Good morning. Good morning, everyone, GMG and welcome to another episode of the promo hour. Hey, hey, close Thursday 2025. What day has already been? This can get better. Here we have a huge. OK, huge. Trump is back saying he's going to make crypto great again in the US. We had a mega Kaido AirDrop this morning, the pain token pre sell last night, and some big news out of the SEC which might have just stopped crime season in its tracks.
Plus folks, our biggest guest in quite some time, legendary artist Sam Spratt, is joining us halfway through the show to talk everything about the Masquerade. This is a big one. We've been looking forward to this show for days. Farouk is still out in Asia. Mando might pop in. He may not be able to join us, but we've got Ovi on with us. OSF fresh off his pain trade fresh off Paris. Ovi How you doing GM? When you GM, when you were like, we've got our biggest guests in a while, legendary.
I was like waiting for my finger. And I was like, oh wait, obviously you're talking about sound, not me. We have two legendary artists on with us. Sound definitely much more legendary than me. It's good to be back. It's good to be back. How you doing man? I'm good. It's it's been an eventful day already, but we are feeling good. How was Paris? I'm sad I wasn't able to go. It looked like it was a lot of fun.
It was good. I mean, I really of all the NFT events and stuff, Paris one I enjoy quite a lot. There's a ton of people that turn up. I think there's like the actual conference itself. There's at least 20,000 people that roll by. And this time I felt like there were a lot of people who weren't really in the NFT space, not even necessarily in crypto. They had some AI events and that kind of stuff.
You know, we have like a big wrecked booth at each of these events and we just hand out drinks for free. And I felt like last time 95% of people who turned up were people in the space who kind of knew what we were. This time it was a bit more 5050 where people were like, you know what, what is this? What is this drink? How is it related to crypto or web 3 and and and and stuff? So it was good. Like it was a lot of a different
crowd, I think to usual. So yeah, I had a good time, enjoyed it, but good to good to be back, I think. Nice expanding that top of funnel exactly. Love to hear it folks. We're very excited to have legendary artist OSF on with us as well. What are we talking about? So we're going to chat with him to start. We're going to talk markets, alts, cooking a little bit, this breaking news about this SEC cybercrime unit. We're going to talk to the Kaido AirDrop. We're going to talk to the pain
presale. I also want to get Obi's thoughts on where AI, crypto AI is here. And then second-half of the show, Sam Spratt will be joining us to talk about the Masquerade, the idea, how it came up with it, how it's going to work, the one-on-one sale and a whole lot more. So we are stoked for that one. Before we dive in, shout outs to our partners, Galaxis.
Galaxis is a Web 3 platform empowering creators and brands to build unstoppable communities with full ownership and independence, trusted by icons like Donald Trump, Steve Aoki, Mike Tyson, and the NBA, shaping together the future of engagement. And every day we see people's wallets get drained. Fairside is about to launch the fair alternative to insurance for crypto scams. Check out at Fairside Network on X. If you get drained, you won't be wrecked.
All right, Sims, do we have music for Ovi or should we just dive right in to our market chats? We actually don't. I removed it a while back. Oh, sad. You know when you joined, we switched it out, we got your own. You can play your Jingle if you want to go with it. Let's do it. We need, we need a Jingle here today. All right, folks. Well, I'll take a quick overview and then I just want to get into more high level conversation with OSF here.
But it's like Bitcoin 97,000 right now on the dot. It's up 1% on the day ETH up in line, ETH 2730 sold up a bit more back at 173. So it seemed like we've been kind of grinding up a bit here this week off of the Tuesday intraday lows. Some alts are cooking, seriously cooking. So the story protocol, their IP tokens up 23%, Barra up 22%, back to $8. Celestia say Pythe all up double digits on the day as well.
So some nice movement and alts we see SPX is up there, one of the top movers and also I think memes overall, pretty much even on the day kind of chopping in this zone right now. Not a whole lot of big movement on that board news wise. There wasn't a whole lot of big news that that really came out yesterday from a macro standpoint. We had Trump come out and say talk about how he passes executive orders to effectively end Biden's war on crypto. No new details really came out from that.
I think the biggest piece of macro news broke this morning right before the show. So we've got DB tier 10K reporting. The SEC has launched a cyber and emerging technologies unit. It will combat fraud in crypto
among other areas. And folks, if you, if you dig into this and what they're actually going to focus on fraud committed using, using emergency emerging technologies such as AI and machine learning, use of social media or false websites to perpetrate fraud, fraud involving blockchain tech and or crypto assets. So this is a big one. I don't, I don't think that we necessarily expected this to come out here so soon. I think it's very welcome.
I've seen some takes that perhaps this would be more limited to to things like SIM swaps, but I don't know when I read this. 5th bullet fraud involving blockchain tech and crypto assets that feels like it's pretty open-ended to me. Ovi, what's your take on this? Is is crime season going to end in its tracks? Hear what this?
I just, yes, it's about time we see something like this because I think one of the faults of the previous administration is that there wasn't really any clear guidance. So not only did you not know what was right, yours didn't really know what was wrong. And people would just do random things and pay for it after the fact. So it's good to see. Like, there's going to be a task force focusing on this stuff. And yeah, it's just, it's
mental. Like how blatant the crime season has been to start the year, just because everyone has assumed if Trump did this, and I can do that, but what other people have done is obviously way worse than than what Trump did, which is just launched a token. So it's good to see. I think it will be good for the industry. There's just a ton of crime and bad actors that are siphoning money right now out of crypto, which is affecting all of us and affecting all of our existing
bags. And so it would be really nice to have some stricter enforcement on that stuff. I hope an announcement like this prevents people from doing any more of that kind of stuff or at least makes people think twice. You know, like a lot of the crime has been committed by these guys like Hayden Davis, who's like an American citizens. And, you know, at least like it's going to have some layer of protection where the next people who want to do it will at least try and be anonymous or whatever.
So yeah, hopefully goodbye to blatant crime season, I think. Were you Mark, safe from the the Libra scandal over? Yeah, I mean, I, I, I put in a bit of money, but not very much. Like I put in 60 Soul and I sold it and for a 12 soul loss. So it wasn't like a huge loss for me. And I think by this point I've gotten wise enough to it where it was like, I'm not going to just fucking put my full port listing. I was even just angry at myself.
Why don't even put in 60 soul? Like I knew exactly what it was. And I lost some money on the Enron thing. Not again, not that much. But so the amount I've been gambling with on the stuff has just reduced each iteration and now I'm not even going to touch it. Like if if kind of we spoke about this yesterday, Tyler, if kind of, you know, did a token, I wouldn't touch it because I'm not an insider. I'm not going to get the
contract address early. I'm not going to be able to snipe it. I'm going to get second hand information or too late. And by the time I get to buy it, maybe a catch a small move higher, but people will already be be dumping on me. I don't want to give my money to these people anymore. Yeah, It it feels like what's come out here is more just exposing that that portions of the meme market were a rigged game.
I kind of hate the over generalization that that the entire thing is rigged because I don't think that's fair. Look, you have launched a a meme coin Reg coin. I don't think anyone would try to make an argument that that is a rigged token and it was just kind of a natural progression. So I guess how are you feeling about the broader meme market? I mean some people think it's over forever, some feel like maybe just a Lol and and this is just cycles playing out.
What's your view? Yeah, I, I haven't been that constructive on meme coins and like the animal meme thing to start the year. I, I think I tweeted about that few times that I have more of a focus on AI this year rather than just memes or if it's memes, meme coins within AI or that have some sort of like AI relation to it.
So to me, I think a lot of these, you know, I see some of the meme coins bouncing today, but I just think these are all going to be dead cat bounces and we're not going to see 99% of meme coins we saw in 2024. They're not going to reach their all time highs ever again. I think I think they're probably about three, maybe 5 coins that could be inter cycle and will so
stuff like Pepe, for example. But yeah, generally speaking, I, I don't think I think it's going to be very tough for the meme coin market to bounce because we haven't had that, that many new that much retail inflow this year. And I think the idea of like, oh, these communities are really strong is massively diluted by the fact there are just tons of
new coins all the time. And people seem so it's like the same people who were previously the communities now just full on gamblers, everyone just addicted to the to gambling. And when something new comes, everyone sells the old bags. So like chase the new one. And so that just seems to be, I don't think it's a meta that that's happening. I think that's a natural maturing of the market.
And so yeah, I just, you know, I don't, I don't, I barely earn any memes apart from Rect and Rect is obviously has a big AI focus to it now and everything else that we're doing with the drinks, etcetera. So I don't, I wouldn't even class Rect as just like a pure meme coin. I think the pure meme coins I don't own any of right now because I just don't. I think it's very tough to buy and hold that stuff. It's tricky. Folks have moved on from like the memes as communities to just
pure rocket game. I am hopeful that that trend will reverse at some point, but I'm also not naive. I don't think it's happening anytime soon. Perhaps like zooming back out to just Bitcoin and broader crypto markets. Like what? How are you feeling? Like we've had a pretty big run of positive news, macro positive news for for Bitcoin
specifically. I think also just for the broader crypto space here, we are kind of just still ranging 97 K, like what's your view like Q1 plus like maybe on the year? Like do you think we're going to keep chopping here for a while?
Do you have perspective? Yeah, I think it's all been sell the news really, hasn't it. And I think last year at the end of last year, my fear was that inauguration would be a sell the news because I didn't, I never had the view that they would announce immediately announce Bitcoin reserve and that they would immediately start buying like my, I was like these things. Trump's not even president yet.
And for the US to like classify a whole new asset as like a strategic reserve surely takes a lot more work and effort and research than just Trump saying, Hey, I want to do this and it being, you know, done on day one. So I always felt like that would be a sell of the news.
But then we had all this like really positive, all these really positive headlines around other stuff into it, like the crypto task force and the idea of potentially other digital assets being passed the stockpile and just Trump really talking everything up. And originally when Trump launched his meme coin as well, this is before the other tokens came. I was like, wow, that's pretty bullish. It's just it's just like the president launching a coin in the US, They're going to really,
really push this stuff. But I think my original thought of like it being sell the news was the right one because obviously we had all these other coins and it turns out their intentions were bad. And yeah, I think we're in for Trump. I think it will take at least six months, probably from now still to approve a strategic Bitcoin reserve and then the act of actually buying Bitcoin from that, possibly even longer. Like these things don't get done
overnight. But what I would say is that they are insanely, insanely positive and they've gone from being priced in to slowly being priced out over time. And a lot of ults are down. Ults are down 90% plus I mean, because obviously down quite a lot. AI is down a ton. So I've been like mostly in Bitcoin for a while for you know, since kind of like the beginning of the year after that first AI nuke.
But things are at interesting levels for me now where I'm looking to like rotate into stuff like soul stuff like AII. Think if you look at Bitcoin dominance, the the three times it has fallen sharply in the last 12 months have been when Trump won the elections, when Trump started speaking about crypto in the Bitcoin reserve around like it was May, June time and when the Bitcoin ETF got approved.
So they were all like Bitcoin positive events that actually caused Bitcoin dominance to fall and Ulster rally. And that's because I think the market goes risk on and it tries to gamble the other stuff to outperform Bitcoin. So my expectation is a few months of chop. We may even get like a bigger pull back if we get some negative headlines on Bitcoin reserve, which is definitely possible. But ultimately I do think it
will get approved. And that's that's my North star catalyst really for risk rallying into that, I think, But I think we have to be patient. There's no need to get crazy loading the boat at these levels. And you know, I've been my play outside of Bitcoin really is has been AI and Arc and AI 16 is the other two I've been buying. I've just been very patient about only adding them when they
hit new lows really. Sometimes I feel like I would be more, I wish I was more aggressive there at sometimes at times, but that's kind of like my my thought right now, yeah. Well, I appreciate your thoughts as always. And I mean, it's hard to be super aggressive with this AI market cap right now at six billion. I guess it depends on your perspective. It, it feels like every time we we've bought the dip and and seen the the rebound, the next dip is dippier and it goes
lower. So I guess real quick, I would love your AI thoughts. Like we talked about this before you, you laid out potential $100 billion mark total market cap for all these. Do you think that the next meta is going to be different? You talked about ARC and AI16Z. Those are your the the horses you're betting on. Yeah, I really like. So within the AI space, I think the big play here is thinking of maybe some of these things as like potential L ones. And so I think AI16Z and ARC
fall in that bucket. And the reason why I say that is because if you can view something as a potential like L1 for AI agents, your ceiling is a lot higher for for an L1 coin than it is for an altcoin than it is for a meme coin. So those are the two that I like. I think it's really hard to ignore the mind share that AI16Z has and all the tech that supports it.
I know people will have an issue with the shore and all that kind of stuff, but for me, that's kind of created like a buying opportunity for something that I felt like I missed earlier. And you know, just like a like a similar thesis really there on on that one. So, you know, these things are are nascent and they're not without fault and they're not without trials and tribulations. And we've kind of seen that a couple of times in arc. But for me, I do think they
will. I think, I think this whole sector will come out on top this year because it's really hard just to ignore AI in not only in markets or in crypto, but just in your everyday life. Really. It's hard. AI is always mentioned. And this for me is the first. I'm like, I'm not a detailed investor or detailed trader like like someone like Mando is, or maybe even yourself, Like I don't look that much into the
details. I'm like, OK, what can I just like tangibly see and feel that makes me want to buy something? Because that's how I think the most the the a larger portion of the retail investor base thinks. And for me, AI agents is like the first actual product within AI where you can be like, oh, cool, I see AIXBT all over the timeline or hey, I see like wrecked guy AI producing these art pieces.
Like I see these things and I can tell explain to you someone in simple English what this actually does as soon as you have, we didn't have that last year. We have that this year. We didn't have that, you know, the first half of last year. So now that we have that, I think it's like a real, whether it's a real product market fit that has longevity, I don't really know. Like who knows if this is just going to be vapor Ware stuff in the future or real stuff. But for now it's new, it's
fresh. I can explain to my normally friends what it is, what it does and why you should buy the token and explain that the market cap is so low versus other sectors in crypto. I think it's a really good investment case. Plus like I've and I know we like to hate and ignore the institutions, but there is a lot of institutional capital flowing into this stuff.
Like I spoke to a lot of guys who are putting in big tickets and I mean even the other day it was like someone bought like what was it like 7 mil of AI16Z and eight mil of Arc like that. Those are institutional tickets that are going into the stuff and these guys who've missed the whole meme coin cycle who can't really raise capital from their LP's investors to invest in meme coins. They can in this.
And there are similar people who are commentating on this space who are commentating on meme coins last year. So for me, it has all the DNA to to be a main cycle narrative. We've gotten caught in the meme sell off and the altcoin sell off and, and what not. But I don't think this is the end of the story for AI agents. And I do think we, I think there's, there's going to be one point this year where people will look at these levels and think, fuck, I really should
have bought that dip in size. I really think we'll see that. I hope you're right. I think you make a good point about like more institutional capital being able to allocate to this sector versus memes. I think that's spot on. You talked about ARC and AI16C. That's primarily where I've played. I have to give a quick shout out to Virtuals and then we'll move on. We got to talk Kaido as well as pain quickly. They introduced their agent commerce protocol yesterday.
And if someone is interested in the space, I I definitely encourage you to read the white paper or at least a summary. I created a summary of it yesterday for folks. But but basically they are have built a decentralized open source protocol for agent to agent commerce on chain as well as with with a human interaction component.
So if you are bullish on the scenario where agents will be acting autonomously and transacting on chain and there will be a home for that, virtuals is throwing their hat in the ring. And I don't know if they're going to be the winner, but they're actually, but they are trying to go after it. And I'm going to talk about some of the examples and like spinning up an AI digital marketing business where you have like an AI artist, you have
an AI writer doing the the copy. And then perhaps they employ a human Akol to do their marketing for them. And like that is a model where humans can actually be paid by agents in the somewhat near future, which is wild to think about. But I feel like that's very non zero. I actually think it's non zero to happen in 2025. And how that could happen actually is via a protocol like Kaido. So Kaido has the, the, the, the nuts and bolts in place showing
who has the mindshare. And they've got the, I, I believe they're starting to set it up in the back end to, to create that type of a payment mechanism. So folks, the news out of Qaeda, they did launch their token here this morning. I don't think we've gotten a whole lot of more news about what it will be.
Perhaps they're kind of saving that, you know, for a post AirDrop. But in Info Boom, we did get the tokenomics 25% core contributors, 32% for the ecosystem, 2% to Binance, 10% was for the community and eco claim and then seven half percent for longer incentives. So the AirDrop today was a bit smaller than some folks were expecting. It does come along with another round of potential airdrops coming in the future. The token itself, it performs strongly out of the gate, so it
opened around $1.20. Oh wow, it's really moved since since we last spoke about it. Wow it. Has it, It dipped to a dollar O 6 and then just shot straight to $1.50 and it looked like all the early sellers perhaps have made a mistake and then it has since been selling off. So it's right around $0.90 or a $900 million FTV here. So still in the early, early hours of this token, it's going to be volatile. Curious OSF, any reactions to you from the token or just broader thoughts on Kaito?
Yeah, I like Kaito. There's a lot of FUD on the timeline about it. Like this is worse than Fentech and all that kind of stuff. Like I think of all the social fire stuff we've seen, it has the best like scoring mechanism in my opinion, for rewarding people who tweet useful things.
Like when I look through the Kaito list and I see the rankings, I think, oh wow, here's some people who are I've actually personally always rated, but who don't typically score on the well on the other stuff because they maybe have fewer followers or worse engagement. So I think it, in my opinion, it's done a pretty good job of identifying like people who have useful content.
And it does that through this idea of like smart followers and stuff like that, which I think is quite interesting. So I think it's good tech in my opinion. I don't think it's just another friend tech. I think it's very useful tech. Should it be worth 1 billion, one half billion FTV more than that?
I don't really know. Like I don't really have a full understanding of how the revenue model works and nothing to do with like Kite or their tech, but it gets bucketed within like, oh, this is what everyone is focused on right now. Air drop happens. OK, boom, let's move to the next thing. Like that's just how the market
is right now. So you really have to have something extremely special to or something that people will want to really use every single day, like hyper liquid to maintain that kind of mind share. So I don't know if it's going to be able to do that.
I really hope it does because it's really for me, it's like a breath of fresh air to see a project, a product that people have honest and hard working people have been working on, come to the market and do an air drop and everyone makes a bit of money from it. Yes, it's not quite the moon mass everyone was making out to to making out to be, but from my perspective, I got whatever I could 5 figure AirDrop from just doing nothing other than tweeting like how I normally
tweet like I'm I'm definitely very grateful for that. So I think I think we should be celebrating it for sure. At the end of the day, they're giving a bunch of people free money, but you know, will it last here and will this these levels last that I'm not sure about. I hope it does, but you know, that will remain to be seen, I think. Yeah, you make a lot of good points and absolutely rooting the Kaido team on. I think they've done everything really well.
They moved fast through a launch and what's been kind of a tricky market so that they weren't just trying to time market conditions, they opened up over a billion. Like that's an incredibly difficult thing to do at the same time from an investment standpoint, like so I I sold a good chunk of my air drop. I'm happy to be transparent
about that. It's it was harder for me to justify a $1.2 billion FTV evaluation based on like what we've seen from them to date and maybe they're going to come out and share revenue numbers that back that up. I'm optimistic on their future business model. I think they still have a long road to go to prove out that they're a billion dollar protocol. So that's where I'm at. But I'm actively rooting them on. I'll continue to be participating in the the ecosystem.
So I'm I'm very excited to see what more they're going to release today with respect to staking and perhaps their their near term vision for how they're going to continue to monetize the ecosystem and how that information comes out. Again, may, may change my opinion of the protocol, but I think they have to be happy today. This was a huge launch in what is still kind of a challenging market. The other launch and we're we're going to go to Sam here in just a couple minutes.
We got to quickly talk about the pain pre sale. I know you were plugged in to this one pain team. They threw a couple curveballs our way. So they they refunded 80% of the pre sales. They knew it was probably going to be tough to perform and then it came out of the gate yesterday.
Let's see it it opened, it opened absurdly high because of snipers, but then it got to about $60 million market cap, which was 120 million FTV, sold off a bit and then it rallied all the way to 250 million FTV and we're like $25 a tokens back to 15. Now the curveball they had is they released some tokenomics. They effectively burned 50% of tokens by sending them to Harold, the person behind the meme, and locking it till 2045. What were your thoughts around
this presale? You participated and would you do it again? Do you think Mainland would be able to pull this off again or do they they need to wait a little while? Yeah, I think they will. I don't think you can do it back-to-back. Obviously. I think they'll need to waste a
while. But again, I think this is a good example of people acting the right way after all these all this extraction we've seen, like, you know, they could have just taken $40 million, right and put in a portion of that into liquidity and all that kind of stuff and just really banked may bank on it, but they didn't. They refunded 80% of it back to pre sellers and then they burnt half the token supply. They haven't been too greedy in like taking coins for themselves
or anything like that. So honestly, like I think they've done everything the right way. I think if this was launched just a couple of weeks ago before the the Libra stuff and there's more liquidity in the trenches, I think this could have done really well. It could have been, you know, I mean, it has done really well for appreciate the appreciates are up like whatever it is 5-6 X right now, but it could have been even bigger.
I think, I think it really could have been could have done really well because right when they did the refund, it caught everyone off guard and it was like, oh fuck, this isn't a scam. This is legit. So you know, timing is timing and it's not always in everyone's controls and you know, these guys have been working hard to try and get all the exchange listings and that kind of stuff. So I think honestly, I think if they did another one, people
would go in for it hard. I think if they if they did another pre sale for I don't know, I think for another one of the IPS that they have partnership with, let's say in a month or two time, I think they would probably raise more than this original 40 million is is my guess.
But they would have to make it. What they should probably need to do is like make it a capped pre sale and make it such that if you're a pain holder or maybe you know the mainland assets you get first looking or something like that. I think is would be the way to do it.
It'll be hard for them to have another big success, but this like was just laid out this was I think it was a big win for anyone who's sent to the pre sale anywhere from a + 50% to a 2X or more if you held through the overnight peak in in a rough me market. So I'm calling it a win. More is to come from Meme Land. So I don't know if folks saw this. It was a little buried at
consensus. In Hong Kong, Ray Chan, CEO of Meme Land, is giving a talk and he's talking and he's going to reveal their 2025 road map, the launch of Meme Pay, their new crypto credit card, as well as Meme Strategy, their version of micro strategy. So I think that's is arguably like the the biggest open item here. It is what that actually means. I don't think they're just going to be stockpiling meme coins. I think there's likely going to be more to it. Maybe it's some kind of a a meme
launching capacity. I think they have a chance to to monetize that and they're good at it. And I think this was a very well done launch. I think smart people were plugged in stats. Sam friend of the show, he did a nice write up on everything they tried to do to it to vent snipers. And I think a lot of snipers actually got wrecked on this.
Yeah, it's perfect to to see that I think yeah, I think look, these guys obviously their original business is is 9 gag, which is huge and like these guys understand me and I think they understand community like I wouldn't I wouldn't I wouldn't ever fade Ray or Charles. These guys, I think I made a comment on meme land artwork like once two years ago and they sort of like raged at meme token and went got the bio accessing everything and they they really, really crushed it.
So I think I definitely wouldn't fade these guys. And I know people have a sort of like a perception sometimes, but I think, you know, these are good actors and I think they've serially been successful at things that they've done. So this whole like meme strategy and meme that thing is, is interesting. And yeah, like, on the one hand, you may say meme should be meme. They shouldn't have utility. They shouldn't have these other things like it should just be
the meme. And if it's if it's funny, people will buy it. And I think that's true to an extent or it's definitely very true in a market like last year when bean coins are going crazy. But you know, as the overall market evolves and people find new things even more funny or, you know, other things come to play if you're not a Pepe or a Doge or a share, but it's very hard to maintain that attention.
So having these other things that these guys are talking about, it's something that I think could keep a meme coin alive if it needs to be. And for me, it's interesting. I think it's a different, slightly different path to the
typical meme coin thing. But it's important to understand that if you want your your meme coin to last for multiple years and not just multiple days, which is the hard thing right now, then you need to have another element to it that's not just, hey, this meme is pretty funny. Yeah, and I've got I've got confidence in this team. I am trust stats Sam. I don't think he would be working with them if he didn't believe in the mission and the
vision. So I think they've got some more tricks up their sleeve or tricks is probably the wrong word. I think they've got some some big plans here. So I'm very curious to see what they'll continue to to roll out. But a nice win on pain here from the the meme land team folks. All right, we've done our market roundup. It is time to get into our discussion here with Sam Spratt. Wow, this is this is a big one, folks.
If you're not familiar, I'm sure almost all of you are Sam Spratt, legendary digital artist, fresh off his $3,000,000 sale for his one of 1X Masquerade. And the game is about to go live. He's incredibly busy. We're thankful he took out some of his time to speak with us. Sam GM, how are you doing? Man, that's good to see you both. It's good to see you too. I, I appreciate your time. Wow, I imagine your, your head is spinning. You're, you're locked in the, the office right now.
We, we can go so many directions with this. I think maybe First off, I'm just curious, when did you come up with the idea for the masquerade? Has this been something that like this ever stretching kind of games and evolving games, has that been in the works for quite some time? Like talk to us a little bit about that. Sure. So all of Lucy, the series I've been making over the last three years and change, it's episodic, so it's always kind of made.
As I'm starting this new bit of my life, I'm going to make one painting at a time and each one is going to be what I'm actively learning, maybe trying to capture a little bit of what I have learned and try to point at what I want to learn next. And so, you know, that began with these narrative paintings and then it's slowly started slipping into utilizing the blockchain, but in kind of like a, a not code based way, more in
a relationship based way. So like the skulls of Lucy was the, the first example of this, where those first three paintings I did in the auctions, I ended up painting a skull for each one of the people that entered into my first steps into the space. So these these things were free gifts. In the act of doing that, suddenly I collided with this host of, you know, 50 people who all have totally different lives than me. I've been artists for 10 years doing album covers, movie
posters, things like that. And to collide with traders, poker players, protocol engineers, other artists. So just like a, a totally different ball game. It, it, you know, it's inspiring. It kind of just shows you, you're in a very, very tiny bubble and a lot of different industries are suddenly buttered up against each other. And with that, I, I think it just kind of broke a little bit of my path that started as this very solitary artistic kind of melodramatic endeavor.
And then a node connected to it with my wife Rachel, and then a node connected to it with a few friends and then a council of people. And then the monument game, that piece back there was a way to to kind of create a, a large painting, but have a lot of people gather around and contribute their thoughts to it. And so while I was making that towards the tail end of it, the idea for Masquerade was
percolating. Little fragments of it was was there, but really it was actually seeing what happened through my collision with all the people that wrote on top of it that traded after and seeing all of the human behavior around
this art. This like very maybe over earnest story that I had been making suddenly having a bunch of people both give me their own earnesty of love letters and confessions and letters to their dead brother and like beautiful things that are just etched in code on my painting forever. But also like the opposite end of the spectrum of our space, you know, the more degenerate side of it as well.
And then as it started entering the market and people started trading it, you see this thing that was a link between us. You know, it's it's tenuous. There's there's some people that hold it for a very long time. It remains precious to them. And there's some that it starts moving. And then as an artist reckoning with, OK, well, suddenly I've connected to this network. What do they all want from me? And it covered. It's a bit of a jungle out there. It's a little mad.
And so Masquerade was really born from seeing both the like profound camaraderie and friendship of colliding with like people like OV and some of the members of the council and like the genuine brotherhood and bonds and formations that can occur in such AI mean, let's be real here, like a very absurd small portion of the world that we're we're all kind of colliding in. And then on the other end of spectrum, the inverse of camaraderie, right?
The the people that maybe wear that to you, but do not act that way behind the scenes. And as you wrestle with all this, I think where Masquerade ultimately started coming into fruition was the recognition that there's no good, there's no bad. You need the whole spectrum. You need the people that are like your tightest brothers, your most trusted people right next to you. You need your even tighter version of that in the form of
family. And then you need the kind of people gradating all the way in between. And that's what creates like a living and breathing ecosystem. Like we're, we're undulating and, and you, you need the predators and the prey. You need the people that provide cover for others, the good guides and the teachers and the people that are. I would need poison shit posters like there's none of this works without the whole spectrum.
It is a growing Organism. That's such an interesting way to put it. So you started with your one of ones you you have a handful of collectors. Then you do skulls 49, I believe. So you're growing the circle. I think my first glimpse was NFT NYC2022 and that's where I really saw like the skull holder and like this cult forming around you like go, this is this is a real thing. This is a group of people who who really believe in in your work.
And then you've expanded here last or two years ago with with Monument game 256 and now 613 for the Masquerade. There's a lot of directions we can take this. I want to give you a chance to, to walk folks through the the Masquerade here. How is it going to work?
And I also want to get into like why you like these interactive games, so maybe talk to us a little bit more about the Masquerade. So to kind of just strip out a lot of the, there's a lot to it, but to just kind of boil into like what the actual participation and interaction here is, is it's built on some of the foundation with Monument Game. So Monument Game was one large labyrinthian image, very complex, hundreds of stories
within it that I made. And then we built an interface for you to leave a coordinate and a written observation on top of. Think of it like a slightly long tweet that is embedded atop of it, this communal varnish of written contributions atop my work. So it builds on that foundation, but across 3 phases. So the first phase is everyone with a mask. So right now the public drawing ends later today. So we'll find like the total who all is on on this guest list,
who all has a bare mask. So all of these masks begin identical to one another and each one of them will begin the first phase by leaving an observation. So just a written contribution of themselves atop the work the Masquerade. After a few days, we're going to switch to the next phase. The next phase was really inspired by what happened after the monument game, which was well, suddenly I'm, I'm not just like alone in the network.
I'm connected with all of you. So well, what happens if now you've observed and then everyone kind of gets to be a reply guy to one another and you are now discussing with one another. You're engaging in discourse and dialogue and so you'll reply to a few of the people that are are near you and then move to the next phase is taking that
collision. Whatever you learned from whether it was a extremely friendly, helpful person that kind of took some strand of your thoughts and tried to pull it in a new direction, open a window for you, or if it's someone that shout all over everything that you had to say.
However you choose to take that is like that is the collision that is other people destroying trying to find form of your idea and you come back in to try to balance it with a revision, an edit and really it's these three steps of life. The observation is a creation. It's like that first vulnerable act of putting yourself out there.
Destruction is discussion. That's where us engaging in a dialogue with one another, if we trust each other, if we care about trying to find each other's best form, or even if we don't, just the act of being in dialogue starts chipping away at making that creation better, right? It's like any business you guys have run, like the more eyeballs
you have. Sometimes it's too many cooks in the kitchen, but sometimes it shows you things that you didn't see because you are a little too close to it. And then at the end, try to balance and I can get into what's all inspired by, which is this ancient form of scripture and commentary, but that's the core mechanic of what everyone will be doing. And then this collection that all begins bare. So all the masks are the same.
Every mask that I've made, they're all one of one of this 613 collection is inspired by all these different kinds of people that we're talking about. You know, the the the full ends of the spectrum of your kindest and your cruelest, the the funniest, the most profound. And so the masks rather than I would say how people might typically associate a collection where you would mint and a random number generator would determine what you get or your hand selecting the piece that
you want. This is actually a link between me and you. And so the words you give me, I will be going through this collection of, you know, the it's 613, but I've made more than 613 and seeing what goes
with you. And because of some of the tools I built, if there's people that have behavior, which is almost an inevitability that totally surprises me and is way outside of like, you know, the attempts to show a variety of human beings, But, you know, you'll never really capture the density and complexity of all of our little variables. I'll be making them in real time over the course of this to hit those anomalies. I was curious how you were going
to actually make the the masks. Yeah, me too. It's. Like so, so much work. So you've, you've built kind of a foundation and then you, you've got some levers and things that you can, you know, do as you're going through and reading. I'm sure people would love to hear a little bit more about how that's going to work. Yeah, so, so much like the this, this system of participation, creation, destruction, balance. That's kind of what I've been doing for the last year and a
half. So I've been a painter my whole life, illustrator. I've been drawing professionally for, you know, almost 15 years or so, starting out with, you know, little gigs for editorial sites and album covers and so on. But you know, I've, I've loved drawing and painting forever, but I became very curious about expanding my skill set a little bit, the tool set. And when I was a few things happened.
But one, when I was out in Venice for the monument game exhibition, you know, you're there during the BNLS, you're colliding with all these traditional artists and the traditional artists that go and do their exhibitions there. You learn that, you know, most of the the top tier artists in the traditional world that are given these opportunities, you know, they're not a lone guy up on a mountain.
You know, they have, they have whole team studios of assistants of a bunch of like Pratt interns that are doing their, you know, their, their it's like a factory, a pipeline working in hand in hand with them. And for me, there's just something that like kind of terrifies me about like loving so much, making things this way, drawing my whole life being an artist. I'm like, oh, to grow, I have to one day just become a manager like that, that, that like
horrifies me a little bit. And I understand there's components of that of directing, conducting that will absolutely come into the picture here. But I was curious, like, can I stay close to it? Like, do I not have to abstract myself, filter and filter and filter away from it? So I started learning node based programming and I started learning sculpting and I started slowly stitching together over a very long time kind of a set of hybrid tools.
That is, it is drawing, it is painting, it's sculpture, it's trained on my poetry, it's trained at different epochs along the process on my sketches, my under paintings, my paintings, my characters, and finally my individual brushes and brushwork. And what ended up happening is kind of building a hybrid system where I can make one brush stroke and that brush stroke kind of has every brush stroke
I've made in the past. It's like this oddly weird avatar like situation where you're sort of like recalling your past because you've spent a long time extracting the file structure of how everything you've made would work. And So what I've done is kind of like a very, very grimy form of a man machine hybrid tool where there there's no point where anything is really generating without me in it. It's just this constant pass back and forth, this constant
conversation. I, I like to describe it as like grinding a rock against a mainframe because it's, it is inelegant. But if you watch some of the videos that I posted, you can see a little bit of like the lattice work of the nodes and how it kind of slips in and out of drawing and painting and 3D and generative work all kind of eventually get into the other side where I guess my main goal is I don't really think art that is defined by its tool to is
very interesting. Like it's kind of like, I don't know, I'm a man. OK, great. Like not that interesting of like a premise to start getting to know someone. So really it's more I wanted to break down my own patterns and how I've done things my whole life. And the act of learning how to do that and seeing what can't be outsourced to a machine, but also what can is like an interesting to learn thing to learn about yourself, like your strengths and weaknesses.
There's a little bit of like ego dissolution, but then also like you get to see that most of what's precious and left in there is kind of your flaws in a weird way. And preserving that has been like the the process. I'm, I've got one quick question, Sam. Yeah. Everything you know this everything that you've just explained and also monument game, it all has this feeling of like really careful, intricate planning and a lot of thought that's gone into it and a lot of
careful construction. And I'm sure all that happens when you come round to like, OK when you Rachel sit down and come round to like, OK, this is what we're going to do. But how much of like the ideas that you have and kind of the outcome of what you decide to do is premeditated versus how much of it is just like, oh, I kind of felt this way today and this seems like a good idea. Let's try that.
Like for example, when you did the monument game, did you already have the plans and the ideas kind of in place already for the Masquerade? And then when you were doing the Lucy one of ones, did you have the idea for the monument game? Or is it just kind of things that have developed over time because, you know, the way that you speak about it and the way that we see these come to fruition, it's like, wow, Sam must have been planning this stuff since he was born.
But I'd love to get like an insight into like, you know, how these thoughts spring up and, you know, spawn in your mind, if that makes sense. Sure. So I, I guess I would say I have a plan in the sense that I have a direction like I, I can usually I try to think in a time scale that is far enough out there that I directionally have batted up against my own ideas enough to know that that is fundamentally where I want to point towards.
But the, the thing about over planning or not letting like when I hideaway for a year and a half and make something, when I finally put it out there and share it, especially when it is this participatory mechanism. There's just so many new variables that, you know, I'm trying to construct rules and guides and the parameters of what I care about the the outcomes, the behavior that I want to provoke or incentivize.
But I also am building just enough chaos in it that I don't really know exactly how it's all going to unfurl. And that's already happened even in the like preliminary mechanics of how people have invited people or whatnot like that. So even if I have the plan of a direction or to take like a Trumpism, like a concept of a plan is, there's a always a intentional wiggle room left there where I want to be able to learn from whatever happens the
moment I share it out there. Because there's just a very different thing that occurs that if I only had my initial architecture of the idea, then I've almost like trapped myself in a prior state of growth. And you don't I, I don't really like doing that whenever possible. It's already hard enough to kind of avoid that. But like, for example, within monument game, you know, there's a book buried on the ground hidden next to the log that says the mass of Lucy collection, right?
So like, I knew I wanted to make this and I knew I wanted to explore new tools to learn how to create a collection of the size of the fidelity and creativity that I wanted to. But at that point, I had no idea whether or not I would necessarily be able to or what form it would take. I just directly knew that this is a mission that will stretch me. I don't totally know if I can do it. That excites me.
I think most of what I find compelling about, well, maybe any bit of art is like, I'm currently capable of this. I believe I've some weird delusion in my head that maybe I'm capable of that. The tension to get there. Like there's the joy, right? There's the act of doing the whole damn thing. It's like same thing with raising a kid, building a relationship, all of that. It's just this like projection out into the future. And so that's the plan, if you will.
So, so yes, there are there are ingredients of this that are highly architected that have multiple years in mind, but usually those are like little details compared to the big thing is I want to let my collision with you, with you, with everyone help. I don't know, I just want to learn from this. Yeah, I love hearing that the high level vision, how this is all tied together in the
timeline. I know some of our listeners are playing and they want more specific details if if you can get into it. So I I got a couple questions. One just perhaps about kind of what you are looking for from participants and like this is a competition, how does one win? I guess the other, like the the third part of this I know I'm throwing a lot, is how do you manage anonymity? Do people tip themselves off via comments and how do you kind of
work around that? So people can tip themselves off with comments. That's 100% the case. But there are a number of people that will be playing the Masquerade that I know will be there, but I don't know which masks they are and they have not publicly revealed themselves. And so like our guest list is a very eclectic group of kind of all ends of the spectrum in a common space.
As far as what I'm looking for, I guess I'll start there is I think there's this maybe like a we got a little bit of this in the monument game. Not a lot, but a little bit where people thought that what I was after was, you know, things that speak in my language or use the kind of words that I use or have immersed themselves in the world of Lucy and all that. And you know, like that. If that's what drives you and
motivates you, by all means. But you know, for me, the point of kind of me exerting the art and building the system around it is to try to capture some little snapshot of what all this this strange cultural moment we're in is. And that is, you know, like we talked about the market in abstraction, like it's some kind of entity, but it's people, right? It's an undulating Organism of people. And so who are each of the people that helped move and motivate it?
So like what I'm looking for, as I don't care if it is about Lucy, about my art, about using my words, I don't care if it's well written or anything like that. Like that is not what I'm looking for at all. I am genuinely just curious like what have you been up to? Like what is your life? What if you could encapsulate 1
little snapshot into it? One story 1 leave behind one note to someone else when anything that is of your essence, if you want to call it like there, there's there doesn't need to be anything deep or profound about that. It can just be you is that will help me know where to put it all. And I think it's the things where we get a little stuck of knowing, well, what do I want to
leave behind? That's when, well, you start wearing a different kind of nature and, and there's a, there's something to observe in that as well. But no, the, the, the point of masquerade is it's not to there. Yes, look, there are keys and codes and riddles. There are things to find. There's all that. But that's just because there's a whole host of people that work like that. Yes, there are three masks that
can be won. Not everyone is motivated by winning like some people just want to be and that whatever form that takes, you're kind of encouraged. Like the reason why one of the lessons learned from monument game of, well, all the players were identical, but there's these three skulls is some of my reflection on that is man, there's just, there's so much that I read that people contributed that how could I really even sort it? You know, like my, my attempt to try to create these parameters
and incentive structures. Like there's so much that I loved that meant a lot to me that how can I create more of the spectrum of sorting of all of these masks and try to make it it really felt and understand that I am going through. I am reading all of these, every single line written means the world to me that you would even bother to take the time, let alone collect a piece of my art. And so the all all I'm looking
for is you basically. And as far as the winners, that is the task that I've given to the council. And so, you know, OB is, is part of that. And basically what that will be is closer to the monument game. They'll be, they're structured a little different here, but I can't get into that too much yet.
But the intent is to take everyone in and based on these three separate phases, which kind of have very different behaviors, if you think about them of that initial observation is something we kind of do alone. It's like a personal thing between me and whoever is coming in in some sense. But then the discourse and discussion, now I'm out of it and it's everyone there colliding with one another. What do you want to leave behind
on, on a topic of one another? And then that final step of revision is, you know, like, do you take feedback well, do you or do you reject it outright? And so there's three things are are kind of the separate rubrics, if you will, of what everyone is looking at. And there are three masks that represent creation, destruction and balance. So observation, discussion and revision.
And it's one extra mask that is given to each of the three, but everyone has their masks revealed and chosen at the same time. Got it. Well that this is super insightful, especially for me. I could disclosure I'll be playing for the first time and I'm incredibly excited and now I have a better idea about how this is going to work. I'm curious for you on a personal level, how stressful is this?
Like what what parts of the next couple weeks are are like the most stressful or are you you just love it and just deep and enjoying every second I. I do love all of it. Like I wouldn't do it if I I didn't enjoy it. But yeah, I mean, look, it's, it's been a long roll out already. We, we try to pace it in a way where there's kind of moments of extreme activity and exertion and then a little bit of breathing room.
So it's not just all the time, but today we get to the end of the, the public drawing phase, which is like we're kind of out of the zone of anything to do with the sale or anything to do with who is or isn't in the thing. And tomorrow we get to go into, you know, the, the core experience that we are creating. And so for me, like all of the the preamble, a lot of that centers around slowly trickling out information so that it's not overwhelming.
And to almost create a filter of people who are curious and interested and want to take a leap and are comfortable with the oddities and opacities around this. That like some of the years spent building all this is they don't need to necessarily follow every single step that I've
done. But through like consensus among friends or anything like that, that that final group of people that comes into this are people that are like they're down like they're they they they recognize the absurdity of making arts to begin with, doing it on chain, doing it all together like this. And they're willing to dive all the way in and not kind of sideline or side eye the whole thing. And so the the slow dole out has kind of created a a beautiful
crew of people. Like I, I think the guess list will make itself apparent to people at the close after it's done. But it like genuinely warms my heart to see like people that I have seen tiniest glimmers of or just like new with like the fragment of a name for three years. Like we've said hello or shook hands at like 1 random event two years ago and now suddenly they're in this and that you have like the high and the low of all of this. You have someone that randomly
bought Ethereum like. I don't know, six years ago and has five followers and a milady PFP. And then you also have like billionaire art collectors from the traditional art world like that. They're all in the commonplace space. It's very interesting to me. I I enjoy that kind of like folding in of of spaces. It's incredible, Sam. I know we're overtime. I want to be conscious of your
time because you're a busy man. I guess maybe one last question here is what would you tell someone who's interested that they've seen they're they're starting to see the masquerade, they don't have a mask. If they want to learn more about the ecosystem and figure out how how to join, what should they do over the coming weeks? Sure. So until 6:00 PM today, there's a public drawing for the remaining 68 masks. So it's a collection of 6/13.
All the others are accounted for based on decisions that players have made. This is that final pool. I don't know the number of entries we're out. I think it's like 405 hundred, something like that so far. And you can try to get in through that method. And if you're able to, you'll find out at 6:00 PM whether or not you're you're kind of in or out.
But I guess what I'd also say is like seeing like the number of entries versus what's available for me, the intent of keeping the collection size, what it is and not making something that is like 1005 thousand 10,000 is like very explicit is that's a, that's a lot of people, It's a lot of responsibility. It's a it's a lot it it's sure, it's way more money that could be made or anything like that. I don't really care about that
so much. Like I would rather leave that on the table for others to get to try to figure out how to do my next thing later. Like that's, you know, this is more than enough. We have a blessed life, but the the people that are in tomorrow, you'll begin that process of observation, discussion and revision and then at the close, all of the secondary will open and now all of the masks that
everyone has received. If anyone doesn't, you know, they're, let's be real, like there are some people that I've gotten it. They may not, Maybe they don't like the mask I gave them, right? There's always that. Maybe they want a different mask. There's a million things that could motivate that behavior is they'll start swapping at the
end of all this. We've also built the whole secondary market with a new royalty structure that I created as well, which we probably don't have time to get into. But nonetheless, a big part of the way I wanted to think about the masks is when a player left an observation on the monument game. Some of those ones that maybe like hit a liquidity crisis over the year and had to sell it. They are actually kind of bummed about it. Like there was a personal nature to it.
But at the end of the day, like, I don't know, there's even like people I know who you know, that selling their player, they were able to build something very cool in their life. And so I, you know, it's, I don't fault him or, or anything like that, but it did make me curious. Like is there some way to think about the future beyond the initial iteration of the mass grade? Where should these change hands? Is there a way for someone to
come back in? And so even if this version of it, the 613 and what every, the guest list is set here. If you are not part of that, I just recommend to keep an eye on the future because we, we've accounted for that. And later this year, we have a a rather beautiful thing that I'm very excited to share with people, but it's like a little bit too early and there's plenty of other things to talk about. Yes, sounds sounds like a spoiler there.
Well, this has been incredible. Sam, I, I know you are incredibly busy. I guess maybe just any final words you want to leave listeners, your collectors with ahead of the games about to begin? Just that like Rachel, my wife and I are just like so insanely appreciative. Like it's it, it means an insane amount to us to have this kind of support. Like we're, we're cognizant of how crazy it is out there.
And like we have a number of friends that got hit very hard during like market downturn and everything. And sort of like have people galvanized around this in some sense and be ready to kind of like dip out of their own patterns and trading and whatever to try this.
And like, even though it'd be like you got a kid, you building a little empire over there, you taking the time to like go through and read these observations and like where that role within this, like it is, it is an insane privilege that I, I do not take for granted. And it means quite a lot to me. Well. Love to hear that. And Obie, how are you feeling, you know, ahead of deliberations? Yeah, I'm excited to that. Unfortunately, I'm I've missed just be it my luck.
I'm not really the luckiest person in the world, but I've missed the in person council meetings that are famously held in in New York where various come like activities occur, which seems to involve killing Benny each time. I've missed the previous ones. Hopefully. I'd love to make it out to it to one of the ones that coming up this year. But yeah, it's cool. Like it's really cool. I bought my skull probably about a year and a half ago now. I think it was in 2023 I
believe. But it's really cool.
Like I love being part of something like this because it's just like it gets so engrossed in like, oh, looking at charts, numbers or all this stuff and then suddenly it's like like, you know, Masquerade, I can just finally, like, it's like a release for my mind where it's like, ah, this is actually something fun that I can sit down and just think like use a different parts of my brain that I'm not using every single day to actually really just appreciate some good art, to be
honest with you. Like, I think that's for me, that's what it always comes down and boils down to. So I'm really excited to see how this works. This is definitely a each iteration of this story ends up being a larger scale than the previous one. And this is, you know, the monument game was huge, but this is like another level. So I'm, I'm very curious to see how it all pans out. And yeah, excited to to, to play a part in the deliberations for sure.
Yeah, and, and I agree, I'm a huge fan of your work. I I think these, these last few, one of ones, they keep getting better. I think there's some of the best digital art we've been blessed with in in this space. I think you're on my my Mount Rushmore, a digital artist, Sam. So very impressive. I'm very excited to be be following and participating in this game and reporting on it as well. So wish you the the best of luck and we'll be excited to let this play out.
Thank you so much. Appreciate it, guys. Take care, K Sam. All right folks, we, we went over, but it was well worth that getting to hear in detail from from Sam everything the masquerade. So I'm excited for this one. This is going to be a fun few weeks. It kicks off here. Yeah, really. Today the drawing ends, then the 21st. So tomorrow is when the party starts. So get ready to party. As for today, we are going to end two days show there.
Want to thank our listeners, want to thank our partners. Want to thank Sam, of course, for coming on an ovie for taking time out. This has been a fun show. We'll be back tomorrow at 10:00 AM Eastern to close was out the week. Till then, go make it a great day. Goodbye.