I can tell you what's real, you know, everything on the blockchain right now forget the machines we have a copy art machines will be able to create art that it knows that humans will find immensely pleasing and put value in because it's it's asi is like human knowledge infinite times infinity yeah so yeah it's like that's right but what i know we will all do is look back on the glory days of the past and that's we will cling on to even if we're transhumanist side of the equation, it's like, fuck it, let's just throw ourselves into this.

1:03:50We're still going to look back. Like, my walls are covered with rock and roll photographs signed by Mick Rock or whoever the photographer is. That guitar is signed by Bowie and Stevie Ray Vaughan. It's like, because they're times of the past. And I know we're going to put value into this. The more it changes, the more we cling on to the past. Absolutely. I mean, I just walked around London and what are some of the most successful shops in London right now? Vinyl and vintage. I mean, if that does, and we haven't even started yet. Like we haven't even, like we're already going through a nostalgic, you know, wave.

1:04:27And if we haven't even gotten to the ASI, that's interesting. Yeah, I think what's going to end up, and this is sort of like, I'm still trying to get my head around this particular concept. But ASI, once we achieve, you know, not even ASI, once we achieve like, you know, AI that's even a little bit better than we are today, which is, you know, maybe even next month. Everything that we think we know about aesthetics is going to be just thrown out the window, right? You're going to start, and I think we're starting to see some of this now, but like AI can create the, as you said, the most perfect aesthetically beautiful thing you've ever seen in your entire life.

1:05:00that signals to our dopamine system, that whole thing where it actually triggers emotion on purpose. Exactly. So what is going to end up becoming valuable in that kind of world? The things that led up to a human-created peace, the journey of the artist, the background of the artist, the imperfections. I mean, I'm thinking about this baseball card I collected when I was a kid. There's a very famous baseball player named Cal Ripken. He was a shortstop on the Orioles. He's in the Hall of Fame. and his brother was named Billy Ripken. And there's this baseball card where Billy is holding a baseball bat with his hands.

1:05:36And as a practical joke, the team knew that his photo was going to be taken that day. And they put a sticker at the bottom of the bat that said, fuck face. That card was the most valuable card in the entire set that year. And that was like way, way, that was in the 80s. So the value of human imperfection is already here. I just think it's going to be supercharged in an AI world, right? I mean, there's just like, we don't want to be fed the perfect view of art. I like the fact that, you know, there's a piece of art out there that has that little something about it. You know, that little like, you know, that human aspect to it is just like, that's going to end up becoming very, very valuable as well.

1:06:17And then, you know, what I also love is the people at the forefront of all of this, like Pindar and whether it's Kim Asendorf. But a piece I bought the other day was super interesting. a guy called sares from argentina very few pieces of art but really complex what he does with how he creates his stuff it's all generated working with ai and stuff like that and this one is built up based on emotion and the emotional footprint that the algorithm produces from the person he he got to look at the art and he's using that as a it's super fucking clever it's like multi-layered I must show it to you actually you'll like it it's like I just saw it I'm like okay this is incredible like that carbon piece I bought the carbon piece yeah that was phenomenal I love that as well I'm really excited about it I've got nowhere to put it but I still love it I mean that's the thing the evolution of this space is going to be phenomenal right I mean you the limiting factor of a canvas is the canvas itself and the paint that the person who you you know, like Rembrandt is a genius, applies to it.

1:07:23The limiting factor of the digital art space is, I don't even know, it's limitless, right? No, it's simply how much ETH I can get. Exactly. So there's always going to be something coming out. I mean, I think this Kim Asendorf drop, PXL, that you mentioned is spectacular. Oh my God. I think it's one of the best drops I've seen. And what did he do? I think it was a real advancement of some of the things we had seen, certainly in pixel art but just in the space in general and i think every year or every two years you're going to see another step change like that because there it's almost limitless human expression in digital format is it has no bounce so to go back to the buying of stuff and then i'll move on to some other stuff again they're all hearing us now pontificate about when we're dropping artist names like what the fuck do you mean how do i find these people whatever my process has been pretty simple because i'm a total moron is i use lindy effects first it's the easiest thing yeah what survived last cycle that still has a social consensus people are talking about and pricing has maintained somewhat that was a you know you saw that with the beples and the x copies and whole bunch of stuff even out in the pfp space everything from rec guy to mfers to the hello grand of crypto dick butts which we have to discuss um to um you know there was a whole bunch of stuff that had lindy effect and it's like generally speaking things i've been expecting a second cycle do really well and it's been de-risked so i do that and then it's like curation of what i collect now is really based on i have a few key ideas of the kinds of things are like really cultural stuff but it has to be different i'm not going to buy another glitch that copies x copy i want something that is different that stands out and goes wow okay that's new or in the technology end of things something that is strikingly advanced that's like okay that's changed everything again i'm not very good with a bit in the middle um yeah kind of more trad art stuff because i don't really have an edge but that's that's how i've approached it is the Lindy effects were the easiest thing.

1:09:37For most people, you can use, I think it's called NFT floor price. It's just a nice way of just looking what's moving and you can look at it in dollars and ETH. Yeah, and you can go back and look at the history as well. Yeah, exactly. And it's very useful. How do you think about... So I'm always top down because I'm macro and you sound like you're an equity guy, so you're more bottoms up. So you're happier building a large spread. Okay, how many NFTs have you got? ballpark within the closest hundred nfts or art nfts nfts i'm probably approaching somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 000 i told you man i'm sick i need therapy if anybody out there as a therapist specializes in nfts let me know you need an ai now right to sort this because you can't you have no idea what's in your collection yes it was someone or something to sort this yes that was 69's idea that really really struck me when he talked about taking photographs i was never taking a lot of photographs because i'm like i never look at them whatever he's like just take as many as you can because soon the ai will sort it and now i've come to the realization more importantly than that you can exist in perpetuity if the ai can absorb your photographs in due course because you have the more information you put out into the internet now which is a whole new game you can live forever or an element of you can live forever i agree with that yeah i don't want to i hope there's you know i hope my estate decides that um bat soup yum had a nice run and and this is the end of it when when my time comes but you know that'll be up to them and I'll be dead.

1:11:25So what difference does it make? You know, I'm going to need help for sure. I would say, going back to this sort of idea of Lindy effects, I would put it into two categories, at least for me. There's the category of discovery and there's the category of large chunky purchases. You know, when I used to run a hedge fund, I would tell this is also somewhat counterintuitive. I remember very distinctly telling my team, Amazon was a better buy at$100 than it was at$6 a share, which it got to during the financial crisis. And they don't understand that. They're like, I don't want to get this. I don't get this.

1:12:02Because 99 % of people here don't understand how to price risk. That is the fundamental. And I see that a lot in the equity market as well, but it's also a bit more sophisticated there. Everybody can think about price, but you have to think about risk adjusted price. So the reason why Amazon was a better purchase at$100 and was at$6 is because they had massively de-risked the company at that time, and they were on a path towards success that they weren't on at$6. $6 could have very easily gone to zero. When it was at$100, that was sort of off the table at that point. So if you understand that, you understand the big chunky side of what I just said, which is I totally agree with you.

1:12:40I am not going to go out and spend half a million dollars on a brand new artist. I'm just not that person. I know there's people out there and they're much smarter than me and they have a much better art background than me. I just, I cannot make that leap. It's just, it's too risky for me from a financial perspective, even if I love the art from the discovery side, the much lower price stuff, I mean, talking 0.3 for Pindars and a hundred bucks for a meme card, 200 bucks for a meme card. I'm much more willing to take that leap. In fact, I barely think about the financial aspect of it and I buy the things I really love.

1:13:15So it depends on your budget and that respect as well. But I will say one other piece of advice. Most everyone who buys what they love, most people have not great taste, shall we say, to be nice. Myself included. I don't think I've got like the greatest taste on planet Earth. But what I like to do is buy things I like because I'm supporting the artist and I get to display it on white walls or whatever technology is out there these days i get to display it in a way that shows off something that i really enjoy seeing when i wake up in the morning i have a cup of coffee um and then my financial downside is what is what it is and i don't really think about it because i don't care and the other thing you can do is you can double check your own sanity you can be early and like something and nobody else has to like and that's absolutely fine that is art and it should be that way but if you're thinking about you know hey i don't know if i want to put two weeks into this i don't want to lose money yes you will probably lose money but you may not but the idea is you can just click and see who else owns it social consensus is very helpful do interesting people own it um and is it super concentrated or is there a broad social graph yeah and when you get to this that simple hack when you're seeing something look on openc or look on you know any of the sites super rare just see who else owns it and see what they own and i mean i almost every single one of these artists in fact i can't think of one that isn't almost every single one of these artists is on twitter so just you can go read their feed you can decide if you like what they're doing or not like what they're doing you can talk to them you can hop in their dms in many cases and say what inspired you to create this piece like they're they're they're very fun to talk to and they want to talk with you believe me because there's nice most of them are really nice people um so you can there's a whole, this is the whole point of like networked art.

1:15:10This is why it's both competitive and beautiful. You get access to these folks in a way that you never would if you were, you know, again, calling up the Gosian gallery or pace or whatever. Hey, I want to speak with, you know, Damien Hurst about that piece he just created. Fuck off. You know, like that's not happening. So, you know, it's a little, I mean, maybe that we get to the point like that eventually with some of the bigger artist but you know every time i dmd police responded every time i dmdex copy he's responding every time i dm sam spratt he's like and these people go to events like if you are new to the space and you want to really dive into this go to the toleno art museum next month they're having a huge show it's open to the public i know sam's gonna be there he has a phenomenal exhibit there among a bunch of other phenomenal artists i mean matt and john from crypto punks were there last time i'm sure they're going to be there again like these are like legends in the space and they just show up and you can walk up to them and say hi you know it's like and you also go to people's studio and it's unbelievable it's such an experience and he holds the winds all the time just look at his feed and go there you know go to an event you'll meet people but how what i don't understand how you do is how do you have the bandwidth to be you know so early on artists so you're you're looking at artists that don't yet have formed social consensus yeah you are you know you're the you're the small cap stock picker in the space and there's a lot how how do you do that it's a genuine question because i have no idea how you do it because every time i look at you buying stuff so how the hell did he find this like i said you know ready fire aim is yeah but even that you say that flippantly but that's not even easy even if i tried to do that I wouldn't even know where to go.

1:17:01Yeah. Yeah. So a couple of ways. These are somewhat revealing of my secrets. You're not paying. You may pay high prices for some stuff. A lot of the time you're not paying very high prices. Yeah. Because you're early in supporting an artist's career, which is amazing. Yeah. I mean, I, again, I, going back to what I said at the beginning, I really liked the support aspect of this. So if I find there's a couple of criteria, a criteria, number one is there has to be good art. I just have to like it again. I don't think I have particularly above average taste. I don't know that it's below average either.

1:17:34I'm probably like somewhere in the middle, but like, I know what I like and I know what I don't like. And if I'd like something without ever having spoken to the artist or seen it before, I'm going to grab it. If it's at a reasonable price, just because I like it. How do I find that stuff? It's on Twitter. It's on, I explore the super rare feed. I'll see a meme card artist. I'll go back and look and be like, wow this person did a really good job on this and i hadn't seen that card before um those are probably the three main methods for the super rare feed you'll go through and see what's there yeah i will i'll just look at it once in a while and do some sorting you know like last sales or recently you know created or something like that honestly artists who recommend other artists is a phenomenal way to to discover i've been encouraging more artists great collectors all of them like I mean, like, Coley is unbelievable.

1:18:25I mean, not only is he an unbelievable artist, he's an unbelievable collector. He's like, I'm like, who is this guy? He's crazy good. And there's a number of artists, like Matt Cain's a great collector as well, in addition to being a phenomenal artist. Like, there's quite a few of them out there. Those are the main ways. Foundation.app, actually, believe it or not, they've kind of pivoted to another thing called Rodeo. But they're still out there, and you can go on there and look at artists, their past work and things like that. That's a fun one. Roger Dickerman, as we mentioned, is a really fun one.

1:18:57So how do I find it? Those are the ways. That's sort of like the entryway. That's the way that I discover, oh, wow, I really like the work that this person did, even though maybe this piece isn't for me. And I keep an eye on them. I'll write it down. I'll be like, okay, here's an artist XYZ. I did this with Sasha Stiles recently. like maybe a year ago where she kind of takes this poetry in a way. And Ana Maria Caballero as well. They take this poetry in a way in the totally different styles, but they incorporate it into the digital format in a way that I've just never seen before. I was like, Ooh, this is cool.

1:19:34I didn't go and buy it. Usually, you know, I kind of violated my ready fire aim rule at that point, but I didn't go and buy anything right away. I just kind of kept an eye on it. And when they did something that I thought was really interesting, I went back to it. So I just keep a list, you know, sometimes mentally, sometimes on paper of just sort of like, this person is doing really cool work. This work may not be for me necessarily, but in the future, I'd really like this. I also, I just want to add, I have a healthy level of respect for people who have stuck around. And they're automatically going to get, in my mind at least, a slight boost in sort of my respect level for them.

1:20:09Because we've, I mean, people maybe even on this call, we have been through hell and back, then back again, And then back again, I remember one time, I'll tell you a quick hedge fund story. I was working with a – I was running a pod for a large hedge fund and the founder, who was a very well-known billionaire, I happened to be in New York City. And he was not around, thank God. I didn't think he was around. I was meeting with the head of equities and I was having literally the worst day I've ever had in my career. I mean like I was losing so much fucking money, millions and millions and millions of dollars for no reason whatsoever.

1:20:41And the guy who's the head of equity says, oh, so-and-so just came back and wants to say hi. And I was like, I really don't want to. Like, I mean, this is like a noose around my neck. It's about to, like, go tight. You know, that's how I felt. And so his credit, so the head of the whole hedge fund walks into the door and he says, Bats, if you were any other person at this firm, and, you know, I was in, like, the 30th floor of their high rise. If you were any other person at this firm, they would have jumped out the window, climbed back up and jumped out again. Great to see you. And then he took off.

1:21:16And I was like, oh, my God. I almost just like got, you know, skewered here. But it's a little bit like that, you know. It's like, anyway, I'll shut up at this point. But that was just a fun story, side story to the point. It's true. People have been around. Also, I love finding artists and helping them in their journey. I spend a lot of time talking to them. And Lindsay, my girlfriend, is very good at that as well. She's just trying to help people, you know, give them a bit of advice. Because a lot of people don't really know much. And you try and just, like, piece them together. Hey, speak to these people.

1:21:48Look how they do things, stuff like that. And just help nurture them because the whole economy nurtures. Yeah, and I think that's sort of just a real quick aside to this. I mean, I think that up until now, we've sort of talked about helping an artist as a financial transaction. But that actually is a very could end up being a very, very small part of this. I mean, there are many, many ways to be a participant in the space. And you don't you know, you're not doing it out of altruism. You're just doing it because you're interested in what's going on here. um and that to me is sort of like you found a passion for this when you hit that point where you're just willing to do whatever it takes even if no money is involved um to help someone out you know just show up at an event or or talk to them and say hey you know i can't afford this work but you did a really nice job on this you wouldn't believe how far that goes yeah and just just a little bit of thoughtfulness it's just a nice thing so ending up with a couple of more i mean I mean, we keep talking for hours, but lending markets.

1:22:46Yeah. Tell me how this works. I've never been a borrower, never lender. Yeah, I've used leverage, but I just don't, I have a fear of it all. What are you doing? Explain what you're up to. This is Gandhi and the incredible rise of borrowing and lending. Yeah. So just to give a little background here, in addition to being just completely psychotic on this sort of tip of the idiot spear in the crypto space called NFTs, we've also decided to add leverage to our psychosis and lever up this insanity that we're going through and just make it a little bit risky. It usually ends well, right? Yeah, it's going to be fine.

1:23:26Don't worry about it. It'll all end up great. So all kidding aside, the interesting thing, I mean, this is part of, again, part of this network, things that you can do in a network, The financialization aspect of a network can be completely and totally built out in a way that you can never do in a traditional world. You have lending. You have tokens. I mean, Kim Asendorf, who we talked about earlier with PXL, has a token attached to PXL. I don't know if a lot of people realize this. It's so clever. I bought 3 million more pixels. I figured this out. I'm buying pixels. Yes, exactly. It's amazing.

1:24:00It's super cool. We talked about Rectrings earlier. There's a token. We call it a brand token attached to Rectrings. So there's this whole financialization aspect to the network that we didn't even get into. Of that, lending is a piece of it. So I do lending on Gandhi. And the reason why, and I do it mostly against art. I mostly do most of my loans against digital art. I don't necessarily recommend most people go down this hole. But I will at least explain to you what's going on. It is a system that can only exist in Web3. I don't know who the people are. I see the art and I value it. I make a loan against it.

1:24:41I have no idea who this person is that led that piece of art gets escrowed in a smart contract. The money changes hands. That smart contract will execute a single decision at a single point in time, which is either give the piece back to the borrower because they paid off the loan or give, or the loan defaults. And the piece goes to me as the lender. And that's it. It's all software. It's all smart contract based. I don't have the only due diligence I do is on the artwork itself. I am in a weird position, unlike most people, where I work with the 6529 group. Therefore, we are and we run five different funds that have bought digital art over time, quite a lot of money.

1:25:24And we have to value those every single year. I'm on the team that has to run that audit process every single year. so I'm literally we own over a thousand pieces of digital art and we have to value every single one of them for our LPs so I know what already what a lot of this stuff is worth so I'm able to lend against it and that's why I have you know I personally have very few defaults I think where it gets a little crazy is in lending against you know some of the PFP stuff that just is so highly volatile like you know not to pick on moon birds I'm really happy for they're having a lovely redemption arc right now but making a you know an 80 ltv loan against moonbirds which have tripled in the last month is probably not a great idea so let's say somebody's borrowing against a an ex copy let's say it's a one of 24 so it's liquid enough that you've got a decent idea what how much leverage you offer i what what is the backstop that you get given the piece of art for normally so let's say the piece of art in the open market trades at 40 eth yeah what would you lend against it i'm i mean everybody's different so i'll tell you what my parameters are i'm pretty i'm typically around 50 to 60 percent ltv right i'll do i'll personally do loans up to a year and the rates are quite high you know the rates are 20 low 20s so and then if something somebody defaults you get it at the 50 of ltv correct no no no you get the piece wherever it is so you know these these borrowers have a put obviously right i mean they can put the piece back to you over the course of the year at the due date.

1:26:59So for example, I had four autoglyphs. Autoglyphs are a very famous generator collection. I've only ever had five defaults on, I think, 170 loans I've made. And four of them were autoglyphs. And what happened was the autoglyph market crashed. So I made a 50 % LTV loan. The autoglyph market crashed to like 150 grand. These loans were at 200 grand and they all came back to me, which is exactly what should happen, right i mean if i were the borrower to put them back to me too luckily uh the market rallied immensely and i was able to sell them for a much higher they're priced in they're pricing dollars not eath or eath price in dollars on loans most people i think price in eath that's another and we could spend an hour on this discussion because it's crazy but most of the markets in art and punks and things like that i think are still largely priced in eath i don't i don't price an ETH anymore, in large part because my stack of ETH is a lot lower than it used to be.

1:27:53So I'm thinking about things in terms of dollars, because now I have to buy the ETH in order to acquire something. Final question, and the most important one. Talk to me about crypto dick butts. So I was thinking about this today. When I came on with AC a couple of years ago, we talked about dick butts. So crypto dick butts are about 5 ,500, I believe, roughly, of a cartoon created many, many years ago that ended up becoming somebody, somebody created a collection of different ones and put them on chain. And to me, they've always represented the tokenized version of real life degeneracy. So what do I mean by that?

1:28:36We are all kind of weird around here. Very obviously, we all kind of have our quirks and our libertarianism and, you know, what have you. And the one common theme is that people love sort of the degenerate aspect of this. You know, the number 69 will get a laugh every time, 420 every time, you know, like, I mean, just silliness, stupidness. I mean, really, I mean, backing up for a second, we have taken the art world, we have taken many things about like the trout art, the seriousness of the trout our world and made it fun. Like we've like, I mean, I cannot, you know, stress enough how important it is that we are all having a very good time.

1:29:19So to me, dick butts are a representation of just sort of the stupidity of, you know, like the top level stupidity that we're all experiencing in a very playful and fun way. I think they're brilliant. I think it, I think if you go, there's a dick butts telegram group, which sometimes I just quietly go onto and just laugh my ass off because people are just posting ridiculous things on there but it's it's just fun and it's it's immature and stupid yeah i get it i mean you know because we've gone through fucking hell and back to be honest exactly those of us have been around for a while we have driven eye-watering p &l swings where everybody around you questions you question yourself you question your sanity you know it's scary everyone's businesses implode their cash flows implode the assets implode and we still go through it and we still laugh about it exactly exactly and dick butts is that it's like it's so stupid that unless you've been in the space you're like what on earth is this but to anybody else it's like it's an og asset to me it's punks don't do this it's this is just like yeah if you know this you know the space if you know this you're the space exactly but i would tell you a really quick story i was on a on a whitewater trip recently um unexpectedly, I shall say, because I didn't mean to go through whitewater.

1:30:38And our boat flipped. And like an idiot, I didn't have a life vest on. And we all almost died. I mean, it was a pretty serious incident. And how do we identify with that incident right now? We laugh about it. I mean, it's just stupid. We're idiots. I mean, we're a bunch of dumbass guys that we should have been scared for our lives, but we laugh about it. And I feel like the same way about dick butts. Dick butts are a representation of just sort of like the hell, the back, the hell, the back, the stupidity, the idiocy, the ha ha. Like, if you know about dick butts, you know about the whitewater crash that I went through.

1:31:11There's a parallel there that I think is interesting where, you know, we just sort of laugh about it. But at the back of our minds, we all know what we went through to get to this point. And that's one of the things that when people come to me and say, how do I get into the space? You kind of figure out what their wallet size is, you know, what kind of investment they want to make. I'm like, listen, if you want to make your first big move and you've got some decent capital, buy CryptoPunk. It's a good place to start. You can connect with people. You'll learn very quickly. If you don't and you still like that kind of thing, buy a dick butt.

1:31:41It's still relatively cheap and it's an OG asset. Look who owns them. Just go through who owns them. Go through their wallets. See what else they own. The whole world will open up just by doing that one trick is buy a dick butt. Go through all of the owners. um and then if not i think this i think the 6529 memes is a really really great idea as an as a super easy entry point and then what i love about the the memes is you've got a community already built out of people trying to make decisions about this think things through to communicate with who are passionate about it and before you know it you can ask all the dumb questions we've all had to ask dumb questions we all you know we'll hit each other up on twitter and say, well, how does that work?

1:32:25What is that? Like I'm asking the dumb question about the lending because I'm like, how does that work? And that's okay. We can all do that. Yeah, we've done a lot of the heavy work for you in the 6529 ecosystem. So you can just go, I mean, I'll plug it real quick, 6529.io, and there's a ton of resources there to check out. So I think you can have a lot of fun. I will tell you one, to wrap up, one really funny story. So you've had 6529 on here a number of times. we um uh were were charged i remember this was back in like 22 when we were with a fun you know this was one of our major funds you know we have quite a few lps you know where i think we have like at the time like 70 million dollars under management that we raised so not not like small peanuts here and we spent i'm not kidding you agonizing hours hours hours trying to find there's only 12 legendary dick butts and we spent hours trying to find one and we finally bought one it was the spider-man dick butt and i still remember to this day 69 if you pay for that you've set the high i think uh i can't remember that was you you owned i think it was you personally i own the paris the paris hilton dick butt um and i think i paid 20 for it i think i can't remember exactly what we paid for the spider-man but it was one of the grails and i'm not kidding you It was like it was the same week.

1:33:44So we hold a weekly call, right? There's there's maybe 10 of us. And the reaction to getting that grail, one of the grail 12 dick butts was basically the same as if we had just bought like a Rothko, like a rare Rothko for one hundred million dollars. Like we were high fiving. We were celebrating. It was like we achieved, you know, just unbelievable with, you know, status amongst ourselves. and we were so proud of ourselves. I mean, I will always look back at that story and laugh because it's just, you know, we're idiots. I mean, it's stupid. I'm still trying to buy and I've tried every angle. Can't get hold of Ray who owns it.

1:34:20I need the banana dick butt. It's an ultra rare grail. One of the grails. I know exactly what you're talking about. And it's owned by someone. It needs to be mine. It must be mine. It's the banana zone dick butt. I think you, I'm rooting for you, man. and let me know how I could help. I mean, everybody's tried. Even Eli can't get to him. So nobody can get to him. It's like, oh, please, I just need the banana zone dick butt. I'm rooting for you, man. Come on. All right, my friend. Fantastic conversation. Thanks for everything. Do you have a wallet that displays your art where people can look at stuff?

1:34:59A public wallet or not? Yeah, you can go. So my display has taken a turn for the worse. I really need an AI and an artist probably to help me out. I used to have everything displayed on cyber, but I've not kept up with it. So all of my art, if you just go to batsoupyumvault.eth, everything is in there that I've collected. Yeah, everything's in there. But have I done the work? I mean, again, I mean, I think this is one of the biggest difference between where we are and where the try to our world is. We have very far to go on displaying the art. We will get there. And we're making huge strides. White Walls has been phenomenal.

1:35:45Changed my life, to be honest. And I think there's even, like, more iterations of that to come. And I think Toledo has done a phenomenal job of taking the next step, to be honest. But, like, we have a ways to go. So my excuse is I'm waiting for that moment, and then I'm going to put all my energy into displaying my art. I've been pretty good about it because I did it a while ago when my collection was smaller, and I created galleries on OpenSea just as an easy way and just broke it down into ways that made sense for me. And then I've been able to keep on top of it. You have to keep getting rid of the bloody spam that comes in your wallet.

1:36:17But the galleries on OpenSea, so mine is the Culture Vault, but ETH for anybody watching this. But yeah, I mean, go down because you've got an incredible collection. You're always one of the greatest people in the space. It's been an inspiration doing that. And I'm looking forward to seeing you somewhere in person very soon. Likewise, likewise. And I just want to point out that relative to what we were saying earlier, if we are going to OpenSea, no, nothing against OpenSea. I love OpenSea. If we are going to OpenSea to, quote, unquote, display our high-value art pieces, it tells you how much further we have to go.

1:36:49And we'll get there. But this is a testament to how early it is. So, as you know, I went on that fight on Twitter recently. Really interesting because I kind of lost my shit over this because I onboard so many people, so many people. And they're like, OK, well, how do I find out? I'm sorry, you can't. Is there like an AI algorithm? No. What happens if I just want to see what these people collect and find a commonality? No. OK, is there anything? No. I can't. What were the highest last sales in the last six months? I don't know. Where can I go to see that? You can't. Like, I mean, just basic research information.

1:37:29It's not even out there. I'm sorry, I can't help you at all. Go and buy crypto dick butt. That's all I do. Yeah. But what you should do is go start a wallet. Oh, by the way, write down your passphrase on a piece of paper with a pen. Never lose that. Never give it to anybody. Put it in a book. I was literally told to put it in a book. And then go and buy thousands of dollars of ETH and then go find another piece of rare art that you might get stolen down the road because somebody rugs you and steals your wallet. You know, it's like we have asked for a lot and yet we persist, which I think is a testament to the durability.

1:38:05I think we're going to make it. I think we're going to make it. All right, my friend, good to see you. Thanks so much. So much fun. Thanks for having me. So look, great conversation with Bats. Him and I could speak forever on this. It's a rabbit hole. You go down and you start learning more and more and more. It is more than a financial game. Yes, there is generational changing wealth to be made out of art. That's always been the case in art. If you get it right, if you figure it out, buy the right pieces, it can be worth a lot. But more than that, it's full of fucking great people, amazing artists.

1:38:43And they can be new artists. You don't have to buy the most expensive X copies or whatever it is, Beeple's. there's new artists to support new styles of art new experimentation with computers and ai and physical and digital and all of these things and it's amazing to be involved in culture you don't have to go to the museum now you don't have to go to the opera you don't have to go to a music festival it's happening in front of us online every day so dip your toes in and get involved because art is never going away. Art is the story of humanity. Anyway, see you next time. So here we are, Token 2049.

1:39:23It really is one of the most energetic, incredible events. Speakers from all around the world and visitors from every country you can ever imagine, all trying to learn something together, something new, this exciting world of crypto and technology. It's where you go and make friends, lifelong friends. And what's so nice is to see people with big smiles on their faces, happy to be here and happy to be together. So hopefully see you next time in Singapore. Real Vision will be there. I look forward to seeing you all.

1:39:58You obviously enjoyed the episode because you're here with me at the end. But listen, don't forget to go to realvision.com forward slash join and grab a free membership. It's an incredible community packed with alpha, great investment ideas, and the research that you need to help you unfuck your future. So get started now. Go to realvision.com forward slash join.

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