Jim, Jan, thank you for joining us here this morning.
We're going to start the show here in just a few minutes.
We will give it a few for folks to filter in.
Get our speakers up on stage while we wait.
Good morning, and welcome to the Lucky Lead.
Today is Thursday, February 1st.
Folks, the sun is shining here in Chicago.
We're going to hit 50 degrees today.
We are absolutely cooking here today in Chicago.
Claire Silver, she's cooking too,
and feeling nice and hot after a quick $1 million raise
yesterday with her Corpo Real.
Art on Bitcoin and Solana warming up as well.
We're going to dive into that today, folks.
Even the mines are heating up deep, deep underground.
We've got a lot to cover on today.
I see some friendly faces out there.
DJ, Joe, Pop, thank you for joining us.
As a reminder for any new listeners out there,
we do run this show every weekday,
Monday to Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern,
covering all the major news in crypto and NFTs.
I'm your host, Tyler D., and I'm joined today
by some amazing co-hosts.
We've got Emily Love's crypto, a Web3 security expert
and co-founder of Foolproof Labs.
Ghost, content star over at Lucky Trader.
Quiet Whale, deep in the AI streets,
still hanging out with us.
Then Logan Hiscock, he's our editor-in-chief
He's repping the Lucky Trader account.
Logan, GM, how you doing?
A little chilly here in Northeastern PA,
but doing as well as we can for Thursday morning.
Hopefully our warmth in the Midwest here
Folks, it's a big show today.
We've got a lot of guests coming and already with us.
He is the founder of Collectors Corner,
He's been dabbling across Solana and Bitcoin lately as well.
Astum, Jim, how you doing?
Excited to be here with you all.
Well, we'd love to have you as always.
And then, folks, in the second part of the show,
we're going to have an interview with artist Cyber C
We're going to be talking art on Bitcoin more broadly,
how it's different, how it's unique,
their decision to mint generative art on that blockchain,
along with a preview of Cyber C's Dos Ex Machina drop.
So we are very excited for that part of the discussion.
Today's show, also a special show,
is brought to you in partnership with Wasabi.
If you don't know Wasabi,
they boast the most liquid NFT derivatives market,
allowing NFT traders to go long or short.
NFT projects, yesterday, very interestingly,
Wasabi published their open interest data
A few takeaways that I saw,
I'm curious for Logan's thoughts here as well.
One, the Wasabi market is nearly 100% long
The Pudgy Penguin long-short ratio has fallen
from what was about 100% long
to a more balanced 60-40 ratio
and is seeing the most perps volume.
And then D-GODS is 100% short.
So Logan, I'm pretty sure you saw the data.
What jumped out to you about the Wasabi market right now?
Unfortunately, my first reaction was to kind of laugh
regarding the D-GOD stuff, Tyler.
That was just what jumped out.
Of course, we've been talking about the Pudgy longs.
I just reran the numbers as you were talking there.
It does look like at least 1% now is long, D-GODS.
So somebody put them out of their misery a bit there
with relation to it being 100% short.
But I just think this is really indicative
of overall sentiment, at least on my timeline.
If you take a look at the open interest for all of these,
think about sentiment as it relates to your timeline
and how people are feeling about different projects.
The market pretty much reflects that.
If you want to make a bet in that direction, of course,
now you have the opportunity to do so.
Yeah, I'm familiar with you there, Logie.
I think this is going to be a great just dashboard
to continue to monitor ongoing sentiment,
how the timeline is feeling about these collections.
I think just looking at the Blur board, it's so messy.
It's so dominated by a handful of whale farmers.
It's really hard to have a full picture of what is happening.
Whereas the data appears a bit cleaner on Wasabi.
And granted, it is at smaller scale,
but it doesn't seem overly farmed in any way.
So we will certainly continue to track that.
Folks, what are we talking about today?
It's an art-themed show, but we have to start
with a few big crypto headlines,
and then we'll get into our discussion with Asim.
So let's just dive right in.
If you didn't see the Morning Met newsletter from this morning,
So first up, FTX is making their customers whole.
They dropped that announcement yesterday,
but it does come with a twist.
Their customers will be made whole at November 2022 prices.
And as we know, the major crypto tokens
are up quite a bit since November 2022.
So take that with a grain of salt,
but still, it looks like it'll be a positive outcome.
Tether, next up, Tether made $2.85 billion in profit and Q4.
and they made more than companies like Nike and Goldman Sachs.
So the stablecoin business is booming for Tether.
And then we got to talk Jupiter.
Yesterday was the Solana Super Bowl.
We broke it down live on yesterday's show,
so we're not going to spend as much time on it.
But I think the story this morning
is that the team is facing a little bit of thought
for how they've been selling some of their tokens.
Logan, I think you've been following some of the Jupiter FUD.
What are your early reactions to this situation?
Yeah, early reactions are,
one, I was not deep enough in the weeds
with the docks and everything
to be prepared for some of these things that have happened.
A lot of people talking about the fact
that this was kind of like an open market sale.
you probably could have figured most of these things out, unfortunately.
So that's a shot to myself for not being prepared
or informed enough going into it.
I think the tough part about this has been the communication.
Meow has done a pretty good job at communicating everything that's happening.
But he's done so in a way that like,
and he's getting some shit for this on my timeline, at least.
All of his messages are like these super, super long tweets.
They're like the really, really long form tweets
that nobody's actually taking the time to read,
which, again, is a little unfortunate for all of us
because we don't want to digest our information in that way.
So, yeah, early reactions for me,
it's just been a little bit of like,
I'm still bullish Jupiter, I guess.
I'm hoping I haven't sold or panicked.
But I guess people deeper in the weeds,
people that care a bit more about some of the technicals
and the short-term trading stuff,
probably have every right to be mad
about some of these things that either weren't communicated well
or were communicated oddly.
And, yeah, that's kind of where I'm at.
So I want to take the communication piece off the table, actually.
So as I understand it, this wasn't in the docs.
Anyone who did the due diligence would have seen this coming.
So I actually want to focus more on just on the conceptual decision
to sell tokens in this manner at this size.
I guess, again, I didn't have a full chance
to process this yet this morning.
And Akin, I'll throw to you in a second here.
But I guess my understanding is that they're basically running
like a one-sided liquidity pool.
They're selling tokens that way.
It is allowing buyers of Jup to buy and sell into their pool
and providing additional liquidity there,
I guess there's some fun around the size of it.
But then, alternatively, this is versus having done
like a private token sale,
where they perhaps could have raised the same amount.
So I guess that's my read on the situation.
What are your reactions here to some of the fun we're seeing
about how the Jupyter team conducted that token sale here?
I mean, so I think this is a classic case of people
on the timeline not doing research
and not understanding what the intention was.
And so if you understood the mechanism,
the core focus was to create price stability
for a very, very hype mint.
And what the team did was create a liquidity pool
where anyone who were claiming to take the tokens
they wanted to sell could insta-dump in size
without essentially crashing the price.
And it also created a scenario where if you wanted to buy,
you had ample liquidity to fill your positions
hey, we want to focus on price stability,
this incentivized botting,
because what typically happens when you have low liquidity
on hype mints is the bots will literally run the price up,
create FOMO, and then the buyers who were really loyalists
who wanted to kind of accumulate a bag,
unfortunately would have to buy high
and then eventually get dumped on.
And so the core intent has to be clear and important.
And the core intent was we wanted to create price stability
and ample liquidity right off the gate
so buyers and sellers could kind of find the equilibrium price.
The secondary effect of that,
because the team is writing liquidity pool,
is you're going to raise funding unless the pool is exhausted.
So if everyone basically sold an insta-dump all the way below 40 cents,
right, the team would have basically,
sure, maybe gotten some fees from the pool,
but essentially would have raised zero.
And so I think part of the challenge here is,
a lot of this was communicated multiple times
in multiple ways to the core constituents,
You look at podcasts, you look at AMAs within the discord,
like there are multiple times over the last week
where this was communicated.
But the problem is those who don't read,
those who don't follow now are kind of left with,
oh, we didn't know what you were doing.
We're not sure if you know it was a raise.
Like if you read it, like obviously it was a raise
because if the pool was actually bought
and not kind of crashed to 40 cents,
the team will end up with some stablecoins in it.
And so that was to me relatively obvious.
I think ultimately the communications could have been
maybe a little more explicit,
I'm blaming folks who didn't take the time
to actually even read things and ask questions prior.
And with you there, it's kind of hard to play the,
I'm surprised you didn't explain it well enough card
if it's laid out in docs.
I mean, that anyone can discover.
Meow's communication style put aside
because I'm also not a fan of his posting style.
Aston, your hand popped up curious for your reactions
to Jupiter or the other headlines.
Just on the Jupiter thing.
because I know you don't want to talk about communications,
I think you have to ask yourself
if this is going to hurt Meow and the Jupiter team.
And if you think that it does,
and I don't know, then you have to know your audience.
Like I totally hear what you're saying, Joaquin,
Most of these people don't read a lot.
They're not going to go into a big, deep post.
So I totally get what you're saying.
But ultimately, if Jupiter and the Jupiter team is hurt
by this, then I think they should consider changing
their communication style.
I don't have a full read.
It feels like the sentiment is down a bit,
but perhaps just because the whole timeline was rallying.
We're going to see Jupiter hit a dollar.
And now some folks are talking about this liquidity pool
was a part of the reason why that didn't happen.
So basically, it's just kind of moon boys being upset
that they didn't see the price action they wanted.
Joaquin, I'll give you one more chance,
but then I do want to move on to some hard decisions.
Just an issue on sentiment and to ask them to post.
And I think the communications publicly could have been better.
But I don't think the timeline is a constituent.
And if you look at the sentiment in the Discord
and the folks who, in my mind, have been engaged,
the sentiment is still good.
I don't think this is any long-term damage to Jupiter
or the team or what they're building.
And for anyone who's been following over the long term,
a lot of the decisions were not just made independently.
A lot of these decisions were actually made in consultation
with the community who had input.
And I think that's an important decision to make.
Everybody is not your constituent.
I think the core constituents, in my mind, were fairly briefed
and I think are still generally happy with the outcomes.
No, that's a great point.
And hey, if you're pissed off, stop using Jupiter.
There's alternatives available broadly on Solana right now.
Let's cut the crypto talk.
I'm sure we'll talk about it more tomorrow.
So I think some big headlines and ask them,
I'm open to where you want to go.
So I think the biggest one for me, we had the Sotheby sales.
I want to talk about that.
Yesterday's Corpo Real was a big headline from Claire Silver.
We had smile on Solana a few days ago.
I think there's a few takeaways from that.
Just quickly, I'll just give a quick breakdown of the Grails
because we didn't talk about this yesterday.
Some of the big sales here, X copy citizens came in at 203,000.
Beeple's time, the future of business at 178K.
Till death do us part, $165,000.
So those were the three higher dollar sales.
Grant Eun's bedtime came in at 69,000.
Dimitri Turniac's right October at 69 as well.
Otherworld, the garden at 50K.
Tyler Hobbs, incomplete control at 50K.
And then Hackatow, his flood one of one just at 40,000.
And then Serialized, Castle in the Sky at just $27,940.
Some solid sales up top on the bottom in there,
perhaps a little underwhelming.
I asked him, I'm curious for your perspective,
kind of rate the outcomes here.
Did this come in line with your expectations
for how the Sotheby sales were going to go,
any takeaways, any big surprises?
Yeah, you know, I actually think this is fairly in line
with current market conditions.
I'm a little bit less versed on some of the one of one sales,
like the X-Copy and the Beeple one.
I mean, clearly the Beeple, and we can talk about that one.
As you and I were discussing a bit privately,
the buyer was held onto it before
and sold it for about 10X to Starry Night
and then bought it back for even less than what they bought it for previously,
So that's certainly an interesting one.
But if you look at some of the generative art
and the comparisons, there's an incomplete control by Tyler Hobbs.
It sold for right around $51,000.
And that's pretty much what the last sales have been.
There was a sale of 52,000.
And, you know, Sotheby's has a little bit of a premium.
I don't know if the numbers here are before their premium or afterwards,
but generally speaking, it seems like things were fairly in line with the market.
And I did hear some folks saying the Grant Yoon piece,
which sold for $69,850, was a little bit low for Grant Yoon.
So it feels consistent with the market.
But I think there's two takeaways.
You could say, well, it's down a little bit.
Sure, it's down from peak.
But these are still really big numbers for burgeoning art ecosystems.
So I see this as a victory,
even though things are maybe not as expensive as they were before.
I don't see this as a bad outcome by any means.
Yeah, I'm with you there.
They basically kind of came in line with the target price ranges that Sotheby set.
And I think it's a takeaway.
It's just a sign of the broader times on the Ethereum art market,
especially on the higher end.
Quickly, we have to talk about the time sale here.
So I think we're getting the tweet pinned.
This is perhaps the craziest art flip, rebuy story of all time.
So the collector, I think his name is Han.
So he first bought this Beeple timepiece, May 21st, 2021,
That was $320,000 at the time.
Fast forward five months later, on October 6th, 2021,
he sold the piece to Starry Night for 675 ETH, or $2.4 million.
A casual 5x in ETH terms or an 8x in USD in five months.
And then fast forward to the auction that took place on Tuesday.
He bought it back from Starry Night, the same collector who first bought it.
He bought the piece back for $177,000,
which is $150,000 less than he paid in May of 2021
and a whopping $2.25 million less than he sold it for.
So I mean, I think this will go down as one of the best trades of all time.
I mean, what are the takeaways here?
I mean, when I look at this, I think it just goes to show,
one, how crazy the 2021 cycle really got at peak.
And then just, I mean, a few whales, a few funds,
like what they can do to devaluations
and how high they can run these numbers up.
I'm curious for any reactions you had.
And I mean, look, for folks familiar with the Starry Night story,
they were obviously taking risks that they probably should not have been taking
And a lot of the art that they bought,
they bought at extremely high prices,
not to mention some of the other stuff they were doing
that ultimately led to the collapse of their fund.
So I don't think we should necessarily expect those types of sales.
But I do think that there's a couple interesting takeaways for me.
One is that I do think we see another hype cycle like this.
I think that there will be digital assets.
I think a lot of them will be art,
but certainly PFPs and other things that get really,
really high valuations when people are feeling rich.
I just think this is human nature and it happens over and over again.
I think that as the market matures, we won't have quite as much volatility.
Like you may not be seeing some of these like really,
really crazy multiples happening in the short time period.
When markets grow, they tend to become a little bit more mature,
a little bit less volatile.
But I also think we're going to see more funds,
maybe not ones that are taking as big of risks,
but more institutional money coming in.
And at the start of any industry, when you zoom in,
you can like zoom into the Bitcoin price chart if you want.
There's a ton of volatility that tends to smooth out over time.
And I actually am really bullish on the art market for a lot of reasons.
I'm going to talk about this on a spaces tomorrow.
But to me, seeing such wild price swings is normal at the early stages of market,
but it's not normal to see them at this high of price values, absolute values,
which makes me think that if this continues,
then the market is going to be very, very large in the coming decades.
So that's a little bit of a hopium case, but I wanted to put that out there.
Well, pump the hopium into our veins. I love it.
I think, I mean, we're already seeing signs of new funds being spun up, right?
We're seeing, you know, some crypto pump collecting happening,
I think some squiggles collecting happening.
So I don't think it's much of a stretch to think that we will also see funds
coming after one of one in grail digital generative art,
perhaps later on in the cycle.
One more question on this, and then we'll move on, ask them.
But I'm curious, like, what are collectors saying?
Do you have a sense that folks have been kind of sitting on their hands
with respect to going after grails because of the Starry Night overhang here
and just more continuing to hit the market?
Is that kind of put a pause on some of the buying we've seen,
or is it just more just a broader state of less liquidity on ETH?
Do you have a take on that?
Yeah, I don't hear too much about the Starry Night overhang specifically.
I'm really seeing two major groups of collectors.
There's the folks who are more funds or, you know,
really well-capitalized DAOs that are taking a much longer-term approach.
They're looking five, ten years out.
These are your flamingo DAOs of the world.
And it's probably some of these new funds that are coming in
and buying things up right now.
And I think that's a smaller percentage of the capital based on price action.
And then I think there are some folks who are really three groups.
And then there are some folks who are, you know,
really interested in some of the other plays going on.
We saw something like one seller sell, I think, those 32 memories of Qilin
just all into wrapped ETH bids and go buy some pudgy penguin ecosystem
and mochi mons, which to be honest, I don't even know what those are.
But I think they did well in that trade.
And so some folks are just looking for liquidity and they're like, you know what,
it's just better everywhere else.
But most people who hold this art, I want to point out,
most people are holding, which is also a decision, right?
If you look at it, there's not a ton of movement.
Yes, the price isn't going up, especially in ETH terms,
but most people are just kind of sitting on their hands waiting.
So I just think people are waiting for new folks to come in
before they'll really sell.
And it's a little bit more of a liquidity story versus the star night story.
Well, it's good to hear the collectors have patience.
So I want to get into our next story,
one that also might require a bit of patience here for some early collectors.
So Corpo Real from Claire Silver, I think expectations were high.
She didn't let down, you know,
this was a 500 NFT sale over on Braindrops,
Claire's second Braindrops collection.
I think 200 went in the first round,
which I think was primarily for Braindrops holders.
Then the public sale, there were 300 NFTs available that they sold in seconds.
I don't think it lasted more than a minute at that one ETH price point.
So 500 ETH raised in just less than an hour or so for Claire.
I think we've seen what I'll call a solid secondary market action.
So 200 ETH is traded, the floor is holding at 0.92,
So a touch under, but not crashing by any means.
I'm curious, what were your reactions to Corpo Real?
How are you feeling about this one?
Yeah, I actually think it's holding up better than I thought it would.
And it has nothing to do with the art,
my prediction as to why it might not have held up as well.
It's just more that it's 500 ETH,
and the art market has been pretty low liquidity.
And, you know, this to me felt a little bit more like a niche project.
I mean, Claire Silver is, if not the top one of the top three names
So certainly if people want just like exposure to AI art,
this is a great artist to go and collect from.
And I think the pieces look great.
They're quite interesting captivating.
I just felt like it was a little bit niche.
Not unlike my feelings on post photo AI,
this sort of like AI sub-genre with life in West America, etc.
It just feels like it's early.
And I think that some people are probably just wanting early exposure
to this, let's call it like digital fashion art trend here.
Some people probably just want exposure to Claire.
And some people are probably looking to flip.
So I'm thinking that is somewhat the case.
But overall, I think obviously a great sellout
and, you know, holding up quite well, I would say, given market conditions.
Yeah, and I think this is kind of par for the course
with a lot of the brain drops, mints, right?
Botters typically get in, flippers come in.
So folks kind of came in who probably weren't in the long-term collector bucket.
So we've seen that impact of price action a bit.
I think a couple thoughts on my side.
One, so I love that she's branching into like AI and art fashion.
I'd love for the drop to kind of go to the next level
where you could actually, you know, use the pieces in some degree,
like on a PFP, metaversary, that type of thing.
Not that we're in the metaverse.
But I feel like when I think about digital fashion,
that's what I think about versus just, you know, AI images of dresses.
So I think that's one thought.
But also, I'm pretty bullish on this one.
I'm a fan. I think it looks great.
I think the price, the value will certainly be higher than it is
on a long-term time scale.
I have no idea what it looks like here in the near-term future
But I love this collection.
And I think Claire did a bang-up job on this.
I didn't know you were a fashion guy, Tyler.
I'm actually just kind of tongue in cheek.
I'm curious, though, do you feel like, you know,
this is opening your eyes to a new genre, perhaps?
I think it's always exciting when you see the new genres
And we haven't really seen...
I mean, I can't think of any drops that are much like this.
And, you know, I've seen some of the criticisms
that some of the pieces, you know, they feel interchangeable.
That's not... That one doesn't really impact me.
I think you can make that argument about a lot of the various art styles.
I think you can make that argument about her Genesis set.
It's more about wanting to have the art as a collectible part of the provenance.
I think it is an important part of the story for me.
And, again, I think the outputs are quite nice.
I think you talked about kind of the...
Maybe we just get quickly into Smile.
I shared some thoughts on Smile myself, but I'm curious.
What were your takeaways?
Clearly, one of the more provocative events we've seen in a while.
You know, I wasn't sure what to think about Smile early on.
And actually, Roke, the artist, is even in my community.
And initially, when he brought it up as a, you know,
5,000 piece collection, I thought, oh, that's a lot.
But having seen the outputs, I just...
He is such a breathtaking variety in this
that I find impressive just at that...
The sheer output and how different so many of them are,
but still stay common to a theme.
And a theme that I think is quite easily picked up by anybody, any human, right?
We key in facial expressions.
We key in on Smiles, especially.
So I think it's a really, really cool collection.
I think that, you know, I haven't talked to too many Solana collectors
to see how new folks who are not exposed to his artwork feel about it.
But I find it really interesting.
And I think that... I'm curious to see where it goes in the long term.
I mean, in the short term, it's at 0.6 Solana.
So it's 3X from the mint price, but it's still not very expensive.
You know, it's a little bit under $60 right now.
So I don't know if I would say it was like a big financial success.
I don't think it was a failure.
But I think this is one that...
I think it'll age well just because it's so unique.
And I just don't think there's a lot of artists
who could replicate something like this.
But, you know, those are just my early thoughts.
And I own a bunch of these.
So I'm obviously a little bit biased, but I'd love to hear yours
or anyone else's thoughts on it.
I don't know if unique is the word I'm looking for.
It stands out. It's distinctive.
You know this is route based now when you see this collection.
And it's going to jump out.
I think I shared some thoughts yesterday, the day before.
I would have loved to see this as a cut down
to like a 500 to 1,000 supply set.
I think there are absolute...
There are some great pieces in the collection.
I think with 5,000, it does...
There are some that are a little bit more interchangeable,
which I think from an investment standpoint
probably is going to keep the floor down a bit here
But of course, he made that decision.
He wanted to make this more accessible at a lower entry.
So it seems like an outcome here
is there is more art interest over on Solana.
I mean, the momentum that PopPunk had with rubber
now carried forward with Rupe and Smile.
And we've got art projects trending every day
in the top 10 to 20 on tensor.
And I think that's a big deal.
I think more and more artists are going to take notice of that.
So that's going to be a new trend to watch for sure.
Well, Aston, we're almost running out of time here.
What else are you watching here?
I mean, we have a CyberC up here.
I know you'll be chatting with him.
So to mention this, we had a little bit of delays with the function,
which is an Ordinals curated generative art gallery.
So you have to be accepted to release there.
I'm sorry, not gallery platform.
So that should be kicking off soon.
They were working out a few bugs.
So I'm really excited for generative art
and probably more art collections on Ordinals.
And also excited to see some of, to your point,
the Solana art that comes out.
So we probably won't have time to get into it,
but PopPunk talked about how his rubber release would be a white list
for other art collections and other artists.
I'm very curious to see how those dynamics play out.
I'm not sure 100% how I feel about the allow list dynamic for art,
but I think it'll be a really great experimentation.
And more than anything, just seeing more and more art on these chains,
because my thesis is that collectors on any chain enjoy art.
And I kind of, I don't want this mindset that it's only DJs on Solana
or only, I don't know, boomers on Bitcoin to be broken,
because it's just not what I see.
I could be wrong, but I'm excited to see that play out as well.
Well, a lot of Solana traders just secured a big bag yesterday
with this Jupiter airdrop.
So there's 400 million new dollars floating around this ecosystem.
There's some money to be spent on art.
We'll ask them, thank you, this was a great chat.
And we'd love your input on some of the other Vivid and CyberSea talk here
Before we get to CyberSea, welcome him to the stage, though.
Today's top headlines powered by Wasabi.
Trading volume on ETH jumped to 21.1 million dollars on Wednesday,
though most leaders were once again read down 5 to 7 percent.
Doodles announced a new collaboration with G-Shock dropping soon,
though the market shook off that news, with Doodles falling 5 percent to 2.09.
Amber Victoria and Kelly Milligan's Art Blocks collab balance minted out yesterday
at the 0.07 ETH resting price, a touch above there on secondary right now.
In other Art Blocks news, Art Blocks did announce the acquisition
of digital art platforms, Sansa, with efforts already underway.
to integrate their platform into the Art Blocks ecosystem.
In other protocol news, we saw NFT lending protocol, NFTFI,
introduced its refinancing feature, allowing Lindys to extend their loans
without paying off the full balance.
Overall, Bitcoin, RSIC, the miners led action once again with 34 Bitcoin
The floor jumped 30 percent to 0.07 Bitcoin.
I think it's a touch higher than that now.
Node monkeys were also up 5 percent on the day to 0.182 Bitcoin,
Quantum cast, they delayed their mint again.
It was supposed to be today.
Now it's not coming until Monday, February 5th at 12 p.m. Eastern.
Who knows if it will even go off on Monday.
Over on Solana, NFTs did see slight red again
that Jupiter money has not hit the NFT market yet.
Tensorians are at 78 down 2 percent.
MATLAB is down 3 percent, 178.
Crypto undeds continued downtrend minus 4 percent at 6.8.
Jupcats were the hot new runner though.
They forexed yesterday, leading top movers and reaching a 2.5 sole floor.
In broader Web 3 and crypto news, crypto majors are red this morning.
After yesterday's FOMC meeting did send some mixed signals.
Bitcoin down 1 percent, 42,130.
ETH down 1 percent, 22,70.
Sold down 3 percent at 95, 70.
GME Solana meme coin briefly touched 80 million
in market cap overnight before falling back to 60.
It's dominating meme coin action right now.
We saw Immutable's ZKEVM mainnet go live for early access.
And then Mercedes announced a new freemenet called Superdackle
coming soon for next icons holders, community friends, and more.
So those were a lot of headlines.
Before we get to the conversation with CyberC and Vivid,
Logie, quickly, what jumped out to you?
What news should we quickly talk about?
The Quantumcast moving, Doodles and G-Shock.
The Quantumcast stuff I think is one of the bigger headlines from yesterday
that came kind of later at night as well.
I mean, I'm not like disappointed in the news.
It mainly just feels like everything is kind of just waiting
for this to take place, right?
Whether or not Ordinals will shake it off to the upside
or shake it off to the downside with attention focused on the cats.
Just spend this anticipation that's been building
for, you know, what feels like weeks at this point
and ready for that to just kind of run its course.
So unfortunate, but I really don't think it'll impact the cats too much.
Just want to see what happens to the rest of the market
and now have to wait a few more days.
Yeah, there's been some opportunity costs.
I think a lot of folks who are looking to mint that have had their 0.1 Bitcoin locked up,
if not more, in anticipation of that mint, it keeps getting pushed.
And I think that's kind of keeping that liquidity on the sidelines.
But hey, maybe it means just more demand coming next week.
And it could be just a perfect time here for CyberC and Vivid's next drop.
So we're going to talk about that.
CyberC, the Vivid team, Captain Salami to the stage here for quick background.
CyberC is a generative artist, a collector, a developer.
He is a curator at GM DAO, co-founder of Brokers List, member of Graler's DAO and Ink Peak.
And then Vivid, if you are not familiar,
on Vivid is unleashing generative art on Bitcoin.
I think my read is they are a curating body similar to art blocks on Ethereum.
In some ways, we will talk about that and more here over the next 25 to 30 minutes.
Cyber, I want to welcome you to the show, GM.
I think maybe let's just dive right in.
Why does art on Bitcoin make sense to you?
What was your driver to want to drop a collection over on Bitcoin?
GM, I'm really excited to be here.
To be honest, Bitcoin and any other blockchain that you can use as a generative artist is like a canvas for an artist.
So for me, I choose Bitcoin here because it really feels like a great place for this specific drop.
So as you know, Deus Ex Machina is about gears, pipes and so on, and this steampunk look and feel.
And when I think about Bitcoin, the oldest and most important blockchain, this is how I can really imagine it.
So that was the one part of the inspiration, but it's also important.
The second part that currently Bitcoin is all about, at least in my opinion, innovation.
As with this digital artifact patterns and so on and ordinals, it's really on the edge until it's really creating something new in this place.
We already know smart contracts and everything.
And here we have something totally different that I want to be part of.
Well, thank you for that. I think that's what jumped out to me when I started getting deeper into some of the generative art on Bitcoin is the innovation.
I think you can do new and different things that perhaps you can't do another change or at least are different because of Bitcoin because of the way the blocks are processed, which is exciting.
This is the main reason behind me choosing the Bitcoin for DoSX because the things that we are doing in DoSX, the observing blocks and so on, will be not really possible that way in a different blockchain.
And I want to talk about DoSX here in just a bit.
Captain Salami, I kind of want to throw the same question to you.
I want to keep a balanced conversation of why artists are approaching Bitcoin as well as more of the curating bodies.
So why did Vivid want to focus on Bitcoin?
And perhaps maybe just give us the quick background.
Did I explain what Vivid is properly?
If you have any more kind of detail for kind of how you feel about Vivid's role in Bitcoin, feel free to share that as well.
Yes, of course. Thank you.
I'm really glad to be here today.
It's a very interesting question.
And actually, we thought about it a lot of times when we plan to start this project.
And for us, I think the most important thing is about the collector's point of view.
The thing is, OK, blockchain is pretty new in a way.
I mean, many years from now, but from a collector's point of view, I think it's very important to know that your art is going to stay.
And even if you have like one percent of doubt that maybe a blockchain is not going to stay, there are some collectors that are not going to like it.
Because if you think about huge families that just collect art from generations to generations, this is very important.
And I think we can all agree that Bitcoin is here to stay.
And maybe like the other blockchains, we are not 100 percent true.
Yeah, it's a great point.
I think it's something that Aston and I have talked about on this show as well.
And in that way, I mean, if you think of the broader spectrum of different types of NMTs, you know,
perhaps one doesn't feel that, you know, gaming NFTs or utility NMTs make as much sense.
I think it is much easier to come to grasp that art at least makes sense as an NFT use case for Bitcoin.
So I'm absolutely with you there. Vivid, I'll throw it back to you.
Maybe let's dive into DosEx. DosEx might kind of a bit.
Hopefully I'm saying it correctly here.
Would love to know a little bit more about, you know, your inspiration, your vision for the project.
Like what to help paint the picture for our listeners here.
Yeah, sure. To be honest, my my my inspiration as an artist is if I need to choose one thing is that I always try.
I always try to tell a story with my art.
I love front of the steampunk and all this mechanical stuff.
I'm an engineer myself. And here I want to really show how the blockchain is working in some artistic way.
So in case of DosEx Machina, I imagine, for example, that someone can have it on a digital frame in his office or home.
And when you look at it, he will always see what is in this moment happening in the Bitcoin blockchain.
It's a really interesting connection, especially with this all gears, all these pipes and all these mechanical parts connected together.
What is also really important in DosEx is that when you think about this all gears, they are really when you take one gear,
it's a really simple thing and it's somehow ugly.
You see just a simple, small part.
But when you take them all together, you have this mesmerizing machine that is really working and is connected one with each other.
And yeah, I think that was really the important part of my inspiration to show that from the small, ugly, brutalist parts, you can build something really interesting and really beautiful.
Yeah, I think you explained it well. And I'm certainly a fan, so I am talking a little bit of bias here.
Folks, if you haven't seen the previews of DosEx Maki now, I encourage you to take a look.
We'll try to get the thread pinned to the space here in a bit if it's not already.
I think one of the posts in that thread from CyberSea that jumped out to me was this one.
I'm just going to read it. Art animation is reacting to block mining events.
Gears are rotating in speed, which is depending on how old the current block is.
And it's reacting to real-time events, all this integration is done using ordinal recursion without any external dependency to preserve digital artifact status.
So I didn't even grasp that when I first looked at these.
So if you haven't looked at these, it's basically a series of intermoving gears, and they can adjust speed.
Steam can come to the forefront. So these are animated pieces.
What I didn't realize when I first looked at these was how and why they're animated, and it's tied to the processing of the Bitcoin blocks,
which I thought was pretty cool, and perhaps I'm just wearing my nerd hat here.
But Cyber, I think you shared a diagram with me in our chat, which kind of helped explain how the animation is tied to the Bitcoin blocks.
But I think maybe just explaining that for our listeners could help take this a step further.
This is that, for example, when Bitcoin block is mined, all gears are slowing down,
the steam is going out, because I imagine it that way, that the Bitcoin blockchain is a bit machine that is going really fast.
And when the block is mined, then all steam goes out, and it's getting a bit colder, so it's slowing down.
But when we're waiting approximately, I don't know, 15 minutes for the next block to be mined,
it's slowly heating up and going faster and faster and faster until this next block is mined again.
And again, it releases the steam, and again it slows down.
So when you look at this work, you can see where are the blocks right now, if it was mined one minute ago or 20 minutes ago.
There was even some funny thing that when the block was really mining like 30 minutes ago, the gears are going crazy, crazy fast,
and it looks really interesting and mesmerizing.
So yeah, it's really talk about the current state of the blockchain in exactly this moment that you look at this work.
It's so cool, and honestly, that's why, part of the reason why this passes the wall test for me.
I think this is just such a cool piece, like have on the wall of your office, and you can visually see what's happening on the Bitcoin blocks.
And as someone who's now trading Bitcoin NFTs on a near daily basis, it's a fun twist.
Ask Amir Hamptop, I'm curious if you have a question or take care.
And first of all, CyberC, Harto, Vivit, congrats on getting this.
That's a ton of work to get to this place, and congrats on the success of the gallery so far.
I wanted to ask you, so I've noticed, is there a reason that you are more easily able to tap into this dynamic,
reading the data from the blockchain and incorporating it into your art?
I've seen a couple other ordinals projects that have motion or some kind of reaction to Bitcoin blocks,
and I'm wondering if there's something about ordinals and the technology that not makes it easier, per se,
but makes it more achievable to do something like that.
And sorry, two-part question.
Second part, is there something that will change in the art with the halvening?
It may not make sense, technically.
It's out of my wheelhouse, but I'm just curious about that, too.
Yes, so I will start with the first part.
To be honest, I'm maybe not aware, but I'm not sure if there was any artwork that really done it that way that I connected to the Bitcoin blockchain.
Because if you know how it's working, the digital artifact, you know that one of the main rules of digital artifact is that it's in a sandbox.
So you cannot really connect to an external dependency.
And that was really a challenge here.
But as each rule, it has some exceptions.
In that case, it's the recursion pattern.
And with the ordinal recursion, we have access to some endpoints that are fully on-chain.
So they are not asking any external servers, like, for example, Mempoolspace or something like this.
No, they are just asking the ordinals and the blockchain itself.
So the whole data that we are gathering is fully on-chain data without any external stuff.
To be honest, I was searching for such art and not found any that was utilizing it, but maybe something is there.
And yeah, second question was about the housing.
And yes, we prepare something specific for the housing as with this recursion endpoints.
There are information about the block height, so you can get information when the housing exactly happened.
And it will definitely affect the look of the pieces.
So it will, after the housing, it will evolve.
I don't want really to spoil how and exactly how it will evolve, but it will change.
Wow. So we got a little bit of alpha here from CyberSea.
So ask them, thank you for that question.
I wouldn't have thought about that.
But what a fun little surprise.
And CyberSea, thank you for walking us through how Bitcoin makes this possible.
Captain, I want to throw it back to you, maybe talking more broadly just about Vivid.
How is Vivid approaching generative art?
What are you thinking about for 2024?
You've got what, three collections out of the gate so far with SATs, rising echoes, and the golden ratio,
which I think the golden ratio SATs here from Harto, Harto on stage with us, has seen tremendous success in the market.
I'm curious how you and the Vivid team are thinking about approaching the rest of the year here.
Thank you. Glad you asked.
Basically, it's very simple for us.
What we are looking for is for collections and artists that really want to mark the history of Ordinos and Bitcoin.
And that's why we choose CyberSea from other artists to launch this collection with us.
We were talking with a lot of artists, but when we saw the potential of his collection with this idea of connecting to Bitcoin,
we were sure that this was something that we needed to do and we need to do it now.
So basically, this is the idea.
Find other artists that have a lot of potential.
Maybe they are not very famous yet, like when we launched with Medusa, but that really want to do something special.
And yeah, we already have a few artists that we are going to announce in the next weeks that are going to work with us in residency,
because this is something very specific about Vivid.
We are building a generative art gallery on Ordinos, but what we want to do is to support a lot the artists.
We are going to work with them, almost create the collection together from a technical point of view,
with Piero, who's here also listening, and Florexius, but also with Harto, who is going to help a lot on the artistic part,
because we know he's a very talented artist.
He has already proven a lot in the ecosystem with Satz and Golden Ratio, as you said.
So yeah, this is the idea.
Take artists in residency, create collections together, and just marking history in Ordinos.
Also, we are planning to do other collaborations and other types of projects.
And it's very funny for me to hear when you say the art blocks of Ordinos, of Bitcoin, it's very flattering.
Of course, we would like to go to such a level, and we are going to do everything that's possible for us.
And I think the first step is choosing the best artists and creating best collections in the Ordino space.
Well, it's great to hear that vision.
And certainly you mentioned kind of supporting artists, and I see that.
I do lurk in there quite a bit, even if I'm not actively chatting on a daily basis.
So I do see the discourse, and it is a lot of artists supporting each other.
It is a very friendly community.
And it's so interesting because I feel like what art blocks has done for generative art on ETH,
it's become a much more mature market.
But now we have generative art on Bitcoin, and it feels so fresh again.
And I feel so many analogies back to January 2021 and where art blocks was at that point in time.
Hearto, if you're with us, I'd actually love just to get your thoughts and the off-the-cuff takes here.
Again, you've seen tremendous success with SATs and the golden ratio.
What was it about Bitcoin that drove you to it as a medium?
Anything to chime in on this discussion?
Hello, hello. Thanks for the invitation.
First, I'm very happy with Cybercy and what he's doing.
He's been super fast with changing things and very communicative with us,
and it's a pleasure to work like this.
In terms of what I expect for the original ecosystem or what is exactly the question more?
Just more like what drew you to Bitcoin?
Why did you want to drop SATs, the golden ratio, via ordinals versus doing it on Ethereum or somewhere else?
Was there anything about the ecosystem that stuck out to help drive that decision?
Yeah, when I discovered ordinals in February last year was incredible because it was like discovering fire.
We were learning everything and going on discords with spreadsheets and things like that.
It was so refreshing, as you say, it's like starting again.
As the things that Captain Salami said, from the technical part and the immutability and the centralization, it's incredible.
But it's also very exciting because you can build new things.
In a way, I feel that it's more pure than Ethereum.
I mean, I like Ethereum and I think that it's a very useful blockchain for smart contracts and gaming and other things on PFPs, etc.
But for art, I think that ordinals is really the place to be.
But it's my point of view. That's what I think.
Yeah, well, thank you very much. And I know we didn't really plan you even coming up.
So just appreciate you having being here with us.
CyberC, I'm going to throw it back to you. We have just a couple minutes left.
We've talked high level about DosEx Machina.
But what do our listeners need to know if they want to participate? When is it coming?
Where is it at? What are some of the details?
Yeah, it's coming on February 6.
There are still some whitest spots possible to get.
But our whitest will be first come, first serve.
So already most of the supply was sold in the presale.
But yeah, there is still possible to get one.
If you hold any of the big collection or bank, you will be whitelisted.
Also, some collapse is going on. So yeah, I think we will see on February 6.
Well, fantastic. February 6, mark your calendars now.
If you're not already, go give CyberC a follow.
I'm very excited for this one. Also, I haven't said this yet.
But DosEx Machina is my favorite movie.
So I love the titling of this collection here from you.
Captain Slamy, I'm going to throw it back to you. Any final thoughts?
Anything our listeners need to know before we close out?
Yeah, perfect. Well, first of all, thank you to everyone.
Thank you, CyberC, for joining here and explaining a little bit more about the art.
I think it's really important that people know a lot more about the collection.
We haven't announced everything yet, as you said, the Halloween thing, et cetera.
So I'll invite people to just follow us and to discover more about the collection
in the next days, in the next weeks.
As you said, there is some wide list left.
We are going to do some giveaways on our Twitter accounts and on our Discord.
So just go on if you want to join.
The launch is going to be February 6th at 8 p.m. UTC on the Magic Eden Launchpad.
So be sure to be there if you want to grab one.
And as Haro said, we are on Bitcoin.
It feels like a new opportunity to build new things.
And for me, it's like almost having a big brother, like Ethereum,
and say, okay, now we can start again.
I'm going to do it better because I know what my brother mistake was and the good thing.
So I'm just going to inspire from that and create the best project that we can.
I think those are fantastic closing thoughts.
Folks, give Captain a follow.
Give the vivid underscore ordinals account a follow if you aren't already.
And just, you know, if you love generative art,
go start browsing some of these collections over on Magic Eden Bitcoin.
Certainly go check out some of the previews of Dos X Machina if you haven't already.
Thank you both for joining us.
Folks, we are going to wrap up the show here before we go.
So we've got Matryka Labs blocks happen this morning at 9 a.m. Eastern,
as did Lindsey Burns, skate or die.
We have FA and transient labs, the cell coming at noon Eastern,
and then harm band adorable and burst struggle for pleasure coming at 1 p.m. Eastern.
Once again, focused in the art sector against several drops and big names harm band adorable.
Certainly transient labs and Lindsey Burns.
So check those out if you are interested.
We'll be back tomorrow at 10 a.m. Eastern.
Thanks to our listeners for tuning in.
Thanks to today's sponsor wasabi.
Astum, Cyber C, Captain Salami, the Vivid team, and Akim for coming on up.
Everyone enjoy your Thursday.
Let's make it a great day.