Abnormality

Episode 4: Gramajo (@0xGramajo) is joined by Abnormality (@joshripple). The project owner for The Culture Project(@TheCulture_Art). Abnormality is a community creator who thrives in the vibrant realm of Web3. Their presence is most prominent on the Culture Project platform, where they frequently share their artwork and the articles they pen, offering glimpses into their explorations and perspectives. The Monsters Discord stands as a virtual sanctuary to them, a place they consider a second home and where their activity flips between active participation and silent observation.
Abnormality adopts the role of an observer across many digital landscapes, a habitué who is more inclined to silently explore rather than directly interact. Their journey often takes them into niche corners of the internet like Aperture MP and Rezva's discord, where their influence is subtle yet significant.
In the intricate and dynamic arenas of FX hash and ArtBlocks, Abnormality engages in what they describe as "hardcore lurking." There, they survey the latest creations and trends, tirelessly seeking pieces of art that may have slipped past the watchful eyes of the greater community. Their story is one of quiet immersion in the ever-evolving world of digital art and culture, where they remain an unseen yet integral part of the conversation.

Date Recorded: May 26, 2023

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WDR Newsletter --> https://gramajo.substack.com/

00:00 Active in web three communities, art-focused. Lurks.
06:28 Negative experience with NFTs, found mechanics weird.
15:10 Became head mod, involved in behind-the-scenes projects.
17:39 Invested heavily in technology and NFTs, lost.
25:05 Bringing value through generative art on Tezos.
27:16 Interested in buying more, impressed with Tezos.
33:21 Conversation about kids, hobbies, and a beehouse photo.
38:42 Daughter acquired NFT collection and minted NFTs.
48:28 Met artists in the FX hash community.
52:57 Bids on FX hash can lead to steals.
56:02 Kim is a talented artist on FX hash.
01:02:58 Service to back up NFTs, get alerts.
01:06:50 Discussing plans to release art through auction.
01:13:03 Find me on Substack at the culture project.
01:19:24 Encouragement and admiration for NFT project endeavor.
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Links:
Gramajo
Abnormality
The Culture Project
The Culture Project Newsletter

Items we talked about

https://objkt.com/profile/monogrid/created

https://www.fxhash.xyz/generative/slug/reading-a-book

https://twitter.com/artnome

https://opensea.io/collection/dotdotdots

Music by: henriknorstedt

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Transcript

0:00

So I was basically just left trying to just tell everybody, I don't know what's going on, but I'll find out, and as soon as I do, you know, I'll let everybody know. And it was just kind of like that for a couple weeks. And then he comes back and he's not the same at all. Gm. GM, this is Grimaho here. This week I sat down with abnormality, the project owner of the culture project. He took over this project, and not in the best of terms. Yeah. Hope you guys enjoyed this episode. So let's dig. You wanted to get in with who is, you know, your intro, who is abnormality? Or if you want to go by your name, that's fine as well. Yeah. Abnormality is a gamer handle I've used since like 97 or 98, and then I go by just my full name on Twitter, which is at Josh Ripple. And I'm currently the owner of the culture project, which is something I took over a little over a year ago, which is heavily focused on generative art and FX hash mostly, but art blocks as. Yeah, that's. That's who I am. Awesome. Yeah. And then, as I mentioned to you on Discord, my name is Juan, so we can both dox ourselves a little bit. So you've been gaming since the 90s. All right. That's what that is. Yeah. Since I was a teenager, we used to have lands in high school with a bunch of friends. What games were you guys playing? We played Half Life when it first came out, like, oh, nice. 99, I think. And we played Caterstrike when it was just an add on to half life and doom and, I don't know, all kinds of games. Starcraft. It was fun. I love it. So wanted to know what discord servers do you kind of spend the most time in, just so people get kind of a sense of where you spend most of your time. In web three. In web three, the culture project, I obviously post a lot to there. Just art that's coming out and articles I write and everything. And then the monsters discord, which I'm sure you know, is probably like my second home. I'm there a lot. I lurk a lot in most discords, honestly. I lurk more than I engage. And then there's smaller ones I like to visit, like Aperture MP and Resva's discord. And I hardcore lurk in FX hash and artblocks and just see what's going on in there and art that's coming out and stuff I may have missed that's been out. Oh, awesome, man. Are you in the art blocks one too, as well? Is that what you. I think I was in that one for a bit, but it was getting kind of. There's so many discord servers that I'm in kind of chaotic. I was like, I think I need to get rid of some. Yeah, I feel that I'm in way too many. Yeah. So tell me, how did you get involved with web three? What made you go from. Were you actually in the traditional art space before web three? No, I mean, I've always loved art and admired it and gone seen art, but I've never purchased a lot of art or I'm a terrible artist. But I do do photography. That's how I guess express myself through art. Oh, awesome. Yeah. Have you been shooting for a while? Oh, yeah. Let's see. I took a college course that was photography based. That was like 2001 maybe. And I've been shooting ever since. I've done some weddings. I've done real estate. I currently do real estate photography for my dad whenever he needs it. I just shoot a lot of abandoned stuff and I like exploring. We do a lot of hiking, so I do landscape stuff too. I shoot a lot less now that we have kids and everything, but I still love it. Yeah. What kind of camera do you use for shooting? I have a Canon 60 full. Nice. Oh, damn, that explains that shot. You really have to have a full frame if you do real estate. I mean, just cramped rooms and everything. Makes sense. Have you ever thought about. Slight tangent, but have you ever thought about getting into the whole 360 webcam space? Man, I've messed with it a little bit through a guy here in town, but not really. That's not my thing. Yeah, seems to be like, I noticed that when the pandemic kicked off, that became like a thing. Like to do virtual tours with those. Everything virtual was popping off. Yeah, go ahead. I never really thought about, I guess the real estate and 360 virtual tours obviously was probably a big thing. Yeah, I think there's like a platform now that blew up, of course, and got really popular that I forget the name of it, actually, but a lot of real estate companies use it to host, to create the host and create those virtual tours or whatever. Yeah. Okay, so you weren't involved with it, but you do photography and you like that as well. So what made you go in? What got you into web three or just crypto as a whole? Well, I joined the whole crypto craze in 2017 and was heavily into ETh and other altcoins. And then I guess it's close to two years now. I started the NFT endeavor. What was the project? There was one specific project that was backed by stars, people from Hollywood. It was like Ashton Kutcher and his wife. It was a cartoon thing. I can't even think of, like stoned cats or something like, so, like, that was coming out and it was like a lot of hype behind it. And that was one of the first NFT projects I really heard about. I didn't really hear much about NFTs before that. And then I went in there and, I don't know, got in the discord and it seemed really scammy and weird. And it was my first experience with it and it wasn't a great one. The way they had the mechanics set up for selling. Like, people could buy a lot and just fill their wallets and they said, well, the people that need them, it'll get to them. It was just really weird. And after that, I just started branching out and going to a bunch of different projects and minted some really just random things at first, just trying to get used to the blockchain and how it worked. I didn't really get anything that was really good. And I don't know, art wise for a while, at least six months probably, of just buying weird crap, I would say. What was that first NFT that you ended? So it was the Ashi Kutcher one? Is that what you. No, I didn't get it. I wasn't able to buy it. That was my first gas burn, too. Like, the first thing I tried to buy. Obviously, back then, gas was really expensive and I lost, I don't even remember like $100 or some shit. And I was just like, I don't understand this. Why am I losing money? And I didn't get anything. So just, like, it was a big eye opener for the space and just figuring out how everything worked. I don't know. I just spent some time just learning about the technical side of the blockchain and just kind of minting random stuff and not spending a lot of money on anything before I really started picking out projects I liked. Yeah. What was this again? Like, late 2021? Yeah, it had been 21 in that late 21. Okay. Yeah. So I think we probably got in around the same time then. So I think you said you were, like, researching blockchain and all that. Now that you've kind of been in the space for a bit. Definitely over a year, probably approaching two years now. And specifically, like, the gen art space, what are some advantages. You think blockchain technology enables artists or community builders or anything really, to the gen art space or art as a whole? I have the most obvious answers with those. Just like the proof of ownership and the transparency of who owns what and artists getting their royalties. I think royalties was a big thing for me. It's amazing that artists can finally keep making money off of things that people overly sell and make tons of money off of, and those artists kind of stay poor. It feels like a revolution in the art space. I think that's why a lot of traditional art collectors have started to embrace generative art and other pieces of the NFT art scene, like the one ones. And. I don't know, there's a lot of great artists out there. Yeah, there is. And a lot more coming into the space too. I feel like. I feel it's slowed down. I don't know if that's just engagement or just. Lots of people have left recently and I don't know, there has been a resurgence with the big sales lately and more people are buying in on art blocks and other things and it feels like it's turning around. Yeah, hopefully we'll see that million dollar Fidenza sale is definitely. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, let's see. So yeah, let's talk about. I know you've referenced it a couple of times. So for those that don't know, what is the culture project? And yeah, we can go from there. It's a project that started about a year and a half ago. It's the first generative art project that I bought. My big introduction into gen art. The owner at the time, zero x Culture or ox Culture, however you say that he just released some whips like works in progress of the Brushstrokes project and a bunch of alpha groups. And I was a dots member. I don't know if you know what that is. A lot of people don't anymore. Well, it was a big alpha group and a cool project that's still ongoing. We could talk about it later if you want to. Yeah, no, I never heard of it. But yeah, so they dropped pictures of it in that discord and the alpha and some other big alphas at the time, and the art blew people away. I mean, it was just really cool. It's flow fields, which has been done ad nauseam at this point, but it was unique and it still, it's. I still think it's a beautiful project. I love the ones that I own still, but yeah, so that really came a big hit with a lot of those groups and they were going to have a Twitter release and a discord. So as soon as all that stuff happened, I mean, we were in there immediately and we got on the early stages where we got whitelisted and everything we could buy at a discount because we were the first people there and it really blew up. The discord was 1000 people were going to be able to join in the first 24 hours and it filled up in an hour, 2 hours. Oh, wow. And it blew up. And he had all these grand plans and ideas and he was really smart. He was a programmer for Coinbase, I think he still is. And he really knew how contracts worked and he would do these live spaces on video where he would show you and just explain everything and answer any questions, anybody, just. He was a really cool guy. He was really likable and just very intelligent and he had really cool art. Yeah, the brushstrokes. I know that for the one year anniversary article that you wrote in your substac, also the same name. Right. The culture project. For anybody that wants to check it out, I'll link it as well in the show notes. But yeah, I know you attached a couple of the images and. Yeah, that was the first time I actually had ever heard of that or even seen them. And they were nice. Like the ones that you included as examples. Those were really nice. I did like that about kind of what you were saying in that article as well, which was that the artist was doing live streams and showing kind of what, explaining to people like how contracts worked and all that. Because I feel like that level of behind the scenes is always fun to see as well. Definitely. Especially when we don't understand it and there's so much to it. I mean, it's funny, it's complicated. Yeah, it's super complicated. And just having someone there to just break down any dumb question you may have and just really take the time and it felt like something really special at the time. It was. I mean, it was something special at the time. Yeah, I could definitely sense that on your writing. I got that feeling very quickly. And I think someone even had a comment too. That was like a really long in depth comment about some of the stuff that happened after and we can jump into it in a bit. Yeah, you could tell that had some impact on people as well. So just keep telling me a little bit more about the beginning. So it filled up 1000 spaces in like 2 hours and stuff. Well, then he just started to release more of the project and what he wanted to do and how it was going to be physicals. And at that time, nobody was doing physical stuff. No one talked about it. Things were so different then. And the things he were talking about, I mean, few people were doing or promising, which there were so many promises back then, and everybody was docs back then, too. No one cared about that, which is just kind of mind blowing now after everything that's gone down in the space. So no one cared that. No one knew who he was. So it really was all about the art at the time. Yeah. And then I guess he had some posts about mods, and I, I jumped on. I was like, I. I became one of the head mods for the discord, and that's kind of how I became more involved behind the scenes. And I did some videos for some of the projects that were coming up because he already had, like, three other projects that were going to come out, and one was like an ASCII kind of faces thing, which has been done a couple of times since then, but they're really cool and unique looking. And then there was a pre brushstrokes, like a version zero of brushstrokes that was like the inspiration for that release that he never did anything with, but he would show us everybody pictures of it and whips of it and everyone. He promised everybody they would get that at some point. So when he left, he left some stuff behind, like the Ens name and the discord and the Twitter and all the key components to the project, and he left some eth behind, whatever was. And then I know you alluded to it in your article, but what kind of led to the downfall of the project and you kind of taking over for it? I think it was like a share taking over for a bit. And then now you've fully taken over it at this point, right? It's just you. Yeah, it's me and just some friends that are mods. Yeah. Let's see. At some point, these projects that he promised, one was supposed to come out within like a month or something along those lines, and it never happened. And after that month, he kind of disappeared for a couple of weeks, like literally ghosted nothing. No Twitter. He wouldn't respond to discord. So I was basically just left trying to just tell everybody, I don't know what's going on, but I'll find out, and as soon as I do, I'll let everybody know. And it was just kind of like that for a couple of weeks. And then he comes back and he's not the same at all, just like he's really depressed and he tells everybody basically, that he spent all the funds that were going to finance everything that he promised and only had, like, I want to say it was like four or five eth left out of 50 plus eth. Oh, man. He spent it on. There was two specific coins that he mentioned that really cool technology that he dumped a lot of money in, apparently, and they crashed. And then there were several NFT projects that he bought heavily in, one that did absolutely terrible right after he bought into, and then one that Mfers, which crashed for a little while, and then the community took over and it did really, really well and still doing well, but he sold all those at a really low price when they crashed. And, I don't know, he just got depressed because he lost all the money trying to make more money with it to do everything he wanted to do. And he just ended up saying he was going to leave and that was it. He disappeared again for a couple of weeks and then came back saying he had tried to give the project to somebody. And I said I would take it if you give me everything, whatever's left, I would try and just do whatever I can to provide some kind of value for the people that are left over and I mean, it just end up some other person. He agreed that he would give the Twitter to them for whatever reason and then gave the rest to me. And it became me and him running it for a little while. Did you get a hold of the Twitter handle and then. Yeah, I ended up getting it. The guy was going through some just general life problems where he had a bunch of stuff he had to take care of and just couldn't be around anymore. So he just gave it all to me. And I have ownership of everything now and have been running it for a little over a year. Man, that's wild. And then the project itself, it's already surpassed 100 e, right? In total. Yeah, it has. Yeah. So, man, that's a lot. Yeah, it is. It's pretty crazy. That's insane. Yeah. That's not like, I mean, even 100 e right now is $200,000. Yeah, it was crazy. Like, he sends me the ens and all that stuff and whatever was left over, and at the time it was like 20K in Ethereum, which was kind of mind blowing to me. I was like, you're just handing this over and I could literally just take this. Yeah, you could rug everyone even more. It's such an OD situation. And then I was like, well, how can I? I'm not technical, I can't write code. I can't provide those kind of things. I can't even release new projects. How do I provide value to everybody that's left over who wasn't so pissed off and left? I don't know. It was a really strange place to be in. Yeah. Did you get a lot of. Did you get a lot of heat coming your way, even though you were kind of, like, trying to remedy the situation as best you can? There was no heat to me at all. It was all directed at him and he was gone. So it was just me, like, having to take the heat in a way, just indirectly and try and. I don't know, it was so difficult for some people. They were just so pissed off when this thing was blowing up. People were paying, like, the rare versions were going for 0.7 and higher. Some people paid an eth. I recently bought one that was bought by somebody a year ago for zero point 67. I bought it for like 0.2, which feels terrible, but I mean, it was a rare one. Every time I see a rare one really low, I put it into the community wallet and I don't know. You got to let me know, man, because I need to get one of. Those and I'll send you one. I think the story is just like, it's so crazy to me, man. It's fascinating, it's wild, it's sad. Thing is, probably not the only story like that. People have been rugged in this space at this point. It's crazy to think about. No, I would agree 100%. I feel like it's very common. I feel like it's also very common to see, or I feel personally like just seeing that level of success overnight. It doesn't even have to be the levels of 50 eth. It could literally be like, I don't know, 20 eth. And to me, that's still a decent chunk of change. To me, that's a lot. Yeah, no, exactly. That's a decent chunk of change. Then the crypto space or the NFT space moves so quickly that the weeks of him ghosting, you probably felt like an eternity because it moves that quickly. And then, yeah, man, you're just chasing when you're in that hype. And definitely back then we were in a hype cycle for sure. You get so much fomo, and every week there's like a new thing that everyone is chasing. And if you don't make those people money, they get upset and they're very vocal about it. And that's a strange space. Yeah, I feel that I'm complaining a. Lot just because I guess I'm talking about a bad story, but there's a lot of good in this space as well. I guess I would love to emphasize that. Yeah, no, you're good. We're talking about kind of what transpired, and then we'll get into some of the good stuff that you're working on. So taking a step back from all those emotions and all that, what are some lessons or kind of takeaways or experience that you can either personally, like you taking over a project like that, or just from the outside looking in with helping an artist like that, what's something that you can share from learning. About all that as far as taking over a project? I guess it would be, if you're trying to fill someone else's shoes, don't try and do what they could do. Look at your strengths and try and provide the value that you're good at and something that you can just naturally do. At first, I was all, like, trying to. I was so stressed out about it. I was like, how am I going to release these projects? I felt like I had to do everything so quickly. The space, like you said, moves so fast that you just slow down and take a breath and just kind of. Everything doesn't have to be done so quickly. Yeah, I feel that, man. I think some days we all need to go touch some grass, as we say on Twitter, just go outside and take some pics with the camera. That's how I kind of decompress sometimes. It's like working out or literally just walking around the neighborhood with my camera and just trying to not think about whatever it is that's on my mind. Yeah. As far as other experience, I think the market has naturally experienced a lot of things I've experienced, and they've already adapted, and doxing really is a big thing for creators now. You can't just be anonymous most of the time anymore. I mean, it works for some people, but the majority of big projects, people want to know who they're investing in. It's changed a lot. Yeah. All right, so you've taken over the project and all that. Like you said, there are some positives. So what have you been up to with the community, or what's the community been up to? I know you've been doing some good stuff for the culture project and the server and everything. Yeah. So my whole thing was bringing value to the people that were left over and the holders, and I was like, I used to write a long time ago, like 20 years ago. I used to love it. I was big into FX hash at this point on generative art, and it was just like my scene. So I was like, maybe not a lot of people are on tezos that collect gen art that are in, like, art blocks because our brushstrokes project was on Ethereum. So a lot of those collectors obviously were probably on that blockchain. So introducing them to FX hash and buying different pieces off of floor from artists I like and just giving them away to the community. I've had so many members in the community have to create wallets where they've, like, what wallet should I get? And then I introduce them to Kokai, however you say that one, or the temple wallet, and it's an interesting experience. And then some of those people have gone on to buy other pieces, and they like that blockchain, how gas is and the prices, and it's just a great chain to collect art on. Yeah, FX Hazard is dangerous, man. Yes. I went down a rabbit hole when I first got into that, man. I mean, it's such an awesome platform. I think for me, Artblocks is, well, the price of eth, too, as a whole. Sometimes just ticket for admission for entry in art blocks is pricey. I don't know enough about Genart to be like, oh, yeah, this is what's going to take off next. And it's not always about what's going to take off next. I think that's where I get back to just buy the things that you like, for sure. Definitely. But it's also like, I don't have an infinite money machine over here either. I do need some stuff to work out sometimes a little bit. But that's what made FX hash really dangerous for me, because it was like, I don't know. Well, Tesla's now is like a stable coin. It's like a dollar or something. It's even lower. It's like, really? I might have to buy some more. Yeah, but they're like, it's 50 Teslas. I'm like, I don't care if this does well or not. It's like, I'll just buy whatever. Yeah, FX Ash is great. So let's see. So you went into the FX ash community, and you help people kind of go down the Tezos rabbit hole, which is a great rabbit hole to go down. How do you keep up with that FX hash? That's like, the one thing I feel like I struggled with the FX hash is there's just like, whatever the fastness of what three is as a whole, I feel like with FX hash, it was like on Royce, because I feel like it even went even faster. And I'm not trying to downplay it with. They're using code or whatever. So I think the outputs are just faster versus someone that's hand drawing. And it's not a knock. It's just like. It's what it is. But even with FX hatch, when it was first rolling out, I think they had that weird minting and open public schedule where it was only open for two days or whatever, and then it would close for like three or something. But it was pretty hard to keep up, to be honest. How do you do it? That's tough. One of the reasons I started a new article that I do every Sunday now. It's like an FX hash weekly roundup where I just see what's coming out, what's been posted for that week, and just pick the pieces I like and write about them and show some of the outputs from it. That helps, but, I mean, there's still stuff that I miss. There was something that came out last week that I had no idea about. And then, just like, the secondary is flying, so I missed out on it. And where did this one come from? It's hard to keep up with. Yeah, agreed. Yeah. That's what I enjoy, your newsletter. Personally, I feel like it helps me just see what's happening in FX hash, because, man, yeah, I get lost in there pretty quickly. I get lost in the sauce. So what's it like running a discord server, running this project? Writing a newsletter? You got your finger in a little bit of everything. Kind of like me. What's that like for you? And it sounds like you have a family as well. Yeah. How do you do it? Teach me some. Share some wisdom. I don't have any for you, man, it's rough. I have two kids. One's ten, one's seven. So, I mean, I'm constantly doing stuff with them. They have the hobbies they're into. And then my wife recently went back to a boot camp for a little college thing for coding, which she was doing for six months. So I had zero time to myself. So writing was difficult, but, I mean, I made time for it. And it's something I really enjoy. I don't know what it is about it, if it's just, like, soothing or something. I just like looking and doing research about artists, and it's a way to find stuff I've never seen before as well. It's just an enjoyable hobby. Yeah, it's weird because I didn't similar to yes. On making time for it. I definitely feel you on that one. Now I feel like I have to be very about one rule, making time. For it set aside either every day or every other day. Even like 30 minutes of writing where you just write about something project you want to work on and build on it, and then it helps set a ritual and a schedule that you can get used to and then add more time to as you go. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. I started doing that a little bit more now, I think the first three months of my kid, I don't even know. I think I was just running on fumes. Somehow I made it all work, but also not at the same time. I had to take a break from the newsletter for a bit. But it's funny, too. Writing is like, we all write letters. Well, I guess we don't even write letters, actually. We write emails. Emails, tweets and stuff like that. But it's funny. The funny thing about writing, I noticed is I actually got started with my newsletter to kind of like what you're saying, just to just practice getting better at writing my thoughts and just being better at, like, I'm not even going to say long form because really what I'm doing is not even that long form to begin with, but just longer than a tweet. And, yeah, it's weird. If you don't do it often, it's hard to come up with the words to write sometimes. Yeah. I went back and read the first articles I wrote when I got back into writing and, oh, my God, they're terrible. I could see progress. Like, it's getting better as I go and, I don't know, it was kind of terrible and nice at the same time to read. To read the old article. But I think it's something people should do. They should go back and read things that they've written in the past and see just how they've progressed. And I think it can help also. It's something that's helped me. Yeah, definitely. It's good to be a good writer, for sure. I like the way that you write, too. I appreciate that. Yeah, no problem. And it's good that you say you can at least go back, read your first article or two and be like, oh, yeah, I definitely write better than that. At least you're conscious that you're getting better at it. Yeah. Could be worse. You could be like, oh, I'm super good at this. Yeah. What I was going to ask you, actually, so I know you were talking about your kids and they have their hobies, too, and I think I've seen. So for the people that don't know on the podcast I ended up buying, I think, was it the genesis for you or for your daughter? Is that what it was for me? Yeah. It was a shot of this beehouse that you. I guess there used to be bees there. Not anymore, but do you want to talk about that, actually? Because obviously we're pumping up my bags at this point, but it's a beautiful picture, for sure. I really appreciate that. Yeah. As soon as I saw it, I was like, I need to run to my. Go buy this immediately, because you actually had shown that image a couple of times, I think, before you had used it somewhere else. I forget where. I posted it on Twitter as just a random abandoned photo I took, and then I posted it to discord. You're in. I don't know which. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's where I see, because I had seen it before, and I was always like. I was always like, this shot right here. I was like, I like this. I was like, if it ever meant. It'S mine, you did some kind of gift, like a gimme gift with a cat or something. I remember. Yeah. Do you want to talk about that picture? Yeah. So, like I said earlier that me and my wife used to explore abandoned places. We used to go hiking a lot and camping, and I used to rock climb a lot before I had kids, and we were very outdoorsy people before we had children. So there was this house that we would pass when we go down this old dirt road in the country, and it was obviously abandoned. I mean, the trees were all over it, and it was just falling apart, and that was like, man, like ten years ago. And we come up on it, and you could just hear the bees in the air. It was like a. It was loud. It's the loudest I've ever heard bees before. And we just walk up on it. You could just see the hive. It was that big, and. Yeah, it was pretty amazing. I got closer to it than I probably should have. I was actually kind of uncomfortable being as close as I was to it and took some pictures of it, but they never cared about us. They paid no attention to us. We would go through the house and, I don't know, just take photos of whatever was left behind and just kind of interesting to explore places that are just being retaken over by nature. Have you ever researched what happened? Was it house? Yeah, it's on family property to a neighbor of theirs down the road that I've talked to and asked them about it, and it was owned by some relative down the road that passed away. And no one really owns it. It's just a cattle property now. So some family member just puts cattle property on and just cleans it up every now and then. And I guess like five years ago, they took a cat, a tractor to it and ripped down all the trees and brushes and tons of stuff around it and ended up taking out the beehive also. And yeah, the bees ended up leaving after that. Nuts. Bees are crazy, too. I don't know if you've heard that Joe Rogan podcast with the bee. Yeah, I don't really listen to Joe Rogan too often, but somehow this one made its way into from the algorithm, made its way to me on YouTube. And yeah, it was interesting hear her talk about bees or whatever. And the reason why I bring it up is like you were talking about how you could hear it and it was super loud. And she says something very similar where apparently they fly like 100ft in the air or something, but you just hear this loud humming, buzzing sound because there's just so many of them congregated together. That's wild. Yeah, these freak me out, man. Have you gotten your kids involved with blockchain at all? I think I know some people. No. Yes. I've minted a few things on tezos for them each, but I haven't made tezos wallets for them. But there's some cute pfps that they liked that we minted. And there was like this weird robot PFP that my son liked that we minted. And then there's an artist that I've collected a few things on that she does some, I guess I'd call it girly art. I don't think it's doing any justice, though, but it's really nice art and my daughter loves it. So I've collected a few pieces of her work from my daughter. Yeah, that's what I thought. I think I remember reading that somewhere and I was like, oh, that's awesome, man. I'm happy I can do that. My daughter has a nice eth collection, actually. She ended up going to Marfa with me last year, and we minted a Marfa yuka for free for her, and I got to mint one there as well. And we ended up meeting somebody there, Phil Mahan, who does stuff for bright moments. And we got to sit down with him and chill with him and just talk to him about art and different artists that have released through bright moments. And he did a minting experience with Keras. Like he recreated a coinbase wallet for her on my phone and she minted her first ever NFT with him and got to mint a bright moments and it was a really cool experience. And then literally an hour after that she got to mint her second NFT, which was a, has a pretty, we've added a few other things to her eth collection, but yeah, she has a cool collection now and has her own ens address and. Oh, that's awesome, man. Yeah, that's the stuff I'm looking forward to. You start now. You just get little, either the boy or girly. Just get stuff that you think they may like and start them with wallet. Yeah. This is what I tell my wife when I buy more Pokemon cards. It's for my kid. I mean, my son loves Pokemon cards, so there may be logic to that. Yeah, right. There you go. We'll see. I'm hoping my daughter will like Pokemon cards because that's definitely an excuse I have. My daughter loves the animes for Pokemon. She watches all those. So she loves Pokemon. Yeah, I still watch it, too. It's good stuff. So you mentioned you want to. What is Marfa like? I actually haven't gotten a chance to go yet. I'm planning to go. I hope you go. I don't think I can go this year, but I'm probably going to go next year. But I'm in the middle of. Yes, I, I live in Texas, but I'm on the opposite side. And I've always wanted to go to an NFT event, but I can't travel to one. We just don't have the money to do that. But when they said artblocks was having a headquarters in Marfa and we're having a big event, I was like, man, I got to go. But I found out maybe a couple of weeks before the event. So I was going to just drive after

work at 05: 41:02

00 on a Friday for 8 hours or 9 hours to Marfa by myself. And my dad ended up going with me and my daughter ended up going with me and I took that Friday off. So I mean, it made it really enjoyable. It was a lot of fun. We ended up staying like 30 minutes away from Marfa. And yeah, we got to go to several events. The Art blocks headquarters was amazing. It was really cool. And then there's another place called Glitch that just opened and I don't know if they have a partnership with proof, but Kevin Rose of proof had like an event there and I went and sat there and listened to all the different people that had come through, and that was probably the coolest event I went to. I think all the stuff I learned and the people I listened to, I really like that event. Yeah, it seems like a really fun event. I definitely want to go to it. I don't even know. I had never heard of Marfa before. I haven't either. My dad has. He collects some old maps and other random stuff. So I guess Marfa is known for some antique stuff and some other art stuff. So, I mean, he had heard of it, but I'd never heard of it before. Yeah, that seems to be like a trend. Like, I was reading about people that knit, I think, or quilt, maybe that's the same thing. But this company or this couple ended up creating, like, they just took over a whole town. I think it's in Texas, too, actually. And they took over a whole town, and it's now the capital of quilting. There's like 1020 plus stores where it's all about knitting or quilting. So one of them sells special yarn and I don't know, and I was like, what the hell is going on? But anyways, it reminded me of that. I was like, did they just pick Marfa? And we're like, we're making this the capital of like, let's do it. So the owner of art blocks, Snowfrow, there's an artist that moved to Marfa that has physical pieces and he has these. I don't know that they're rocks. There's something that he has built out somewhere, and it's art that a lot of people really like. And apparently snowfrow has had lots of inspiration from that art and other stuff that's there. There's supposed to be a really good gallery in Marfa as well that I wasn't able to go to last time because it was booked, but it's supposed to have some really nice stuff there as well, like traditional. I mean, it's, it is an art centric town. So I guess when Snowfrow moved there, he just thought that it would be the perfect place to have a headquarters. And it's an interesting place. There's some really cool stuff there. Yeah, I definitely need to go check it out. I don't know when, because like you said, especially now, I feel guilty leaving my very small kid. But someday soon I'll probably go. But yeah, it's super interesting. Never heard of Marfa, but I'm glad that you've gone at least. And I do know, again, going back to your substac and all that. I like that you kind of wrote about it and all that. Because for some of us, because it really is. It's like the closest airport, I think me and you were chatting. I was like, el Paso? And it's still, like, not that, you. Know, you have to drive, like, three or 4 hours probably. Yeah, exactly. And no offense to El Paso, but it's not a capital or anything of that nature, but, yeah, it's super. Just caught me off guard, and I'm like, all right, now I know I got to go pay homage and go there. Do you know which artist it is by any chance? The one that snowfar was inspired by? Yeah, no, I can't remember his name. I could probably google it super quick and find, nah, you're good. No worries. Unless you mean. I think I already found it. I think it's Donald Judd. Oh, okay. Don't even know who that is. He has a foundation there, so I'm pretty sure it's him. Well, that makes sense. Guess the stars are aligning for it to be Marfa, then. Yeah. So, I mean, since you've gone and stuff, do you have any tips for anyone that's, like, the first time that they're going to go? Should they wear their ledger around their. No, don't do that. Really. I went by myself for the most part. My daughter did go to a couple of events, but she didn't stay very long. Her and my dad went and did stuff. So don't be shy. Just go meet people. I met a lot of people there, and it was just such a cool go to. There was multiple events they had at night, and I went to one at first, and it just really wasn't my scene. So I left and then went to where bright moments was doing their thing, and that guy Phil was there, and so I hung out with them, and, man, that was a fun party. They had a musician there, and it ended up being a really cool night. So it was, like, tons of artists, and, yeah, he got to just hang out with people that have minted on FX, hash, and art blocks, and I met a lot of cool people. I love that. Is it all, like, mostly art block stuff, or was there actually some FX hash kind of events as well? No, it was all art block stuff, but there was just artists, I guess, that have released on both chains. They've done on both platforms. Yeah, I feel like it'd be cool to make it, like, a gen art thing, because I feel like it's been fun seeing people move. They start off in FX hash for whatever reason, and then move on to, or vice versa. Yeah. Because I was definitely FX hash to art blocks. I just started collecting a lot of them for the community wallet art blocks, doing, like, really low bids on lots of cool, different projects that I thought were by good artists and got one to keep in the wallet and one to give away. And then we've given away, like, 28 different gen art pieces now to the community over the last year. So it's been really cool. Yeah, no, I think that's awesome that you do that. Like, again, trying to bring that value to all those that are sticking around. Hopefully some people have stuck around. There's a small amount we've got still left over that are still there all the time. But, yeah, a lot of people have left over over time. Yeah. We're still adding people, too, though, which is the great thing with this substac articles and everything. Sorry to. No, go ahead. Yeah, I think you said for other people, too, that maybe don't read your newsletter, but you did, like a v zero. Like some of those works in progress that ox culture had that you got a hold of, you were able to do another job. Right? We're going to. I mean, we haven't even done it yet. Oh, man. Okay. I'm probably going to do it on FX hash. And like I was saying before, I've met a lot of artists through the article just because I'm writing about them or I'm buying their stuff and giving it away. And artists obviously appreciate that kind of stuff. Phenomena, I think is how you say his name, I'm pretty sure is one artist that I've met, and he's just helped me a lot behind the scenes with random stuff. And I think it may be a duo, I think there may be two of them, but it's just like, different people like that. There's a lot of helpful people in this space. There are. He's going to help me release it on FX hash if I need any help, because it's beyond me, I think. Yeah, that's awesome. I love that. That's what I love about web three, is that the community aspect, so strong people are always willing to help out. And if you have questions, it's very much like a high tide lifts all boats kind of thing. I think I butchered that phrasing, but it's not like the zero sum game kind of situation. Yeah, it's interesting. Like, I wrote an article recently, and then I had an artist that I wrote about contact me and he was just asking me general questions about what I thought about his art, and I don't know. It's just cool to have experiences like that where you can actually talk to the people you're collecting from or people that you respect in some way. It's a cool space. I don't think there's any other place where you can enjoy art like this. Yeah. And you have access to the artists themselves. That's kind of the reason why I feel like I started this. I've been collecting from people and stuff, and people have been very willing to answer questions and help and me learn from them and all that. It's great. Yeah. When are you going to do the culture project in Zencan? Like, an article about them? No, like a collaboration drop. Let's do it. I know, right? Let's run it. Yeah, I'm ready, Tom. Exactly. So you do the coding and the drop. I'll just read an article. Win win, right? I'm sure he's cool. He seems like a cool guy. Yeah, he seems like a cool guy. Yeah, I agree. And he seems to do a lot of cool stuff. Let's see. So, if money wasn't an object, what are your top three grail gen art pieces that you would go mean? Like, if money was no object. I mean, Fidenza is definitely on the top of my list. I've always loved those. I think Cromwell Squiggles, obviously. I love those things, too. Squiggles are awesome. And then, I don't know. What are my other favorites? It's kind of expensive. Is archetype, I think the same guy that did the decagons for Deca Art did those. I can't think of his name. I'm so bad with names. I'm super bad with names, too, trust me. Really good with bases. In a kind of creepy kind of way, almost. But names, yeah. There's others that aren't, like, just overly crazy price, like, memories of coilin and harvest anti cyclone Fontana on the art block side. But if I was going to go, like, FX hash, man, I'd buy a hollow. Hands down, I'd buy hollow first. That's my number one on FX hash, probably. There you go. But then, like, garden. Talk about Zancan. You can't. Got to have dragons. RGB, takata. There's so many good ones, man. I could keep going. I've been really wanting an RGB. They're so cool. One just went for, like, 800. 850, which is crazy low. The fact that you could put bids now on FX hash and when you buy stuff on FX hash, sometimes it takes a while to sell shit. I mean, it could sit there for like a month before there's a purchase. So now that you can put bids in and people just want money really quickly, you can get away with some steals. I got something recently that I was just, like, kind of blown away at the deal I got, and it was something at the top of my list that I could afford. You're right, man. You're on it. 800 pesos. Is that what it was? Yeah. Too. Yeah, man. It's crazy. That's crazy. That's cheap. That's cheap, man. I think, tezos, you can get some deals right now on FX hash. That's insane. Yeah, I would do it. I've always kind of wanted one of these pretty badly. Time to break the piggy bank. Yeah, might need to break the piggy bank on this one, actually. I might have to delay. Hopefully nobody tweets about this. Just kidding. I think you're right. Yeah, it looks like people. Yeah, it looks like people are taking that because even floor is not that much more anyways. Wow. That's insane. Is the floor down that low on that project 1000? It's already down to. Okay, so it's not like it's 800 is not like that much of a gap. No, it's not. But, I mean, there's a lot of people just throwing things pretty low below floor, and floors can evaporate pretty quickly on FX hash. Oh, I know what you mean. Everything's pretty low and they're. Except for zankans. I feel like zankans are still, like, the garden monolith ones. I'm pretty sure that's still, like, some crazy ass number. I think they're like, I saw some 13k maybe somewhere in that area. That's not too bad. I think they were going for a. Lot higher before 2025. Maybe at some point. You know what's dangerous, too now is you could pay with credit card. Oh, dude, I bought two things on credit card. Yeah. And I was like, after I did this, I was like, I am not going to do this again. This is dumb. Yeah, I did something pretty small to support an artist, and I was like, that was too easy. That's dangerous. I need to stop that. I did do this. I was like, I didn't have any tezas in my wallet, and the floor was kind of going quickly on something that just released. I was like, okay, I'm bust out the credit card real quick. That's insane. Squiggles, fidenzas yeah. I'm trying to think of which one. I think the most recent one that I liked was the cargo one. I forget the name of the guy. Oh, yeah. Wasn't it Kim something? I don't even know. Is it the moving, like. Yeah, the moving. Yeah, it's Kim something. I don't know if it's a guy girl, honestly. So I'm not going to say. They have done some really cool stuff on FX hash. It's something like reading a book or something like that is what it's called. And then she's done monochrome. Or they have done monochrome 1.1 and some other stuff. They've got some cool stuff on FX hash. Yeah. I'm going to actually minted one of those for the culture project and was able to mint one and then ended up selling it and making a good amount of money for the community wallet instead of giving it away. So even more stuff for the community. So that was pretty cool. Yeah. Look at you, man. Yeah, that was a good experience. It was hard selling that thing, man, because they do some really cool. Really? That cargo one was kind of the first time that I heard about it, and I think it was like Ko from the Monsters community who was talking about it. It got my attention, for sure. Look up mono grid by them. I don't think it's on artblocks or FX hash. I think it's just on Ethereum. And I think it's one of their kind of. Like a lot of people have it. I'm pretty sure it's monogram on their grail list. And it's cool. Monogram. Same artist, though, as cargo. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it is. Let me look if I can find it by Kim Asendorf. That sounds right. Yeah. Kim Asendorf. So let me just look up this name. Real monogrid. That's it. Monogrid XYz. I want to say that you're going. To make me buy something. I should. Monogrid is tezos. Okay. Yeah. I didn't realize that. But they're like at 1800, I think, or something. Or 9000. What are they at? Floor price is 5800. Tezzos on those. On the monogrids. So, yeah, it's loading. I need to see these now. That's kind of a strange website, to. Be honest, but numbered. That's kind of cool, actually. This is a cool website. Oh, wow. Mono. You just click on it and it goes full screen on it. That's cool. Oh, this is a trip. So I think this is. I want to say it's one of their first projects that I don't think was on FX hash. I think it may have been released on, like, hen or tia or something else. I'm not 100% sure on that, though. It's actually a really cool website. Whoa. I think. Here we go. Yeah. They were created in 10, 20, 21. It's a collection of 256 real time animations created by Kim Asendorf. That's cool. So they're kind of old. Yeah. Rest in peace, Taya Rhen. Yeah. These are crazy. I like these. Yes. They've been doing that style for a while and they are good at it. Man. I love most of their projects. I mean, they've done some cool stuff. I've been looking at their. I'm pretty sure I'm going to put a bid on something on FX hash as one of my next purchases for them. I'm not sure which one, though. I think I'm going to do reading a book because it was their first FX hash release. I'm going to go check and see if I'm actually saying that project right. No worries. I'm looking at these right now. These look cool. I'll link them in the show notes, too. Let me make a note of it real quick. Yeah. Reading a book. That's what it's called. There's a thousand of them. And it was their first. Oh, these look nuts. Yeah. That was their first project on FX hash. It's probably the cheapest one out of all their projects. I think also probably because there's 1000 of them and the other ones are a lot smaller. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. You sent me down a rabbit hole now. For sure. Enjoy. It's a wonderful rabbit hole. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. I think going back to. I'm kind of with you on almost all the ones. I think with the ones that you've selected. I do like autoglyphs. Yeah. Autoglyphs. Yeah. That's an obvious choice because they're on chain. Sorry. Yeah, that's right. They are on chain, aren't they? Yeah. And I'm a sucker for on chain stuff. It's definitely a good thing to be a sucker. You know, at first, I think, like anything else, that's genart. I think about the monsters community. Hi, I'm Dave. It's just like a bunch of lines and triangles. He hates generative art, doesn't he? I think he's warming up to it, but, yeah, I think he critiques pretty hard. Kind of hilarious. I was listening to one of their spaces. And he started going off. I think it was Fidenzas or something universally loved. I was just like, what the hell is going on? It's funny. It was a good take. It was funny. You sometimes need that opposite opinion a little bit. For sure. Definitely. It cracked me up because I showed fidenzas to my wife and she was like, this is nice. And I was like, yeah, this is nice. I'm like, but it's also over $100,000. And then she was like, yeah, it's not that nice. It is, but we just don't own it. That's what it is. Yeah. So Fidezzas are definitely, like, super nice. I like meridians. Oh, yes. Those aren't too bad in price right now and then. I like squiggles. There's been some low bent, like nine e for a meridian lately, I think, or maybe even lower. I saw one, I almost bought one when they were like at five, I think at the beginning of the bear, and I should have just pulled the trigger, man. I could say that about so many damn things. I know. But, yeah, once I found out about autoclyphs being on chain, because at first I was like, yeah, man, they're just like, the hell is this? Triangles. I was like, dave, this is triangles alliance. I don't like this. And then I started researching and learning more about it and I was like, oh. I was like, yeah, I need this provenance to it. Yeah, I need this. But, yeah, it's funny how that works. Have you used anything like club nft where they do backing up of your nfts on Tezos and have you heard of it? No, I never heard of that. What is mean? It's a service that you could sign up for and you could literally back up the nfts you've purchased and it'll send you notifications when, hey, you haven't backed up this amount of nfts. And so it's a way of just kind of taking a better ownership of the stuff you own, where you can literally download. I think you should go read about it. There's so much to it. It's definitely, if you collect a lot of tezos, you should look into it. Yeah, I'll go look at this. This is interesting. I've actually never heard of this. How did you stumble upon this? I don't know, Twitter and just being on Tezos a lot. I don't know. I really don't know how I came across. Maybe somebody I follow. Algorithm got you somehow, I think maybe. Art gnome who may be a big personality in the. Yeah, yeah. Art gnome. It's on the website. It's him. So if you don't follow him, you probably should too. Honestly, he's a cool guy in the tezzos system or scene system. Looking him up right now. Art. Now uwe. Let me see if there's a link to him on this website. No, it's not. This person. This person only has 80 followers. That's probably not. Why isn't there a better. I mean, I'm following him. Let me just search his name. CEO at club NFT. Hold on, I'm going to post it. Oh, I see him. Yeah, got him. Oh, this guy looks interesting. I already like him. His hat's awesome. So funny. The crazy thing about the NFT space, there's so much information coming at you from all different places and you could be in it. I don't know, maybe. I guess I'm not deep in it then. I guess on this side of the neck of the woods, but yeah, the tezzo side. Yeah. I don't know. I'm in it pretty deeply, I thought. But guess not. Learn more every day. That's right. Yeah. Let's see. Is there anything you're looking forward to right now? Like either in the art block space? Epic hash or anything really. There is an art blocks project by someone I follow that she comes out with some cool stuff. Lisa Orth is the artist. Oh yeah, I've seen her. Yeah, she's got an art blocks project coming out and it's called speak to me. I don't know, I just really like the style of it. I think comes out next week sometime and it's a presents, I think, not a curated. So it goes for they're usually more affordable. So it's something. I don't know. I'll watch the price on and watch the see how the dutch auction goes and I might buy one for the community wallet to give away possibly. Awesome stuff. Man, I love that you're doing the giveaways and stuff like that. That's great. What was I going to ask you? So I think you mentioned actually that v zero of the work in progress for the dropped. Obviously I'm not going to hold you to it or anything, but what do you think in timeline for anyone that's. Listening, I could really do it at any time. But it's hard to decide when you want it to be the right time. But when is that? The market's kind of been weird. I'm just kind of waiting it out a little. Bit and seeing if engagement gets a little bit better. I don't know. I don't know if that's a good idea in the long run, though. Like the people who left over, should I just try and reward them now and just release this thing? And obviously anybody that owns a brushstrokes, it's going to be free for them. I'm going to figure out a way where they don't have to pay anything to mint it and then it'll be a public auction where it's not going to be very expensive. I don't even know how much. Less than ten teslas most likely, if anybody, I don't even know how many I'm going to, what the size is going to be. A lot of factors I'm not sure about, but I am going to talk to some other artists about that stuff soon and just see what their opinions are about it and see what they think and just go from there. But it's definitely going to happen, I think, in the next month or two at the latest. Yeah, it's a weird time in the market, like you said, so I don't blame you. There's a lot of, I feel like, what was it like in super rare, there was only two auctions at one point or three auctions. I don't think many people are minting or anything. Yeah, I think people are just a lot of people are waiting and just biting their time, it seems like. Yeah, I do get that though, like trying to reward people that are still in there with you right now when probably we're towards the lowest of lows. Hey, taking a quick break. Want to talk to you guys about the DJN's agreement. If you guys could like subscribe, give this podcast rating, greatly appreciate it. Helps keep free content coming to you. Also want to give you guys a heads up. I had to edit part of this. We talked about our history and just learning more about it during this bear market. So yeah, thanks again for supporting the show and let's get back to it. So if you have any book recommendations, feel free to send them my. Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. I ended up just asking Chad GPT to give me a list. Not a terrible idea. Just tell me what I need to read to understand like 80% of everything. And it's like, here you go. And I was like, all right, well, I was actually going to write a series about like, let's see how good Chad GPT with its top ten, how good it is and probably just write about that. I probably still will do that, to be honest. We'll see how good I come out the other side. Well, you may get stuff that's slightly older, unless they've updated recently, because in most of the knowledge that chat GBT uses from like 2000 or 2021 or something like that. Yeah, 2021, I think September 2021, but I think now the new version. So I've been playing around with the premium version. I think that one connects to the Internet or something. Wow, that's cool. But I mean, even so, September 2021, anything that's like post September 2021, I'm like, I got nfts for that, right? Yeah, it's more just like the older stuff because I see he does a really good job of the Madonna in the garden. He does a really good job of grabbing some of that older art and conforming it to his style, which I really like. And sometimes I'm like. I'm like a caveman. I'm like, I understood, like, half of what he just, what he said. And I'm like, I need to be better instead of just being like, ooh, it glitches or it moves or pretty. It's pretty. That's about the extent of my adjectives. I'm like, all right, I should be. A little bit better and more. Yeah, I think I probably said cool like a hundred times. I mean, hey, it's good. I mean, it's so funny, though. I think, I don't know if you listened to my previous episode with Revza where I was know, I was thinking about the comment where you said about your daughter and just in know where I was. If is the art that we all like on Twitter. And this is obviously under the assumption that most people in the crypto NFT world are most predominantly men, is the things that are, like, pumping. So, like apes, pfps and mfers and all this, are they pumping and do people like them? Because we're all mostly men and that's what. And it caters to us, I guess. Yeah. Versus, like, what you were saying, like quote unquote girly or whatever. I say that for some things, she's like, there's girly things that she loves, but then she loves. She was born on Halloween, so she likes horror stuff. There's some weird stuff that she likes as well that I wouldn't think she would like. So I don't know. Watch her be like, dad, I really love rip cash. You got one of those and you're like, what? Where did that come from? Well, then my son, he likes pink and he likes flowers, but then he also likes left or dead. And it's funny. Humans are complex. Let's just say. Yes, definitely complex, for sure. Good for him, though. I'm glad that he likes pink. I also tend to like pink as well, and wear it and all that. And, like, hispanic culture, like, with the older hispanic generation, they're always like, why are you wearing pink? And it's like, why do you care? Just the damn color. Right? Let's see. Yeah. Anything else that do you want to shout out your newsletter or anything where people could find you anything of that nature? Yeah, on Substac. It's at the culture project now. You could just go to substack.com and do backslash or forward slash, whichever one it is, at the culture project, and it'll take you to me and all the stuff that I write, which I predominantly write about, fx, hash, but I do cover some artists that do art blocks as well. And I've written about photography and some other random stuff. And then there's the Twitter, where there's at the culture underscore art, which is our culture project, Twitter, and then mine is at Josh Ripple. If anybody wants to give a follow. I'll definitely link them all as well, so people can just click on them and all that. And then I think before we kind of wrap up, because I think we've kind of been out of now for hour 15, actually, I think there was one more before we get into this last one, but, yeah, let's talk about this alpha group project that kick started this whole thing. Dots. It hasn't been fully minted out. There's 10,000 of them. And the mint mechanism is tied to the price of Ethereum, so there can't be 10,000 of them until Ethereum hits 10,000. It was a very unique. The way that you were able to get them and be able to mint them was just so different than anything else. And the art is just really cool and weird and different. Also, there's the little bugs, and the whole thing is they're bugs that live within code, so they're dots. The whole thing is, it's such an interesting project. They would do, like, these orwellian quotes, and there's all these puzzles. And it was another project where you had no idea who the artists are. You still don't. And it was just a lot of people that got together that were just really smart, different kinds of programmers, different people that are good at puzzles. There's just different aspects. And they all got together in this community and kind of ran it. It was a community made, and there was no artist or leader. It was just the people that got into it, bottom. And thought it was really interesting. And the only way that you could communicate with the artist or anything was through Twitter. They would change like the banner to some cryptic message, or they would retweet some weird video that had to do with Orwell that said something specific. And there was like, all kinds of quotes we would do. Like, all animals are equal, but some animals are equal or more equal than others. It was so different. I'm looking at it. So is it dot, dot, dots? Yeah, that's it. Dude, this thing is crazy. Unfortunately, they obviously thought Ethereum was going to get to 10,000 faster than it has, because it hasn't. I feel like that makes it better, though. You see, I did too, right? Because obviously everyone want minting out is always like, you definitely want minting out to be a thing. Well, it's hard to keep interest, obviously, in the space. Like we've said before, it moves so fast. So when the puzzles came, fewer and fewer because they didn't think it would take this long. I don't even know how long it's been. Yeah, it's been a long time. It was one of the first Ethereum nfts I purchased, I think, like one of the first kind of PFP ones I did. And it was my PFP for six, seven months, probably. I think I actually remember you as his. Mean. I met a lot of, like I said, smart people in that discord that were programmers, and a lot of them went on to do stuff with brushstrokes and helped him with some stuff at first, and they went on to do their own projects and I don't know, a lot of them have done very well. Yeah, I'm going to have to check this one out. It's another rabbit hole, man. It is. It's crazy. There should be like a NFT hall of Fame, a website where it highlights really cool projects like these and other ones that are just unique. I agree on that, actually. That'd be good. Yeah, thanks for explaining that one because I was like, I'd never heard of this thing. But it all makes more sense now because I swear I remember seeing you with that PFP for a while. I still see it randomly, man. There's still some people rocking them. It's cool to see every now and then someone on Twitter or in discord that has one. All right, so for the last question. So I think, as you remember, I think you've been reading my newsletter as well. Pinchos is kind of like tapas snacks. So what is your favorite snack? Oh, man, I like chocolate and caramel together. That's a good combo. I don't know. Like caramello. That's probably one that I've been eating a lot lately, and I don't eat a lot of candy, but I probably eat one or two of those a day, and they're just these little squares that come individual packets. I guess I probably buy the miniatures, honestly. It's probably a candy bar, but, yeah, that's my snack. And then I tend to drink milk and eat chips at night before bed for some reason. I'll watch a show, and I'll just eat a little bit of chips and drink some milk before I go to bed. That's awesome. I love that. The simple things that life. It is. Awesome, man. Well, thanks again for doing this pod. I appreciate your time, man. No, man. I appreciate you having me on here and letting me talk about the culture project and everything. It means a lot. Yeah, of course, man. When I read that, I'm glad that you wrote that article, because when I read it, I was like, I had no freaking clue. This is crazy. That's, like, what I was thinking. People are joining the discord, and they literally have no idea what has happened. I was like, I need to write something, and it's been a year, so, I mean, I should let people know what this is about so they're not confused and I don't have to explain it a lot. Yeah. No, honestly, I'm glad that you wrote it, and I'm glad that you jumped on here, and I'm hoping you. I'm rooting for you, man, because I think it's hard what you did, stepping in like that and running NFT projects. I mean, I could only imagine. I've minted some of my stuff and some of it sold, and some of it has. It you experience a little bit of the highs and lows, but never 50 e or nothing of that nature. So I applaud you for doing that and for stepping up for the community, for the community that you were a part of instead of just letting it wither and die. So, yeah, I think kudos to you and definitely a great story. And I'm hoping the launch of this new project is a success and hopefully it revitalizes it to better things. Thank you, man. I really appreciate it. Yeah, no problem.