Beeple and Raoul: Raw and Uncut

0:00Hi, on the 5th and 6th of June 2024, I'll be speaking at the largest AI event in Asia, Super AI in Singapore at the iconic Marina Bay Sands. Alongside brilliant minds like Edward Snowden, Benedict Devin and Balaji Srinivasan, I'll be on a stage exploring the extraordinary potential of AI and the profound change it represents, not just for financial markets, but also for the world as we know it. With over 5 ,000 attendees and over 150 side events, Singapore will become a vibrant hub for a full week from the 3rd and 9th of June. Visit superai.com to register and join me with 20 % off tickets using the code realvision.

0:44Use the link in the description and I'll see you there. It's going to be incredible.

1:01Hi, I'm Ralph Howe and welcome to my show, The Journeyman. And as you know by now, I'm going on a journey to the nexus of where macro meets crypto and the exponential age. You see, I do think that this is one of the most exciting times to be alive. And the change that we're going through is so dramatic that it's out with the old system, in with the new system. And we kind of get a front row seat. I'm super lucky in where I sit that I get to talk to just the most incredible people in the world. And I'm truly blessed. The kinds of conversation and access to people I have is just, I never thought I'd have this in my life.

1:43You know, I came up, yes, I had amazing opportunities in the hedge fund world where I got to speak to many of the greatest hedge fund managers on a daily basis. But now I kind of get to speak to anybody I want to about whatever I want to. And that's a super privilege. and you get to look over my shoulder and join me in those conversations. Today we're going to talk about NFTs. And NFTs are an incredibly important technology. And really what it is, is if you think of all of humanity, everything we do is a contract. We all sign contracts, whether it's your credit card or whether it's a ticket or whether it's agreeing to meet a friend for a drink that evening.

2:25Everything is a contract. All humanity organizes itself with contracts. Now, some are so important that you need notaries and lawyers. Others are not important. You just need an email confirmation or a WhatsApp message or SMS. But all of these contractual things exist. And as we get into a digital world, these contracts start existing on a blockchain, particularly the ones that have value. And this is all part of this value layer that blockchain technology enables for the internet. You see, in a digital world, everything digital goes to zero in value over time because you can basically make infinite amounts of anything.

3:05And we've seen that from everything from cloud to compute to email. It all goes to zero cost. And it will happen relentlessly. It's going to happen with AI too. It'll go to basically zero cost. So in an increasingly digital world, how do you create value? and that was a problem that was not solvable very easily firstly there was the scarcity value of bitcoin that was one thing but bitcoin was just bitcoin itself but what about all the rest of humanity's contracts what about the value what about stuff digital assets that are becoming more predominant and then the nft came out and the nft was our way of recording these contracts on the blockchain.

3:50My view is, well, the first thing that should happen with NFTs is like OTC derivative markets and financial stuff. But no, the finance market is slow to adapt. In fact, most people were slow to understand what this technology actually was. But there's a group of people who've always embraced technology earlier than anybody else. And that's the artists. You see, art is at the epicenter of culture and change. They're kind of the commentators and the curators of what is happening at a moment in time. And what we found was it solved a huge problem really quickly for a massive part of the art market that had developed, which was digital art.

4:37You see, digital artists were appearing on places like DeviantArt, but there was no way to sell a JPEG because you can make infinite JPEGs. So how do you create scarcity in a digital world? And that problem plagued all of these artists, even though the medium had become very big. Same with film, same with a lot of stuff, photography. And suddenly they started to figure out that NFTs were the answer. And you could have unique assets or a numbered, like a limited edition print, and be recorded on the blockchain and be transferred on the blockchain so there was ownership plus value okay that was super interesting artists were first and they took it and ran with it they then integrated ai by creating generative art which is ai generated art prompted by humans whole new art type of art and they're always pioneers in pretty much everything going on music arts you know graphical arts other arts they're always at the forefront because they are experimenters by nature now i'm really really excited for this next conversation because we only met recently well actually we met a while ago um in some fancy event in utah but that was a slightly crazy event and I really got to know Beeple, Mike Winkleman, at his studio recently where I was luckily enough invited to a very small round table of the world's greatest NFT artists, collectors, museums, everybody else involved in the space, traditional art, everybody and I got on really well with Mike, super interesting guy, a lot of fun Now, I'm going to give you a caveat.

6:31He swears more than me. This, I think, has the highest swear count of any video in the history of Real Vision. And there's a lot in the conversation. It's a lot of fun. So please enjoy. And some of the graphic images, if you know people, they're going to upset you. And that's the whole point. Enjoy. Join me, Raoul Powell, as I go on a journey of discovery through the macro, crypto and exponential age landscapes. In The Journeyman, I talk to the smartest people in the world so we can all become smarter together.

7:06Mike, welcome to Real Vision. I'm really looking forward to this. but before we kick off i want to ask a question that i'm not i'm not sure i've asked anybody before but i thought i wanted to ask you now what is the obsession with cox

7:28you sure you've never asked anybody else that before funny this is actually pretty recent and i was actually gonna go through and see how many of my pictures just in the last like say 90 days or even that i feel like everybody else is obsessed with penises and they're trying to project that onto me but it's it's funny though because like prior to this like if you went back a bit there was kind of a phase where there was a lot of like melking there was a lot of like people like buzz light in your head was being milked and like all this like there was a milking phase that i threw before so this is just a phase it'll pass everybody else is a lot more uh i think i'm so there was it was definitely like there was a three-week window that everything was a penis which you know i will say it's been a more prevalent theme lately i was and even last night i had an idea i was like no that's probably too much everybody's gonna say that's enough i don't believe you have that line the it's too much i remember i was when i i really started seeing your work because when we were at that event together in utah this very fancy event you're on stage talking and there's a picture of gigantic i think mark zuckerberg's balls behind you i'm like this is not for real even you can keep a straight face no i remember that it was a picture of me like with like balls or something like like weight lifting something that's right and i specifically the remember the reason i remember that is i was looking through the slideshow they had put together beforehand and i specifically was like uh can you take that one out because if i see that one i'm gonna start laughing and they're like oh yeah no problem and then they didn't and it was just like god damn it i see it come up and it's like super jarring and like it's just like okay what the fuck like come on but no that's funny you say like i don't think you have a line that's not true at all i absolutely have many things where i'm like that's probably too much so if you can believe that the things you see are a filtered version of my mind that that is actually the truth there well that's how i think of your art i'm gonna get into the whole story of this but this is how i think of your art is that It's the part of your mind that normally people don't show, and you show it every day.

10:16And it's hilarious. And, you know, just Twitter interactions. I mean, you just post anything, and you get several thousand likes just because it's very different, and it's just a little part of your slightly troublesome mind. That's true. But I think what it actually is, and this is something that I think makes it sort of different and new and a sign of when we live is, to me, it is sort of like an embodiment of the internet. And the internet, the culture of the internet is actually super immature. Like literally just two days ago, Elon, the richest person, most successful, you know, person in the world posted like boob joke.

11:09The person who owns this platform and is trying to, like, entice advertisers to spend millions of dollars of advertising money posted some, like, boo meme joke. And it's just like, okay, I guess that's... Like, it's just, you look at the, like, Joe Biden just posted this, like, dark Brandon thing. Like, that's the president of the United States posted some, like, this joke about how people, like, you know, were chanting, fuck Joe Biden. Like, and that's, again. But why is the internet, why are humans like that on the internet? You wouldn't, you know, you might walk out around Charleston chatting to people and you wouldn't be that.

12:02And I don't know what there's a level of abstraction from real life that makes you say and do things you normally wouldn't do. And I think it makes you less mature. It makes you less mature in that you would get into fights with people you normally wouldn't get into. You just go like, OK, I'm not going to argue with this fucking random stranger over there. You know what I mean? it makes you say things that you normally wouldn't say and so to me i'm trying to sort of like capture some of that some of this moment and that immaturity that exists in art because again that's that's not what art's supposed to be if you think historically it's supposed to be this very serious thing and this very you know principled thing but to me it's always like okay well we've certainly done that what haven't we done what can we do to push forward the idea of what art is and i think making things that are purposely immature is something that is not part of sort of like art history i believe and also as you said it reflects humanity i mean it's it's art almost about the internet itself which is a really you know obviously that's not really been done before because the internet is a cultural phenomena on its own right particularly well there's not just twitter reddit has its own huge deep culture there's tons of these cultures that are all there and they are really interesting and that's another sort of like thing with it is it's many of the pictures are very coded and that the average person, like, you know, like the, the, the whole reason a lot of the like penises started is because everybody was Solana was going fucking boners for this thing.

13:55You know, I'm like, God, Solana is the fucking craziest thing ever. And everybody was just going ape shit, you know, three weeks ago, four weeks ago, whatever. And so that's when I started like posting this stuff. And, but like the average person the average person doesn't even know what solana is much less this like you know and then this dog with hat thing and and you know all these like all coins and stuff like that like it's so coded in like all these this this subculture that that too is a part of the internet that you have these subcultures and they they have these languages that they um um build and they're so insular and they're so um this like closed loop of sort of like information and sort of like inside jokes that it takes so long to like unpack and sort of like you know explain to the normal person what any of this means and and i i remember sort of like talking to my my Matthew and and his like him trying to explain things to me and it would just take forever for him to explain things because he'd have to like explain like memes and he'd be like he'd have to explain this and he'd have to explain that we didn't have to explain this thing this thing and it's just like oh my god like people understand that and he's like yeah it's like I understood it and it's like Jesus Christ but it's so coded and like to me I find that very interesting and something that I think is sort of like worth documenting.

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17:28And as you said, you've kind of got the double layer of the internet at large. so like um i was thinking sometimes the people comes up behind me of um of giga chad for example so that's kind of almost the internet at large right which is elon his kind of where he really came on to the onto twitter in 2020 or so 2021 where he was kind of the owner of everything even though before he bought it but you've also you've staked out that subculture of crypto and nft you that whole world and claim that as part of what you're commenting on and it is a massively strong subculture it's huge 100 i think that's that's with a lot of these things i mean and it's full of drama as well which is nice it's full of drama there's always stuff happening and like again that's very new in my art i wasn't documenting crypto culture before any of this sort of like like NFT stuff, I only, you know, knew of it.

18:29And so that piece of it is kind of like quite new. But to me, the culture is like, in many cases, or maybe I shouldn't say many cases, in some cases, that's literally all there is. Because these things actually have no utility whatsoever. It is purely the memes behind them and the culture that surrounds them that gives them any value. And I think, yeah, the same could kind of be said of a lot of sort of like art. What gives it value is the sort of relevance that it has in culture and the amount that it's sort of connected with people and sort of giving them enjoyment or giving them a new way to think about life.

19:19and so to me i think um yeah i just find it to be a fascinating space that is always i mean i and i got these fucking rocks people are going ape shit for and that's like i knew i was gonna buy a rock i thought this is a no-brainer the most dumbest art in the world and i saw they were kind of at rock bottom like about a year ago i'm thinking i've got to buy one it's the most moronic move ever i should have done it i should have done it next minute the fucking sotheby's that's what's so funny though is that it like it's a culture that almost like just like that like the rock thing like it prides itself on trying to find the like fucking dumbest things or you think about the what was the the that monster the kevin kevin the kevin's is just like this is the dumbest thing and then it's like oh wait this is actually the best thing it's just kind of like like i don't know that that to me is like fascinating too that it's like and the space is super smart it's like elon is like the smartest person in the world but they all act dumb as shit and they celebrate it buying bonk tokens or dog with hat and here you've got these kind of you know phds in nuclear physics buying this stuff and punting it it's like it's hilarious it's it to me is like so fascinating fascinating and and it's a little scary if i'm being honest because to me it really speaks to the idea that how fast technology is now moving and how fast these memes can like really sort of like take hold and affect people's real world decisions which they're just means you know a lot of the stuff it's just like okay i'm oh people are talking about this okay i'm gonna start talking about this okay i'm gonna start talking and then it like spreads but it can like literally spread to you know tens of millions hundreds of millions of people in just this rapid amount of time and there's no vetting of these ideas it's just like they're they're only sort of like vetting is how attractive they are from a viral standpoint and i feel like that that in the future is going to cause some issues i think it probably is already fake news is just memetics by a different title as is religion as is everything else right it's stories we tell ourselves i agree but i think it's going to become like very like something's going to spread very quickly and it's going to be like and a bunch of people are going to do something where it's like oh shit okay yeah that was that really like in the course of like a week like that really ramped up really quickly and like i don't know i just feel like it's i i agree i think it's already starting you're already just starting to see sort of like you know little lemmer and we'll get into the ai element later because that is going to fan those flames because you can rile up the people create a meme that doesn't exist create anything you want and manipulate not only emotion but a lot of outcomes so we'll talk about that but before we get into the future let's go back to the past how the hell did you get into all of this what's because you were like an overnight sensation that took 25 years to get there as ever you know sure what was your story yeah so i went to school for like computer science and kind of, you know, thought I was going to make video games.

23:17And then I saw somebody at school who he was going to make video games. And when I saw that, it was like, yeah, I'm not gonna make video games. You're gonna make video games. You want that way better. And when I was in school, I realized I was spending all my time making digital art and posting on the internet. And this was 1999 to 2003. So before YouTube even. And so, you know nobody was making me do that I was just doing it my free time and so I realized this is what I actually want to do I'm just going to get a job doing whatever the fuck I want and just put all my true time and passion into making digital art and there's no real way to sell it you know that wasn't like nobody's what kind of art were you making then what what how were you expressing yourself so it was I was mainly making sort of like short films and they were very like tightly synced audio and video and they were very like abstract um there was no characters in them there was no sort of like um very much about color and form and and sort of um shapes and things like that and um I started you know kind of like posting those on my website and then in 2007 and And I made a bunch of those.

24:34And then in 2007, I obviously started the everydays and started posting those on my website. And then in 2000... And what? Tell me through before you... Why did you do that? Was that just a discipline thing or you just want to explore the idea? What was the idea? Everydays? Yeah. Yeah. So for the everydays and sort of, again, just making art has been... I'm not a very well-rounded person. Let's just say that. I don't have a bunch of other interests. Like I really, my entire adult life has been pretty all in on art. And so I made, I mean, before I started the everydays, I'd made, I don't even know, probably 50, 60 like short films and sort of, you know, many, many other sort of like experiments and things like that.

25:21So the everydays really started just as a way to get better and sort of like teach myself how to draw at first. I had saw a illustrator in the UK who did a sketch a day and it was like oh that's and he had already done that like done a year of it and I was like oh that's really cool being able to kind of like see you know all the sketches and and sort of see that whole process um so I was like well I don't you know I'd do that to get better at that making art and so I did a year of that and then I was Sort of like, you know, I learned a lot about art. I was still very bad at drawing. But I learned a lot of techniques that would have taken me a lot longer.

26:03And the basic trick of that is it just, the everyday is really just trick you into working more. You know, when you're sort of like, okay, day's done. It's 9 o 'clock. You know, I'd really like to watch an episode of something or whatever. It's like, no, two more hours of making a picture. and so that's really it so I was just working more and so I was you know learning more whatever and I think having that that deadline each day gives you a lot more opportunity to experiment and sort of like well I'm gonna spend a couple hours on this and then that will be that and if it sucks whatever there's always you know tomorrow and so um you know it's on a huge sort of like much quicker level up in my skills and so I was like what if I use this to teach myself a reading program I didn't know any 3D programs I'd always wanted to learn one everything I'd done to that point had been 2D and so I started doing a render a day in cinema 4D which is was not really like a thing like I'd never heard of anybody doing it you know a render like this per day and so I started doing that and sort of really quickly learned you know that program and sort of was able to increase my skills really quick and then in 2010 I released a video and it went kind of like viral in sort of like the art scene or whatever and that's when it kind of like clicked for me that and even a little bit before that I started posting my work in uh in 2009 to Facebook um but it kind of clicked to me with social media that it was like I was spending all this time trying to get people to go to my website, which everybody did before social media.

27:49It's like, why somehow I got to give people SEO. I got to get people to go to my website. And then it was sort of like, wait, everybody's already on Facebook. And like, they're starting to like use this Facebook thing a lot more. Why don't I just post my pictures on Facebook where everybody already is? And then it'll just pop up and they can see the picture and to do. And so So I really kind of like, you know, pretty early sort of like understood the power of sort of like social media to be able to like reach people and then people could comment right there and everybody can see their comment and like you can have this sort of like immediate dialogue around the work.

28:28and so really from that point on I kind of was really pretty hyper focused on you know building a social media sort of like presence and kind of having that be this big unlock for distributing my art because prior to that I was also entering a bunch of film festivals and you know with this abstract weird fucking digital art stuff that they weren't looking for they did not want and so I was getting rejected and paying these fees and stuff and then I started getting into some of them and I'd see the other shit they'd have in the festival and it's like okay this fucking blows what why do I give a fuck what these people think anyway and so I realized like if I could just you know post things on social media I could reach people and sort of like build an audience there and not have to go through all the kind of like gatekeepers of of you know sort of museums or galleries all the other sort of like normal kind of traditional modes of things i could do reach people a global audience you didn't think you could sell anything at that point right because there was no real mechanism to sell digital stuff right no it was not a mechanism to sell digital stuff basically the the kind of feedback loop there monetarily that I was experiencing was as I got more sort of followers and people saw my work more and around this time I also started releasing a bunch of Creative Commons like concert visuals sort of like short abstract like 10 to 15 seconds sort of like clips that people could use at concerts or DJs could use behind them and so those started getting really popular too and so a bunch of people knew me just through like the vj clips and so then i started getting hired to do like concert visuals and then i started getting hired to do sort of like better and better kind of like freelance work and so to me that was it it was just sort of like okay i put out ideas on the internet for free and everybody does and then hopefully somebody looks at that and hires you for a freelance gig and and i was making really good money i was making like half a million dollars a year doing freelance work just myself and really cool stage settings i saw some of them at your studio they're like it's super cool stuff right yeah yeah i was you know by the end of it i was working on the super bowl halftime show and the democratic national convention and you know justin bieber and lady gaga and blah blah blah all these like really cool shows and really cool gigs and i was doing stuff for apple and i did you know some stuff for spacex and and uh samsung and blah blah blah all these things and the spider-man movies concept art and like really cool gigs and awesome stuff magically and i was just like well that's it like that's i've already top of what a digital artist could possibly sort of do and and you know this is great and then but i but i still kind of had this inkling even around that time around 2019 I was like, I would like to see this stuff.

31:33When I started doing weirder stuff, that's when I started doing weird stuff in like 2019. Before that, it was really quite normal. What switched? What switched is I realized that's what I truly wanted to do. I started making the images that the tiny voice in my head was like, you know it'd be funny if you did that and then it was like and I'd always be like yeah I don't know if like like I would never do political things just like nah that might be like piss people off like I don't know like I don't know I don't it's too weird I don't know and then I kind of realized like no this is the actual interesting thing is that when I make something that's hyper specific for myself and go really hard on that.

32:27That is what resonates most with people. When I don't try and make what I think people would like, and I make just what I would like, and I assume nobody else will like it. Those are the things people actually like the most because they can tell it. It just has a level of authenticity that things don't have now because everything else is like trying to fucking sell you some shit trying to like make some shit that's like a product versus if you make some super fucking hyper weird shit that people can tell like wow you did not get any fuck if like people like you i'm still scarred by so much of your work you truly did not give a fuck if anybody like this man you just you were doing you bro you were doing and you and when you do that it paradoxically resonates with people more than anything else and so i kind of recognized that and the the pieces started going sort of like much more viral as they were like way more what i actually wanted to make and so i recognized it was like this is something new too and what would be really interesting is to see this hyper fucking weird shit in like a museum like that to me is like the ultimate sort of like an actual new voice of something that feels like it's not been done before um and so I had like kind of this sort of like gallery type show in 2019 in Toronto and it was you know sort of it wasn't really at a gallery it was just kind of an exhibition space um but it had like a great turnout you know really huge amount of people saw it or whatever and then I had a bunch of gallery shows planned for 2020 and you know that was actually through a real you know sort of like gallery or whatever and then COVID hit and it was like okay well I guess we'll just kind of you know put aside this whole breaking into the kind of more traditional art world which you know I didn't really know how to do I didn't know how it operated I didn't really know how sort of like any of that that galleries worked and i wasn't having the gallery shows to sell things i was just having them to show the work um and then the nft stuff hit and it was like oh you know where did you see what was your what was your genesis point where was your the seed been from by that time so over the last you know sort of 20 years of kind of releasing work and sort of through the everydays and the short films and I would also release the like project files for my short films so that was like another thing that nobody really did and sort of like gave me a lot of followers through that um and the BJ clips um I had amassed you know a couple million followers by the time I learned of NFTs and so those followers sort of kept kind of bugging me and being like I think you should look at this NFT thing I think you should look at this and I was a a number of times I looked I I looked at it and it was just like, what in the fuck is this?

35:38This is not for me. This is some like crypto thing. This has nothing to do with what I'm doing. Like the fuck you guys talking about? I'm like, I'm pretty sure I went to like the Flamingo DAOs. I vaguely remember going to like Flamingo DAO site. And I was like, a DAO, what the fuck is this? This has nothing. What were you guys talking about? This has nothing to do with what I do. And then people kept bugging me. Like, really? I think you should look at this. Then I looked at it and I went to Super Rare and I looked at all of the like top selling artists. And then it was like, wait a second, I recognize these people.

36:17These are people that are in my like, you know, sort of like crowd of sort of like digital artists and 3D artists or whatever. and they're selling jpegs for like tens of thousands of dollars like what the fuck and then i was sort of like okay i'm more popular than all of these people if they could sell jpegs for like ten thousand dollars why the fuck couldn't i sell j for ten thousand dollars and so it really like clicked and it right at that time too it also sort of like clicked that it was like, wait a second. This is what stopped digital art from being part of the broader art world. There's no like real way to collect it.

37:02There's no way to collect it that sort of like is meaningful. And this process isn't new. The process of - All you had was like DeviantArt and you could show it in DeviantArt, but what do you do with it? That's it. You could show it and you could collect it, but you had to print it out or you had to give somebody a zip drive or a floppy disk or whatever, all these ways that didn't really resonate with people as like a real like way of collecting. And nobody was looking at it really in like a collecting sort of like mindset. And so I realized at that time that this was not a new process, that this had happened with other art forms.

37:44Photography, that's not art, that's just photography, that's craft, that's not actual art uh street art that's graffiti that's not art that's that's graffiti that's not art vinyl collectibles those are just toys that's not art those are just toys for kids to like collect and then with all of those things then it was sort of like oh okay yeah i guess it is art and then it became part of like actual sort of quote-unquote art and like so this was this was that moment with digital art and like I could like feel that and it was like wait a second wow I feel like I am actually the most popular digital artist like at this moment where this thing is like going like fucking crazy and it was like wow this is like fucking like nuts or whatever and so then I you know very quickly after that like click happened like as soon as it like clicked it immediately clicked and then I was like okay I'm fucking done with the client work I'm gonna try and like figure out if I can like do this thing like and so I immediately just like the night I talked to Pac you know immediately after I saw that super thing immediately texted him I was just like Pac was the the number one selling artist on there I'm like okay I know Pac immediately texted Pac what the fuck is going on here what and so we had this big long chat um where he was trying to explain it to me, and he, you know, kind of explained the collectors, and the sort of, you know, how the sort of ecosystem worked with the marketplaces, and all this stuff, and then from there, I just like, completely just like, this is the fucking thing, immediately, like, within the next week, I'd talk to the founders of Nifty Gateway, Super Air, I'd talk to Xcopy, I'd talk to blah, blah, blah, like, everybody I could fucking get on a Zoom with, that was like, guys, what the fuck is going on?

39:40And I talked to Coley and talked to like, you know, everybody I could to sort of like understand this. And then I think my next drop was like two weeks later. And so it was like, and then we were just, we were fucking off to the races because it was like, and immediately just like, this is the fucking thing. It also combined, you know, a lot of the things, it combined everything that I was interested in. I would say the only other sort of tiny side interest I have besides art is like sort of like fine, not finance, but like, you know, I would kind of like trade stocks, retail sort of like stocks and sort of keeping up with that.

40:24And again, not like crazy D-Gen or whatever. I was actually pretty sort of conservative or whatever. But that was was interesting to me, the like stock market. so here's this thing that you know i felt like i was kind of utilizing my computer science degree a little art and then this you know a mix of sort of like investing and so i was like okay this is a thing like i was i was all there how do you think about it now you don't make an nft every day no because you sold um the 2020 and the 2021 collections and there were relatively limited nfts and you obviously had the big one of one um that that became very famous but then how do you what do you do now in that respect because you're still producing the work every day yeah so we're still making every day is obvious are they commissioned now or how does that work no they're just like literally just like the same way before it's just like make whatever the fuck i want and then people sometimes are like hey can i buy that one and it's like sometimes i say yes And sometimes I say no.

41:32Most of the time I say no. And so that's kind of how we are. I will say I would like to, and that's one of the things on my kind of to-do list, is make the process of the everydays more on-chain. So that I'm minimally having some record on-chain of each everyday. I feel like that is something that I... Yeah, regardless of monetization or change of ownership, it's like they should be stored permanently. That's the whole point. A hundred percent. And so that is one of the things I think what's kind of stopped me from doing that is not knowing how to do that in a way that feels authentic. But that is something I really do need to sort of like crack because I think right now they exist, you know, in a smattering of social media shit that who the fuck knows I could piss off Elon, piss off Mark and we'll just go ahead and shut that down.

42:48I'll go ahead and turn the volume down on you. And so that, to me, again, is sort of one of the things that I think is really, you know, great about the blockchain is that it is decentralized. And it's like, no, I'm going to keep fucking posting whatever the fuck I want. And so, yeah, I think figuring out a good, meaningful way to sort of like, and I had a bunch of ideas of how that could happen. I think that is sort of the next kind of like evolution of the everydays is bringing that. So if any listeners have any suggestions on how we could approach it, because, again, there's a lot of different ways.

43:32Like, yeah, I could just mint the fucking NFT every day. But it's sort of like. Well, also, they're not. I mean, the inscriptions idea is closer to what you're thinking of, because, again, it still lives on AWS server as an image. You know, it's kind of it's still not perfect. So, yeah. No, and that's the other thing. And the inscriptions and stuff like that, and having it be actually on-chain, I mean, these are 4K files every day that are 25 meg. And so it's got to be, I think having at least some record of the metadata or some way of putting it at least somewhat on-chain. I'm not personally a huge, like, every fucking thing needs to be 1 ,000 % on-chain, because at the end of the day, I think the things that we value, regardless of the AWS going down or blah, blah, blah, like, it's backed up other places.

44:31and so i think the things that we want to um save culturally that are important to us we will save i mean you look at namjoon pike you know installations and and sort of like tv sculptures or whatever we keep those working we keep old apple 2e computers working that we you know Damien Hirst shark in formaldehyde that's still surviving take the fucking shark out change the fucking formaldehyde whatever or paintings that are hundreds of years old it's sort of like okay it's covered in 300 years of shit clean it off touch it up blah blah blah that's the thing if culture still values it in the future they will find a way to preserve it and it will only get easier as we have more and more tools in the future to preserve these sort of like old things unless of course there's some i don't know fucking ai fucking i don't know apocalypse or whatever it will get easier to preserve things what was it like for you going from the digital world and that kind of not corporate but you know professional career you don't think that nft is great suddenly the trad art world comes to you that must have been kind of weird suddenly you know you've got the auction houses and people like tico mcgrabi and all of the people suddenly coming into your sphere realizing that you're onto something new what was that like it must have been kind of surreal it was definitely very surreal because i think it's it was it was a surreal moment sort of um just creating all this stuff and then it just felt way too good to be true because it was sort of like it was like here's all this stuff you've already been doing that's great you already felt like you had gotten you know again i was like making good money it was sort of like okay i'm and gotten you know recognition i've got you know millions of hours and all these great clients and blah blah blah and then it's like oh so all that stuff you've been doing it's even way more valuable than you thought and it's like oh okay wait really really all this stuff so all these pictures that i've already made before that i thought i'd already gotten you know the full sort of like value and whatever you know uh sort of good good graces or whatever positive outcomes from these making these pictures there's even way more than that it's like okay like it's just uh it was definitely very surreal but i think um you know it to me is is such a like bigger moment than that and and something that i just feel very very very humbled to be you know a part of because again i didn't invent nfts i didn't invent this blockchain i had to be dragged and fucking like convinced that it was like you know something that would be super sort of like beneficial to me and i just sort of you know kind of happened to be this very very popular artist at um a time when everybody was locked in their houses and starting to sort of like what are these jpings things and what if we gamble on those you know what i mean and oh but also there's an element of you kind of had the right art at the right time so i always think of as art as a snapshot of culture and with this cult this culture got kind of super condensed because of the pandemic so everyone was at home so here's the internet culture it's our only culture now because we can't fucking get out of our houses yeah on top of it is crypto really starts coming into the mainstream as people are starting to understand that the governments are printing money and all of this big thing and then the art of that period is the essence of culture and if i go back and look at art of any period whether it's like i was lucky enough to grow up in the late 90s in london which was damien hearse tracy emin it was all about blur its oasis london was the epicenter of everything sure and that'll always have value damien hearse because it is just a snapshot of that yeah like warhol is a snapshot of the 60s the counterculture revolution and the commercialization and all of that stuff and that's what i see this now and it really strikes me um it really struck me yet again um when we were at your place at the studio a few weeks ago is when you look around a room and everybody's one degree of separation from anybody who matters anywhere yeah and we're not talking about it's a bunch of artists with their noses up or art galleries no no it's finance people technology people art people um trad art people random people who've just come into this space and you're like they're musicians everything and you're like okay this is special this feels like the really early stage of something that this magic won't be around in five years time yeah 100 and and uh i couldn't agree more it it really like feels like a moment that um is just so special and and the amount it was a number of people to your point that you could kind of fit your whole head around it you know what i mean and that's right like you could fit your head around and it was a bunch of different things too it was sort of like you know all of these crazy pfps and and sort of all the the generative stuff and all the the other you know x copy and then sort of more uh just other types of digital artists um all sort of like converging and you know nobody knows what's going on nobody knows the rules of this everybody's trying new things everybody's seeing what everybody else is trying and is in inspired by them to okay i see how they tried that what if we did that but then sort of like mix in this technology or this sort of aesthetic and like things are you know becoming very popular very fast and then very not popular very fast and and just this sense of just a crazy sense of community um you know around that to me just is very i don't know it's this it's like a weird mix of like pvp fucking zero sum game fucking you know fuck you pay me and also very supportive because it's like obviously there's money being traded and that's a big piece of it i'm not like so naive to be like this is just about beautiful art and fucking it's like okay no no no it's it's there's a lot about it's kind of a lot about money it's kind of a lot about money um But then there is really also to me that element of like, you know, something more, I don't know, cultural and something special about it that does, I feel like, kind of, I don't know, make it not just about money.