And then the other thing is a personal thing that I've been very hesitant to talk about publicly or anything at all.
But I actually have recently.
Wow.
Congratulations.
Hello and welcome back to the Orange Pill Order podcast, where we dive deep into the
worlds of Bitcoin, freedom and the cultural revolution it's sparking. I'm your host Thomas.
And I'm Caelan. And I'm Finn. Together, we're your host today, orange pilling through the lens of art.
Our guest is Asanoa Gold, a pioneering Bitcoin artist whose work blends sacred geometry,
cryptography and sharp critiques of the fiat systems.
He's the founder of the world's first Bitcoin art magazine and has been featured at major
Bitcoin events.
Asanoa, thanks for joining us on the Orange Pill Order.
Thank you for having me up here today, gentlemen.
Right, just to begin, before we jump into your Bitcoin journey, I mean, we've got to
asked we were all very curious what does asanoa actually mean like where does your artist name
come from asanoa means uh it means hemp leaf in japanese and it's a triangular tessellation
it's actually a pattern that represents uh uh hemp leaf yeah that's very interesting yeah i like
that that's uh yeah very interesting it's a good explanation um so we'll start at the beginning
actually uh what's your origin story and how did you get into bitcoin and what led you to become
the artist um focused on it uh so back in 2017 i was working in the cannabis and hemp industry
and a friend of mine paid me for some work that i had done in bitcoin and i unfortunately spent
the majority of it as we all have that story um but uh i did i did i did you know that that was uh
that was my first the first time i ever held any bitcoin so uh thereafter i was kind of in and out
i didn't fully you know have that aha moment or fall down the rabbit hole at least the bitcoin
rabbit hole as as much as i would now obviously have liked to and it was during covid then
2021 when it really clicked for me and that's when I began making Bitcoin art and since then I've been
you know working in Bitcoin or interacting or just you know in Bitcoin world every day ever since
so I would say say 2021 I had my real aha moment where I you know fully clicked and I don't have a
specific, like, like, I don't have like the specific moment that I was like, this is it,
as I, you know, had already been in and out. And I, you know, understood it more and more.
But I think that after COVID and experiencing some of the, you know, top down tyranny of COVID
and the effect that it had on, you know, my life immediately, just, you know, the travel
restrictions and seeing them force you know experimental injections on people and you know
kind of all of the the cognitive dissonance and cloud world clown world you know psyop of the
whole thing i i realized that you know bitcoin was the only hope we have and so yeah been working
in bitcoin every every day since yeah i mean that's perfect i think if you don't mind me asking
before we get in uh in reference to your sort of selling the bitcoin what year was that actually in
that was 2017 i see yeah so i i got i got a i got paid a a handful of bitcoins back in 2017
so it was you know the price was like 12 1200 i think when i got them and uh so you know and they
went up you know that year that run I think it went up to around 20,000 and uh you know unfortunately
I kind of sold like most of them on the way on the run up I just was like oh cool this is money
oh it's gone a bit and I you know I just I I yeah it's uh I wish I had to save them of course I had
wish I had have huddled them but I didn't as I think uh you know I was just like this is money
and and my friend was like hey will you accept bitcoin and I was like yeah I was like well
yeah I was like well that's like the digital currency you know I'd heard of it before and
they were like yeah check it out you can just download this wallet it was mycelium wallet
and they were like I can just send it to you right now and it's in your wallet it's yours now
and so I like you know looked it up a little bit and was like oh yeah this is legit cool I'll take
bitcoin and you know I so I did I had bitcoin and then I uh you know I I don't know life went
on and i was like i needed some money so i spent the bitcoin and uh you know then it then it rallied
and it was it had rallied up a little bit and then i was like oh i probably shouldn't have spent that
so i tried you know i bought back a little bit and then you know it was it was it was in and out
for the next you know four years i kind of i had bought some and then i spent it and then i didn't
i didn't see it as you know i didn't understand that you you needed to just put it in cold storage
and forget about it so well at least it's a lesson learned i mean that's really what we're trying to
do here just educate the younger generation and what they need to start doing so i feel like that
would be really valuable to our listeners yeah no i and my story is not a unique in any way right so
i mean there's people you got to think that have that are back in you know 2014 who had a you know
a thousand bitcoins or something and they just they spent them you know and so it's really it's uh
If you get your hands on any Bitcoin, don't spend it or do spend it, but just make sure you replace it immediately.
So don't think of it as money that you can spend.
It's a long-term savings account and you should stimulate the Bitcoin circular economy and you should buy some art from me or buy a magazine.
And you should spend Bitcoin, but you should always replace it, right?
So spend and replace.
And, yeah, so.
yeah made x has a uh says something you know there's somewhere the artist made x says you
know he's like respect the bitcoins you know don't don't spend your bitcoin you know so yeah
yeah just uh keep hodling basically especially yeah that's the main message we need to get out
to gen z because uh yeah just that long-term savings always yeah yeah well and if you can
learn it younger. And I mean, I think a big lesson in it is just saving in itself, right? So I never
nobody ever taught me I don't come from money. I don't, you know, I don't come from like a finance
kind of family or, you know, a wealthy family that teaches their children financial education
or financial intelligence. And I don't think most people are taught financial intelligence,
they definitely don't teach it to you in school. And so I never was I've never been good at saving
money i'm still not great at it but through bitcoin you know you that's something you learn
that's and that's that goes beyond just bitcoin itself it's like having a savings account for
your future i mean i'm i'm a millennial and if i had have been saving money since i was 15 years
old i would be in a really really good spot right now and i you know hate to say it but unfortunately
i haven't been saving money since i was 15 you know but it's it's time goes by really fast and
suddenly realize like dang if you just had have actually had a savings account you'd be you'd be
chilling right now so that's i would say to any gen z out there like learn how to save money it's
like a real thing it's really important learn financial intelligence and you know ideally
save some of your money in bitcoin yeah definitely agree i think it's just uh again stay stacking
sats and keep hodling so uh moving back onto your art um you mentioned all your like sacred geometry
in all of your work so for our listeners and the gen z audience can you elaborate on how that ties
into your bitcoin art yeah so i started making art also kind of later in life i i haven't been
making art since i was really young i mean you know of course i made did drawings and stuff as a
kid but I wasn't like a prodigal kind of you know artist illustrator you know I'm sure you guys maybe
one of you guys is or you have friends who are just like the smartest artists and they've just
been making art like since ever right so um I started you know I was in my my mid-20s when I
decided I wanted to make art and like seriously and try and do it professionally and I've always
been really drawn to like geometric artwork and visionary artworks and so I started doing like
sacred geometry and drawing some Merkabas or some Metatron's cubes the flower of life you know
different patterns that kind of uh I think allude or are a you know an attempt to conceptualize
something greater than ourselves and you know you find sacred geometry and architecture in you know
pretty much everything in life has it in it in some form or another in plants and molecular
cellular structures. So there's definitely some mysterious code of some kind in sacred geometry
that's replicated. And maybe it's just a mathematical phenomenon. You don't have to
get all spiritual about it. But there is definitely some sort of mathematical code that's found
throughout all of this human experience. And I think that's super fascinating. So I started making
geometric artwork and was doing patterns and different geometric shapes and mandalas stuff
like that um and when i started making bitcoin art it was kind of hard to to think okay like what
what is bitcoin art and and how do you conceptualize bitcoin because it's like a digital
it's a digital thing obviously and and it's kind of there isn't you know there's not one person who
can be like this is what bitcoin looks like or this is what a bitcoin looks like so being a
bitcoin artist it's kind of fun you get to try out different different ways of conceptualizing it
so like behind me here uh there's these are like it's like a seed cipher so this is actually
it's this is a laser engraving but i did a painting of this where you could it was just
arbitrary glyphs that i made up so it was just a total artistic idea but you could actually use
them to encrypt the bitcoin seed phrase so you know this piece of art here can be used to encrypt
a Bitcoin seed phrase. So you could say that this art is Bitcoin because it has the knowledge
of decrypting a seed phrase that has Bitcoin on it. And so trying to do some fun stuff like that.
And yeah, and then I think that a big connection is Bitcoin is built on like mathematical purity
and mathematical precision. And that's what, you know, allows Bitcoin to work and function
and is kind of what's so magical about Bitcoin is that it's just like, you know, Satoshi was some
mathematical genius of some kind um and and he figured out a way to get digital cash to work
through super precise mathematics and that's exactly what sacred geometry is it's super
precise mathematics that you one might say you know get this whole reality we're living into work
yeah i mean let's talk more about your art i think well i know we do but more importantly
our listeners would love to hear more obviously your pieces are stunning mixed media with gold
leaf canvases and even as you just mentioned some of the laser engraved work so could you walk us
through your style and maybe some of your personal favorites yeah for sure i've got uh behind me
right here this is a on the uh right there is a laser engraved that's a laser engraved block from
the mempool.space visualizer and this is actually the first block that uh ocean mining found
after they fixed the inscription data carrier size bug
and were able to filter out all but one inscription.
So I then hand-painted it.
It's laser engraved.
Shout out to BTC pins for the laser work.
And then I hand-painted each of the little tiny squares on it.
So that's pretty fun.
And then over here, I've got half of my personal rendition
of the Guy Satoshi, or I call it Guy Satoshi,
but the Guy Fox mask.
And then it says, we are all Satoshi.
And the Satoshi is written in kanji.
And those two kanji characters, the first one represents wise, sage, philosopher.
And the second one represents history or chronicle.
So there's a few different ways of writing Satoshi in Japanese kanji using different kanji characters.
But I really like these two.
So those are the two that I've been using.
And then we're all Satoshi.
I'm sure you guys all obviously know what that means.
and then yeah I've got a project I'm working on behind me here uh you probably can't really see
these ones but I got three panels and these are actually it's a cipher so it's called I call it a
seed cipher um I feel like I might be able to come up with a better name than that but so far
that's what I called it and uh you can use it to encrypt the seed phrase here I'm gonna grab
something real quick
I did a piece a while
ago like I think it was like a year or two ago
where I did this
arbitrary glyph pattern
or just made up these symbols
and
I don't know if you guys can see that
and so I sold this painting and it came
with a seed plate these are custom seed
plates that I made with stamp seed
shout out to stamp seed
and so
So let's see if I can get it to look.
So this is a seed plate and it's got little squares that you can stamp your own seed into it.
And then once you stamp them in here, they're all scrambled up.
So you've got a seed plate with your seed stamped into it and it's all scrambled up, all the letters.
So somebody found this, they couldn't decrypt it and they couldn't get the Bitcoin out of it unless they had this one,
which is the cipher key, which tells you the correct order of the seed words.
So like that little symbol right there, that'll be your first seed letter.
That's your second, that's your third, that's your fourth.
And then you start again, your first, second, third, fourth.
And it's a truncated seed phrase.
So all 12 and 24 word seed phrases can be truncated.
You'll need the first four letters of each seed word,
which is pretty cool to know if anybody doesn't know that.
And so that's for 12 different seed words.
and then that plate holds 12 different seed words all scrambled up
thank you yeah and then my latest art my latest greatest art project is putting together this
compilation of different art that's not mine well i put some of my art in here of course
but uh the bitcoin art magazine so you know we've got art from all the different artists or many of
the different artists all of the best artists in bitcoin so putting this together has been an art
project as i've never i just i taught myself to use in design uh with the help of some really
excellent designers shout out emily and annabelle baza especially and um yeah so that's been an art
project that's been really fun so uh curation and compilation of other artists are in the space is
there was no dedicated magazine for Bitcoiner.
So now we've got one, which is pretty cool.
Yeah, now we've got one.
Yeah, it's really cool and impressive, yeah.
Yeah, it's cool how you can tailor your own interests as well to Bitcoin.
I feel like that's such an important thing for the younger generation to see as well,
that it's not just purely the finance side of things.
Absolutely.
I mean, it's really crazy.
I'm sure you guys know, but the more anybody goes down the rabbit hole,
the more ways you realize that kind of everything leads back to Bitcoin.
or everything can lead back to Bitcoin.
And I mean, I guess that, you know, it makes sense
that everything kind of leads back to money.
But I feel like a lot of us kind of grow up or, you know,
there's this kind of, you know, money is the root of all evil sort of thing.
And I mean, you even have it in religion, like, you know,
in like Buddhism and Hinduism, there's a lot of like, you know,
like let go of all material possessions, be here now.
Siddhartha is a great book.
and it's kind of like, you know, enlightenment is like
moving past attachment, physical objects and material,
you know, material items and so forth.
And then you've got like in Christianity, the, you know,
the rich man will pass through the eye of a needle
before the, before, you know, he gets into the kingdom of heaven
and kind of stuff.
And so I feel like there's a lot of, there's a lot of like,
I just kind of call it like povo mentality,
like poor man's mentality.
And it's kind of this thing, it's like this blue collar thing of like,
You know, like life's not all about money. And it's like, you know, I, I, I, I, that has truth in it as everything has some truths in it. And you shouldn't live your life just obsessing about money or, you know, money doesn't just inherently bring happiness.
but in this world that we live in in this human society we live in money is attached to everything
it's like the base layer of all function like and and that just is the way it is unless you're
going to go live in a you know in a hut out in the jungle or you know a log cabin in the woods
in the middle of nowhere and you're literally not going to interact with other humans or with
modern society then maybe you can live without money uh you know there's tribes there's still
some continuum tribes out there maybe in Papua New Guinea or somewhere where they live with no
money right and they just like hunt and gather but if you're living in today in the in the modern age
anywhere in the western world or in the more you know not even the western world the just developed
world um you're you know you're touching money in some form in some way or another so like learning
how to be good with money it's just super important and bitcoin ties into that because bitcoin is
money it's the best money that humanity's ever known and there is a way that it connects back to
anything you're interested in so that's absolutely spot on and i think is really interesting and
really cool because like you said maybe you're not a tech person maybe you're not a finance
you know kind of person you're not a trader you don't know anything about stocks uh and there is
always some way that you can relate what you do back to bitcoin yeah i mean to help our gen z
listeners we were looking into actually developing sort of an online digital space to teach them
more about primarily decentralization but i'm sure somewhere along the lines we tap on the
financial side of bitcoin and the opportunities that that can open no that's awesome i'm excited
to see what you guys create i think that uh i think that that that definitely needs to exist
and I think that you guys would be the best people to build it.
So, yeah.
Very much.
I mean, more specifically, as a group,
we really love your piece Blood Money and the meaning behind it.
Just for our listeners who aren't really familiar with your work,
would you be able to go into it in more detail?
Yeah, absolutely.
So that's kind of funny because a lot of the work that I've done is very like,
you know, I'm always trying to be like really precise
and make it look, you know, just like symmetrical stuff
or, you know, just making my work like super precise
And Blood Money was actually, I think it was for Vegas, the Bitcoin conference in Vegas last year.
And I needed to make a piece of art.
And it actually, I got to shout out Rebel Money because he kind of gave me part of the idea for that.
But I had this idea to just do like fiat bills and like do like blood on them.
And I was like, maybe I could do like, you know, obviously I was like, oh, like that'd be crazy cool if I like cut myself and put like my own blood on the, something super radical.
uh and then i was like i'm gonna i'm gonna use pig's blood and i i called some like butchers and
they were like no we don't have any like we don't sell like a blood and i was like can i buy like a
bag of blood from you and they were like you have to find like a slaughterhouse so then i thought
about it and like real blood actually turns kind of brown so i ended up just using paint which isn't
as cool maybe one day i'll get some like pig's blood and mix it with some paint or stabilize it
somehow and then do some that because i think that would kind of that would be kind of sick but um
i just use red paint but uh on that artwork i basically did the m2 money supply and so i just
i just like hand drew it all on there and i just i took these i went and got like used dollar bills
like i went and got changed from a store and they were just like dirty used dollar bills and i just
glued them to a piece of cardboard and then i drew the m2 money supply graph on it just
kind of roughly by hand and uh you know the kind of that that m2 money supply is it's like a pretty
powerful graph right there and you realize like that's just like how much money they've printed
and created like how much u.s dollars they've created since whenever they started tracking it
whatever it is like 1920 or something uh 1913 i don't know when they started actually tracking
them too but you know if you if you flip that chart upside down it basically shows like the
value of a dollar right because it almost matches the purchasing power of a dollar so if you look at
what's the purchasing power of a dollar that chart you know it just it's going down ever since the
inception of the dollar and i think the math is like 98 or 99 percent less value for one dollar
than when they created the u.s dollar currency so that's like you know very clearly shows you
inflation and then like you know you basically flip it over and you've got the m2 money supply
so like the more dollars they've printed the less the dollar has become worth and i mean that like
right there alone just shows you that like a fiat money that has no hard supply cap is just going to
become worthless over time how long does it take i think the dollars i think all fiat monies have
eventually gone and overinflated or you know gone into hyperinflation or have collapsed all the way
since like Rome, but the dollars lasted like a really long time.
And so who knows how long it'll last, you know,
and odds are they're going to try and turn it into some sort of CBDC to save it.
But like right now, as we speak, we've got this, you know,
there's now this war with Iran.
So it's just been perpetual war after war to prop up the value of the dollar
because inherently it's printing it and the value keeps going down.
So the blood money was, you know, kind of just talking about that
and depicting that.
yeah no it's a really really incredible piece and uh another piece we'd love to talk about is the
bitcoin grenade collector set yeah thank you that's uh i gotta shout out crypto cloaks so
crypto cloaks made a little 3d printed grenade with a bitcoin b on it um and uh i don't know i
just i thought it was super cool and so i did my own like hand-drawn rendition of their bitcoin
grenade and then I made it into a print and then the little collector set we did was with BTC pins
and he did like a little box that he made laser cut and he did some pins like hat pins and then
Crypto Cloaks printed like an old gold 3D printed grenade and then the little pins went in the
grenade and then I did like some fine art prints that went with it so that was that was a fun
project and then what is a Bitcoin grenade and I you know I think it's kind of up to interpretation
but I like to think of it as it's not a not like a symbol of violence or a symbol of a weapon but
it's you know it's uh I mean it you know it could be like bitcoin's gonna explode like a grenade
um you know bitcoin the price is gonna explode uh you know there's some stuff like that but
ultimately at least for me I like to think of it as like through bitcoin we have the the chance of
reducing war globally and that that's that's really cool and uh we can actually you know
reduce violence on this planet through bitcoin and so um definitely true i mean your use of gold
is iconic yeah and i think everyone sort of curious to know why gold so i started using gold in art because I had some friends who they would like spray paint like water guns or like any random thing like a rock at a music festival at burning man actually
but uh they they like they would you know they would just like spray paint random stuff with
gold and i thought that was funny and um and then i started doing some geometric art and i was like
what if I made this like out of gold and so I I have found these sick gold paint pens and and I was
like black and gold's just cool and it looks sick it's a nice vibe and so I started doing some like
geometric black and gold stuff so when I started doing Bitcoin art in you know I was like well I'm
gonna do some some do something with just a gold paint pen on a black background it's like a striking
and um and it's kind of funny because I actually uh I uh you know Bitcoiners a lot of them don't
like gold because there's you know gold's kind of like the original sound money and it got totally
co-opted and has been controlled by the powers that be now for a very long time and so bitcoin
is you know the gold i like to think of it as a reminder to not let what happened to gold happen
to bitcoin so let's not let them take over and control bitcoin the way they have with gold and
we're seeing that right now with the suit coiners and these ETFs and, you know, the Wall Street
firms and so forth, the, you know, fiat financial mechanisms that they're now using as, you know,
financial instruments integrated with Bitcoin. But it's not the real thing, right? If you buy the ETF
or you buy a Bitcoin exposure through a brokerage account, you know, you don't actually own the
Bitcoin. It's the same as holding it on an exchange. You're not in control of it. Ultimately,
and they're going to,
I think something just came out with Jane Street
doing price manipulation with Bitcoin.
And so, you know,
they're sure it's going to do everything they can
to control Bitcoin the way they control gold.
So, you know, gold, Bitcoin art,
I mean, it looks cool,
but it's also a reminder,
don't let what happened to gold happen to Bitcoin.
And it's also kind of a nod and, you know,
a lesson, there's a lesson in there
of just being taken off the gold standard
and what all of that means.
So if anybody who's listening to this doesn't know,
you know, in 1971, when Richard Nixon took the United States
off the gold standard, that, you know,
that was the real peak decline of the dollar ever since then.
It's just, it's made the dollar worthless.
And yeah, so, you know, don't let, don't,
I think the only use case for an ETF or any sort of,
fiat based bitcoin tool or financial instrument is if you have money and i think most gen zers
probably don't so but if you're older maybe and you have money that's wrapped up in like a roth
ira or a 401k or something and maybe it's through your work and you actually can't get it out of
like you can't cash it out and just buy bitcoin to self-custody but you want to you know get price
exposure to Bitcoin, then okay, you could buy like a Bitcoin related stock. And I mean, that
definitely makes sense. But other than that, it's like, you know, you want to hold your own Bitcoin
in self custody, in some sort of self custody, whether that's, you know, a multi-sig setup or
just hidden stashed away somewhere. If you have Bitcoin on an exchange, if you don't own, if you're
not the only person who has the private keys that access that Bitcoin, then you don't actually own
And there's like, you know, that's really important if we want Bitcoin to become the freedom money that we believe it is or that it can be, you know.
So if everybody just uses, you know, the bank, but the bank has the Bitcoin, then it's not going to, you know, actually provide that freedom or liberation from fiat tyranny.
Yeah, I think we're going to move more onto the security side later on anyway.
So that'll be very interesting.
But for now, obviously, as we've mentioned previously, you're the founder of the Bitcoin Art Magazine, which is absolutely amazing.
Would you be able to tell us about its inception and what it represents?
Yeah, absolutely.
So about, well, I guess it's almost two years now,
but I think it was back in 2024 with, I was out in Nashville, Tennessee,
and I was at the Bitcoin conference and hanging out at the art gallery
and Rebel Money and it was, I think it was MLO and I think Yonat.
But a couple of the other artists had made like a little gallery catalog that was like printed out that showed their artwork on it that was in the gallery that year.
And it was just really nicely done.
And I was like, that's so cool.
Maybe we should do like next year one that is like a gallery catalog for the art in the whole gallery.
And then I was like, well, what about like a Bitcoin art magazine?
Like nobody's done that, huh?
And so Rebel and I talked about it and we talked about starting one and just doing like a periodical publication that features art from the Bitcoin art space, which has grown to be quite a, you know, vibrant, active and robust community.
You know, emphasizing the physical art.
There's obviously a whole lot of NFTs and stuff out there, but, you know, real like nice, fine art, art that you hang on your wall, sculptures.
and we talked about it but we never ended up doing it.
I think he got busy doing the Art of Freedom
and kind of life happened and everything.
And so the beginning of last year,
I was thinking about it and was like,
I'm just going to go ahead and do it.
And so I just started reaching out to people
and the response was just super unanimously positive
and people were really excited about it.
So I spent this last year learning how to design a magazine
and learning how to print a magazine.
We also have a fine art book that we're doing.
The books are at the printers right now.
And so, yeah, so we now have Bitcoin Art Magazine.
This is the Genesis edition.
I'm currently working on edition one,
which will hopefully be out and available in a couple months now.
And we've got 36 artists inside of here.
We've got a couple articles.
We have two forwards.
We have one by Knut Svanholm, and we have one by Daniel Prince.
and we have a piece of writing from Tomer
from one of his excellent pieces of writing.
It says,
a foreword from Knut Svanholm.
So we've got some literature in here,
but the majority of the magazine,
we have some ads from some really great
Bitcoin-only companies,
like Bitcoin Audible and Bull Bitcoin.
We got Saz Mining,
an ad from Saz Mining,
and we've got Time Chain Calendar in here.
And then the majority, though,
the magazine is all Bitcoin art from different artists. So we've got different artist features
and then full page, uh, pictures of their artwork. So we've got 36 different artists
in the Genesis edition, or I think we've got, we might have over 36 and, um, yeah, it's really
cool. It's 152 pages. So it's like a solid, it's a solid, solid magazine. I would say it's
more of a journal or an art journal than just than a magazine and yeah it's been great everybody's
been really supportive shout out to all of our patrons who have ordered copies or ordered one
of the fine art books and shout out to our sponsors who helped make it happen and i'm super excited
to be working on the next one and the goal is to do four of them a year so we'll do uh we'll do
like a base magazine these are limited the 1720 copies on the genesis edition we might do more of
the standard magazine on edition one but um we might we'll still probably keep it limited to
something and then we have like a gold foil version uh i don't know i have one nearby here
we have like a one that's also got there's some artwork on the back here it's black on black
you might not be able to see it but on the gold foil version it's all gold foiled on the back and
then the title on the front's gold foil that's a bit more expensive but it's there's only 210 of
those so that's like a super collector's item and then we have a fine art book that we're doing it's
hardcover book those are limited to 121 copies and then we're doing 100 and then we're doing 21
that's 121 copies and then we're doing 21 copies of a patron's edition patron's editions are sold
out but the hardcover books limited to 121 are still available the goal is to do four of these
a year like uh four editions a year with uh the base magazine or the base art journal and then
the three or two or three accompanying collectors editions of it and so we'll see if we if there's
the demand to do four a year but as of right now we'll definitely be able to do two of them a year
so yeah it's really that's really cool yeah i'm very excited to see it so um what is i'd say maybe
the mission behind it,
and especially with the pieces
that you just said,
the Genesis edition
and those limited gold foil covers.
Yeah, I'll read you guys
our kind of our mission statement here
right from in the beginning
of the magazine.
Ah.
To propel the adoption of Bitcoin
through the lens of art and culture,
envisioning a brighter future
built on a Bitcoin standard.
To archive the evolution of Bitcoin art,
capturing this unprecedented moment
in human history as it unfolds to amplify bitcoin artists by showcasing their work and ensuring
their creations reach a global audience so i would say that yeah sounds right more or less sums it up
yeah i mean how has the community responded to the magazine and the podcast episodes and
various collaborations much like the denver gallery exhibition yeah thanks thank you for
mentioning that so overall the the community response has just been just been amazing when
you have a good idea i think it's you know i hope it's always this way but right now it definitely
is you know the bitcoin space is still quite small on the global playing field in the global scheme
of things so i found that if you have a really good idea in bitcoin bitcoiners are you know
extremely supportive and i think that's because bitcoin has such phenomenal game theory like
anything that anybody does around Bitcoin, related to Bitcoin, based on Bitcoin, as long as it's
positive towards Bitcoin, every other Bitcoin is incentivized to support it because it's, you know,
there's almost no competition, right? We're like all working together just inherently,
which is interesting when you think of, you know, like how communism is bad and socialism is bad and
private property rights are important and bitcoin teaches you a lot of these things
yet at the same time bitcoin is this like extremely communal effort to like a better
for better form of money globally so anything you do anything that's a good idea that anybody can
think of if it's a if it has genuine if you're genuinely bringing value the bitcoiners are going
to support you and i mean this magazine is proof of that nobody had ever done it before i think i've
done it and as responsible as a way as possible and so people have been super supportive and uh
yeah we we've come to find the same obviously bring something new to this space like trying to
educate our generation and the younger generation and we've had extreme support from from all ages
really yeah yeah no absolutely and i mean that's it's it's it's a it's a beautiful thing to to do
something and then people like what you're doing so anybody out there listening to this if you've
been sitting on an idea or thinking about something just just give it a shot try it out do it learn
learn learn as much as you need to uh but don't feel like you need to learn everything you know
about bitcoin because that's impossible just learn enough to do what your your idea is and give it a
and odds are people are going to be extremely supportive yeah you mentioned that go on to
like have this podcast and learn great minds like yourself live in front of our audience like it's
such a blessing honestly yeah no this is this is really awesome that you guys are doing this
it's uh it's an as you as you guys know it's a i feel like my generation is like we're the
we're the I'm the I'm the last generation that grew up without a phone right like I think I got
a phone when I was like 14 13 or 14 um and I remember it was like a Nokia brick phone so I
remember like a friend of mine got the first iPhone so you know we we were I was the last
generation that grew up like the smart smartphones were invented or like the like the first iPhone I
think came out like you know it was when I was a teenager so we're the last generation that had
like a childhood where like all the adults weren't on smartphones and uh but i was still
young enough to like you know intuitively understand technology and have you know like
i mean now you've got like little kids that are just like on an ipad right
but like half of the boomers out there don't know how to use an ipad
and so it's it's kind of this crazy thing i think watching like humans evolve right it's just human
evolution like i grew up surfing and like when i was a kid surfing like if you saw somebody do like
an air 360 on a surfboard they were like super good at surfing that was like crazy it was rare
now you go to like any decent surf break and there's like five little groms that are like
10 years old and they're just like busting 360 airs right and you see the same thing in like
snowboarding or skating or like anything right like as humans as human activities evolve like
kids pick it up younger and younger and it's like we're seeing that with technology now where it's
like little kids are just like coding stuff and like you know just intuitively they just know how
the phone works they know how the ipad works and it's like how do they know and it's almost like
there's some like collective consciousness sort of thing like it's like in our dna like as we learn
something and then you have a kid like your kid already like part of them already like knows the
thing that you learned right so but it's uh at the same time like as cool as technology is and
everything obviously it's super scary and so you know a lot of a lot of kids right now are just
growing up fully immersed in this technological world.
And I don't know why I kind of rambled off there.
But I wanted to say you mentioned the Denver Gallery.
So that's the first we're doing.
Bitcoin Art Magazine times the space, Denver,
and its auctions are being run and handled by Scare City.
Shout out to Scare City.
And we've actually got a collection of physical art
hanging in the space in Denver, Colorado.
The art will be up there for a couple months here.
and then we'll be doing an auction at the end.
So that's the first kind of in-person physical gallery
that the magazine has had a hand in.
So that's really exciting.
And if you're listening to this,
please go check out scarce.city.
And at the top of the homepage,
there's the Bitcoin Art Magazine Space Denver Gallery.
Throw a bid at something, share it on social media.
And yeah, so that's really cool.
And then I've also been doing the Bitcoin Art Podcast.
and shout out to Yonat who's doing the movement of art which is kind of like a round table
fireside chat series of episodes with multiple artists and you can find that at bitcoinartbroadcast.com
and so trying to do that kind of as like an audio gallery to run parallel to the magazine so the
magazine's pretty highly very highly curated and so I'm doing the the podcast to try and make it a
little i have like a bit more casual you know open audio version of the magazine alongside it so
yeah for any viewers listening anyway we'll put all your links in the description of this video
and um but um going on to what you're saying before i mean commenting on technology shifting
gears to your broader worldview how does bitcoin in your view i mean break the cycle of bank funded
destruction and endless conflict and i mean how do you weave those critiques into your geometric
sacred inspired art um that's an excellent very well-worded question uh i would say that overall
like personally i like you know i i like bitcoin and i want bitcoin to succeed so that i don't have
to engage with a technological world if i don't want it yeah so i think i think it's about freedom
at the end of the day. And in kind of as mentioned before, in our, you know, in our modern world,
money is very synonymous with freedom, right? So if you wake up in the morning and you have money
in a savings account, and you go to your job, and your boss is a dick, you can say you and you can
quit. And you don't need to worry about paying your rent or buying food tomorrow, because you
have some money saved away, you know, and so you're given in the moment, personal individual
freedom to not take from your boss, or to find another job if you don't like your job, and don't
have money saved, then you don't have that choice anymore. And it's kind of, I think the same for
technology, like, even right now, I'm an artist, I want to be an artist, I want to have a magazine,
I want it to be successful.
I got to go on social media every day to talk about it.
I've got to come on podcasts to talk about it.
I'm very grateful to be here with you guys.
But, you know, it's like the world we're living in is so, it's just so, you know, revolves around this digital world that has grown for like the most basic things like marketing my painting.
and uh you know so i i would like bitcoin to be successful and so that i don't have to
go on social media today if i don't want to and so that i can disconnect and unplug
and it's kind of interesting because bitcoin's digital and i think a lot of people who don't
want to live in a you know live in a technological world 24 7 with their you know apple vr goggles on
or whatever they're like oh bitcoin isn't that like a cbdc or something so there's a lot of
confusion out there and a lot of people that don't want to adopt bitcoin because they don't like that
it's digital because they know the digital digital money digital things a digital life isn't necessarily
conducive to a super healthy um prospering society just because unfortunately there's a
bunch of evil people out there who use you know technology and use this digital landscape to
control us uh but it's kind of crazy that bitcoin is digital and yet it's this like potential avenue
for us to like not have to use cbdcs like if you have bitcoin you don't have to use the like
government coin that they're going to make us use they're already making people use cbdc i mean
china has a cbdc like and so it's kind of you know there's a quote by hal finney that is
computers can be a tool to liberate and protect people rather than control them. And Bitcoin's a
great example of that, you know. So Bitcoin's a digital technology that can allow us to actually
have to interact with digital technology less if we want to. And if you love digital technology,
that's okay too. But I just want to, I love digital technology. I, you know, I do like the
digital world. I love my Twitter and Noster community. And I love that I can live anywhere
in the world and sell my Bitcoin art digitally.
But I just want to have the choice
of whether I interact with it or not.
And I don't want to be forced to use it
if I don't want to.
So yeah, that was kind of long-winded too.
But I think that, yeah.
Yeah.
No, it's fine.
It's all valuable information as well.
I mean, I think that's one thing
we're trying to combat as well
in the younger generation
is I think there's such a negative stigma
around digital currencies and things like that.
But we want to identify that Bitcoin is completely different to everything else.
I think a big issue is that people still associate it with all the other crypto coins.
And obviously there's a lot of bad things happening surrounding them coins and the control element especially that we're sort of trying to separate effectively.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's interesting.
all the coins on the one hand i think they're kind of you know i think they're almost part of a
immune system around bitcoin to like confuse the like boomer regulators which i think is kind of
cool and you know i think they're also there's something to be said to like the free market
and bitcoin is really about a free market so you know why shouldn't joe schmo be able to make his
you know, Duki coin 3000 and free market, right? And if the Federal Reserve can print money,
then anybody should be able to spool up a coin and, you know, print their own money.
But I mean, at the end of the day, none of these coins will ever be, none, I don't think any of
them ever will ever be able to be what Bitcoin is because Bitcoin was not just a digital currency
or it wasn't just an invention.
It was a discovery of a mathematical problem
that solved the double spend problem
and the Byzantine generals problem.
And it was a mathematical solution
to creating a digital gold
or a digital currency that actually works.
And it's kind of like,
you can't like rediscover
that same mathematical solution again.
And you can copy it,
which is what they've done,
but you're never going to have
the, you know, you can never discover, like, you can't discover how to light a fire twice,
like, fire was a discovery, you know, how to get the internet to work, TCP and ICP, like, packets,
like, and, and, like, the internet, the connectivity of the internet, the infrastructure,
that was, like, a discovery, and then it was a choice to use that particular method,
but nonetheless, it was a solution to a problem, and once it's been solved, you can't just solve
it again, so, you know, that's where all the coins on the Web3 and stuff, it's just, it's copycats,
And I think, you know, what you guys are doing is probably the best thing you can be doing to try and, you know, help everybody, but especially Gen Z understand the difference between Bitcoin and coins is just talking about it and explaining it and providing the resources for people to educate themselves.
and you're not going to save everyone because humans are you know addicted to gambling and
you know people you're not going to stop everyone from drinking alcohol or doing drug
because people are addict have addictions and you know number go up and gambling so but you can you
can give them that you can feed you know you can lead a horse to water but you can't force it to
drink kind of thing so you can provide the resources for your gen z peers and for the gen
years out there from a gen z perspective and say hey this is why bitcoin is unique and you know
i'm sure that you guys if you haven't already are going to have a lot of friends and peers
a lot of i told you so moments you know so yeah
um just going back on to well your work and your art um because your work often maps bitcoin's
protocol onto eternal patterns like the time chain as a natural rhythm or proof of work as
harmonious balance um do you see bitcoin as a form of living art or a cryptographic masterpiece itself and why do you push so hard for physical tangible bitcoin over purely digital expressions artistically yeah uh i think that so i don i don have anything
against digital art a bunch of my artwork i use digital tools for right so when i do like a laser
cut I designed that on a vector software on my computer and there's all kinds of phenomenal
digital artwork out there uh and you know I mean television movies cinematography you know pretty
much the majority of photography today has a digital element um and there's a there's a you
know animations I mean there's tons of amazing digital artwork I think that personally um you
You know, it's kind of when you take a piece of digital art or a piece of physical art and you make like an NFT, you're essentially just creating a shit coin.
So it's the same as, you know, you can just print an unlimited amount of them extremely easily.
Right. So the conviction is very low.
Whereas if I make like a physical print, someone, you know, people have said and someone might say, well, isn't like an NFT just like a digital print of your art?
And it's like, well, yeah, it is.
and is there something wrong with someone supporting my art by buying a digital copy of it
or you know buying a digital signature of it no inherently there's nothing wrong with that
but the problem is when you have a bunch of greedy vcs that pay influencers to pump some like absolute
garbage monkey token image you know auto-generated profile picture thing and then say that there's
some kind of value in it or that it has like a speculative value and that it's a good investment
right so i think that like you know i mean for one physical art to me is just classier like do
you want to live in a house that's a bunch of tv screens on the walls and you display all of your
digital art nfts on the walls or do you want to live in a house with like nice paintings on the
walls like i don't know yeah you know like that's that's a whole lot classier to me at least um and
a whole lot more human than having a tv screen where you've got a slideshow of all your digital
nfts so i just i just think physical arts classier uh and i think it's you know it's still connected
it's connected to reality you know we're we are still physical we haven't fully uploaded to the
matrix yet so or at least as far as we know we haven't so like being able to like hold something
and touch it like is is pretty powerful like we haven't been able to simulate that yet in the
digital reality maybe someday they will and like you know your digital experience will feel
identical to your physical experience super scary and probably someday will exist but so far it's not
and even then i think a physical item is always going to have something special because it's you
know this is a physical reality uh and then the other thing is yeah just the the fact of like
I mean, I could so easily just spool up an infinite amount of NFTs and sell them and tell people that they should buy them or whatever.
And there's very little conviction in that.
When I sell a physical print, I have to make the prints.
That takes proof of work, takes time and money to make the prints.
And then I have to mail them out to the buyer.
And then the person, the collector, the customer knows they're getting a physical print.
there's not any like deception around explaining what it is that they're buying
it's also less impulsive someone can very impulsively buy an nft they can just like click
the buy now button and uh if you and then and then they have it boom instantly whereas if you
buy a print from me you've got to wait for it it's going to come in the mail you've got to go
to the mail you now have a physical item you have to store it somewhere you have to put it in your
home you have to find a place for it and that just is a lot more conviction than clicking okay buy on
a digital photo that i made that anybody else can right click save and steal and you know i can
create them just by tapping enter enter or whatever you know on my keyboard and it's like okay boom
boom boom boom boom there's more of them and so i that's just it's just low conviction it's just
lazy i think and uh it will just never have the same value as physical items well on like an
intrinsic human level yeah i mean i agree definitely i don't know about it's an interesting
perspective to say the least i mean you've talked about being the remnant building citadels against
centralization in a world full of surveillance which is forever going to be increasing inflation
theft and eroding sovereignty how does creating and collecting bitcoin art serve as a
resistance or even a spiritual practice for bitcoiners alike
yeah i think that um i think that it's it's it's bringing the ideas the philosophies
and the lessons behind bitcoin into the physical realm and i'm in you know naturally i'm quite a
minimalist uh and you know i i there's a lot of things about it's it's kind of interesting it's
it's kind of interesting too because bitcoin kind of is is once again like it's teaches you a lot
about how communism is bad and private property is important right and at the same time bitcoin is
it's a communal effort to grow bitcoin adoption and for bitcoin to function and to work is a
communal effort globally so it exists as a as a juxtapose in some ways and i think that you know
i think that that also relates to
uh just the ideas just the ideas of bitcoin being brought into the physical world into the physical
realm and there's something about like oh nothing and be happy right and like you're gonna live in
a pod and eat bugs and it's kind of like it's interesting because currently actually renting a
house and stacking bitcoin instead of paying you know a mortgage and the maintenance fees and all
of this stuff on owning a home uh it's probably a better idea to just stack bitcoin and have less
stuff that you have to deal with and kind of owning nothing and be happy and just have your
you know bitcoin cold storage a laptop and a phone and a backpack with your camera or your
surfboard or whatever you like to do and just like you know being like living quite simply
while stacking bitcoin um you know there's kind of a juxtapose there as well which is which is
interesting that's a kind of a whole nother conversation but i think like the physical art
it's bringing the ideas of bitcoin and the concepts of bitcoin and attempts at conceptualizing bitcoin
and the lessons behind bitcoin and bringing it into the physical realm and then decorating your
space with it so you know what kind of art does anybody hang in their home and why do you hang
art in your home and you know what kind of art do you buy to put inside of your home and so i mean
for me I want to wake up every day and like look at stuff that reminds me what my mission is and
why I'm here and who I belong to and I feel like I belong to this global community of Bitcoiners
so I put a piece of art on my wall to remind me that I'm a Bitcoiner and as a reminder to wake up
every day and get after it and stack sats and maybe if somebody a friend comes over and sees
the painting and they go that's really weird what the heck's that opens up a conversation about
bitcoin and maybe we mint a new bitcoiner right there and then so you know i think uh ultimately
though it's just about you know who you are and our artwork's a part of our identity and so if
we're if you're a bitcoiner why wouldn't you have a piece of bitcoin art very true of course i mean
we've we spoke about the broader worldview of course but now i mean i think we should speak
directly to our gen z listeners many of whom as you know are inheriting massive debt fear illusions
an additional native but increasingly I mean surveyed world what specific advice would you
have them on embracing bitcoin not just as an investment but as a philosophical and cultural
shift almost yeah hmm interesting I would say I would say study private property rights and learn
what private property means and study everything you can about bitcoin and study everything you can
about ai and while you do it just remember that if it's on a screen it's not real and it's not
it's just not who you are and you know kind of the same as you know we're not you know you're
not your thoughts i don't know what you are but you know you're you're not all the thoughts that
go through your head you know i mean that would that would be pretty crazy if you know we were
completely identified with all of our thoughts which many people do and many people are but you
know you're not the things that you own um and you most importantly you're not you know your instagram
page or your facebook page and just be really careful and don't you know just don't listen to
your instagram feed or your tiktok feed too much and just you know take it with a grain of salt and
remember that there are very evil very smart people out there that are controlling you
through your social media feed and it's uh interesting because you need to learn everything
you can about bitcoin digital currency and you need to learn everything you can about ai
so that you can have a chance at success in this fast you know existing digital world we're living
in but just remember that you know that's not who you are and i don't know who you are i can't tell
you who you are but you're definitely not your social media feed yeah well i'm going back to
actually what you earlier said about self-custody because well you emphasize self-custody and running
nodes and understanding private keys as your personal power so for young people and especially
gen z who are starting out how do you think they should begin stacking sats but also while building
real skills like maybe even art or something creative like that to align with the sovereignty
and avoid those fiat traps figure out what you want to do figure out i guess to the question
before who are you and what are you passionate about and you know go go and study that and you
don't need to go to school well you know some cases you might need to go to school for it but
in a lot of cases you don't need to go to school you know all of the resources that you need to
learn most things anybody wants to learn are available readily for free on youtube on the
internet um we have this like giant i mean it's you know there's a lot of sci-fi parallels i mean
But we have Akashic Records, the internet.
We have this archive of anything you could want to know or need to know.
And it's also in books and physical books.
But between physical books and the internet, you can learn anything that you want.
So figure out what is it that you are interested in and go learn about that.
And what do you want to do with your time?
How do you want to actually spend your days?
And what does that look like?
Because the story that we were told of going to college and getting a job,
is just that's just it's i mean now it's i mean that was you know that was a lie 20 years ago
i i don't know how many peers of mine i know who have bachelors of you know global business
management i mean you know all kinds of different degrees and they can't find a job for the life of
them because a degree doesn't equate a job anymore you know it's it's raw raw talent raw skill set
and even more importantly passion so if you're not passionate about something your odds of being
successful with it are going to be pretty low or you know you're not your odds of being happy doing
it are going to be pretty low so even if you are successful so i think figuring out what you're
passionate about i'm like super passionate about art and bitcoin so that's i'm making bitcoin art
and i talk about bitcoin every day i got i have i have a bunch of projects like at any time i can
go work on my projects here um and i think that yeah study ai though definitely study ai you know
good i mean that's recent to like i'm super i've been super like anti-ai you know obviously i'm
super like you know all the digital stuff is bad but uh recently i've been like man like if you
don't study ai you're gonna be absolutely screwed it'll be like my generation not learning how to
use a Google search. Like if I go to get a job somewhere or someone, you know, my age, like a
millennial goes to get a job and they're like, do you have a car? Do you have a phone? And you're
like, yeah, I have a car. They're like, cool. You can get to work. You have a phone. Cool. We can
call you. Okay. Do you know how to like do a Google search? You know how to look something up?
And you're like, oh no, like, I don't know how to, I don't know how to Google. I don't know how to
use the internet. Oh, I don't, I don't know how to use email. You know, they're, they're not going
you might even if your job or the task that you need to do for whoever that is you know a friend
a business a company just for yourself even if it doesn't in entail like doing google searches
or sending emails because you're like i don't know working as a plumber and they have somebody else
who sends the emails like on the fact alone that you don't know how to use email they're going to
think you're stupid and so i think you know i mean it's pretty obvious that ai is going to be like
that like if you don't know how to use ai tools to like a basic you know comprehensive extent your
people are just going to think you're you know like luddite old boomer dumb or something you know
so it's in some ways as unfortunate as it is i would say study ai as much as you can just study
obviously study bitcoin as much as you can learn everything about it learn how to run a node learn
how to send and receive transactions start saving a little bit of your money in bitcoin however much
that is even if it's five dollars a week a hundred bucks a month put as you know much as you can
afford to save in bitcoin learn all the ai tools that you can and uh figure out what you're
passionate about and there's going to be some way that bitcoin and ai are going to help you do what
you're passionate about yeah i think there's a running trend amongst gen z that we're all sort
of drawn to authenticity yeah yeah and i also think that um just going back on your point of
like education and stuff i definitely agree it's the whole that um you can teach yourself definitely
because i think i think i speak for most people when i say that i learn a lot more maybe off
youtube than i do from my teachers 110 so yeah it's just kind of uh making sure you know what
you want to do and following that yeah i mean as i was saying gen z is drawn to the authenticity
sector like memes even visual storytelling on platforms such as youtube so my question is sort
of how can they use bitcoin inspired art where they're creating their own pieces with your sacred
geometry sharing on platforms or even collecting from artists like those in your magazines to
orange pill friends build communities and i think ultimately just resist mediocrity
yeah i mean i think that right now being involved in bitcoin art even knowing anything about it
is a massive you know counterculture that you can be a part of and that's amazing i i don't you know
i don't think it'll always be like that hopefully it won't always be like that because hopefully
will reach bitcoin or when we reach hyper bitcoinization it's like is there such a thing
as dollar art i don't know i think that uh i think that the bitcoin artists like today such as myself
i imagine will move into making art that's maybe that's maybe not directly bitcoin centric or it
isn't like an attempt to conceptualize bitcoin but it's just funded and fueled by bitcoin and it
you know hopefully does carry like proof of work and values that you would find in bitcoin kind of
like you know renaissance art and stuff you know sculptures that took 10 years 20 years paintings
that took you know a long time to make that were low time preference proof of work and not super
just fast cheap high time preference fiat based art um but i mean right now today just knowing what
bitcoin art is uh just knowing who some of these artists are and understanding it enough to
understand what we're doing what they're doing is is massive you know just that alone just listening
to this podcast is like um you're on the absolute frontier cutting edge of you know a subculture
within a subculture although bitcoin is less and less of a subculture with all these suits coming
But listening to this podcast right now is doing more than like 99.99% of your peers.
So I would say just knowing what Bitcoin art is.
And maybe if you're an artist, you know, think about making a piece of Bitcoin art and then hit me up.
Maybe we'll put it in the magazine.
I will say this is I never went to school or I never went to, I went to very little school.
so I this this might be uh interesting I I my parents were like hippies they never forced me
to go to school so I did a little bit of third fifth sixth grade I did a couple months of seventh
grade oh no I did all of seventh grade that was the only full year of school I ever completed
so I did like a couple months of third fifth sixth I did all year of seventh and then I did
I didn't do eighth grade and I did like three months of ninth grade and I have no GED. I have
no high school diploma. I have no college degree. I never went to any kind of college. And I am a,
like, I've been a professional chef, a sushi chef. So I've worked in three sushi bars. I've done
private catering for extremely wealthy individuals. I have done all kinds of construction, shipping
container fabrication, solar design and installation. I've installed orchards with
fruit trees, like 40 acres and 400 fruit trees. And I hand installed and programmed the entire
automatic irrigation system for the whole thing. I've worked in the hemp industry and designed
irrigation systems for that. And, you know, so I've done agriculture. I've done interior design.
I've helped remodel a $500,000, you know, house remodel in LA. I have done custom LED installations,
freaking custom signage, like interior design stuff for startups in LA.
You know, I've worked a bunch of random jobs that, you know, just at a health food store when I was
younger at an ice cream shop, you know, kind of whatever starter jobs. But then I've done a bunch
of like more or less specialized work uh i'm now i'm a graphic designer uh shout out to bitcoin
trading cards i'm the art director and head of graphic design for bitcoin trading cards which
if you like pokemon or magic gather check out bitcoin trading cards they're a super cool project
with a bunch of great bitcoin art uh so i'm like a self-taught graphic designer and i make really
good money doing that and uh you know it's it's all been you know autodidactically more or less
self-taught or just taught by people and you know youtube videos i mean you'd like don't need to go
to school to get a good job and you can be whoever you want to be i decided i wanted to be an artist
i started selling some art here and there i decided i wanted to be a bitcoin artist
and then I decided I wanted to make a magazine and I made a magazine and I'm making money selling
the magazine I mean you really don't you know only you know what you want to do or can do
and then it's only up to you to get out there get after it and do it and all of the resources are
there and so you know there's not yeah very inspirational I mean that's an important thing
to highlight as well like bitcoin provides a solution throughout all walks of life whether
you come from money or you're struggling like bitcoin is the solution absolutely absolutely
you know of course we all want bitcoin number to go up uh and that helps bring a lot of people in
but at the end of the day even if bitcoin even if the number isn't going up or doesn't go up i don't
care i would rather hold bitcoin than hold fiat rnc because i'd rather have a money that the
underlying monetary policy isn't controlled by some totally evil rich dudes in uh you know another
state or another country deciding you know what that money is worth or how that money works
so i mean that alone makes bitcoin absolutely awesome and i would rather use a bitcoin
than than somebody else you know money that somebody else can print for free so yeah of
course yeah and um just going back to what you said um about like all the various jobs you've had
and uh that you didn't go to school i think that is just the proof yeah to everyone that you can be
extremely successful in whatever you do and you don't need to go to school because i think we
have that conversation with a lot of people we know um and i think most people that i know of my
age they're all going to uni and we just don't think it's really worth it unless you want to go
into a profession such as like a neurosurgeon or a lawyer for example there isn't really
any applicability in the real world especially as you know maybe earlier in life a degree was
so valuable because it was so unattainable for the person but now we've seen like you can get a
degree in literally anything like it sort of lost the reason of why if that makes sense yeah and also
especially at a such young age to be going into that getting so much debt and then not even really
securing a job and even if you do it potentially won't even fund yourself or your lifestyle or any
of that yeah yeah yeah it's it's super bad right now i mean i hope that a bunch of gen z
gets out of the trap. But a lot of, like I said before, my, you know, like millennial peers,
they are just, it was just exactly what you're saying. They're in debt right now,
and they're working some other job that has nothing to do with what they went to school for.
And so, you know, I think, for one, you know, people get sent to go to school, go to college,
go to uni before knowing having any idea about themselves or knowing if they're even going to
want to do the thing they decide to go study and also there's just the saturation of it so it's
like if you want to be successful you've either got to have like family friends or family money
or connections somehow that you make like the best thing about uni is the connections you're
going to make because you know your friend joe's dad has a company and so they'll give you a job
and you met him in uni i mean that's like unless like you said which is very true you're going to
be a neurosurgeon or you're going to study something where they literally will not give
you the job without a degree like the only reason you're going to college or university is to make
connections and so then if you are going to college university and you listening to this like treat the connections you make even if it people that you just partying with like treat that social networking as important or more
important than the classes themselves because those connections are like probably arguably
in most people's cases worth more than the actual education they're giving you because the whole
system is just a money-making machine now i have a an ex-girlfriend who she got her
bachelor of integrative science her bachelor of integrative science i think it's something like
that but it was like it's like a science degree like a health of integrative health and it's like
a science degree and uh immediately as soon as she got it they just started sending her
uh you know offers for for post-grad you know graduate stuff like it was like almost immediately
it was like okay cool you got your bachelor's degree you did like four years of college
here do you want to do a master's now or go for a doctorate and so i mean the whole education
system is so absolutely fundamentally broken from the fiat world where everything's a race to the
bottom that they just want to sell you another course they want to sell you another two years
of school and they don't give a about if you actually get a job or not for the most part
there's obviously some good institutions and there's good people in the educational system
who are doing the best they can but like as a as a system as a whole it's broken and it's
interesting because even if you want to be like a even if you want to be like a you know a neurosurgeon
or a doctor or something you know maybe some kind of engineering where you you really do need to
learn certain stuff at school or you really do need at least you could learn the stuff online
probably but you need the degree to get the job you know a lot of times I think how many stories
have you heard of people who were like oh I'm going to be a doctor and then they do like six
years of school and then decide like I don't I don't want to be a doctor and so maybe they had
to go do all that school to decide it but they also could have tried to get like an internship
or an apprenticeship with a doctor like maybe go work in a doctor's office for a summer before you
sign up to medical school and do you like being in a doctor's office like do the doctors seem happy
like what are they working on and you can get internships pretty easily you know you can get
apprenticeships pretty easily and so you know it's kind of crazy that it's not like a a prerequisite
to like signing up to a college course is they're like okay well you have to go do like you know
three months or six months or whatever a year in a as an intern or as an apprentice in this field
before you do like four years of school for it so i mean the whole system's just broken and like
now more than ever especially with like the rise of tech and silicon valley and startups and
everything like you know a lot of these jobs that even five ten years ago 15 years ago you really
did need a degree for i don't think you need a degree anymore if you are just competent and you
know the subject matter right like is spacex is elon musk gonna like hire you because you have a
degree or is he gonna hire you because you're like a freaking rocket engine wizard you know
there's so many companies now that are run by um you know millennials let's say that are like
that are like me or like you know with your guys perspective or other fellow gen zers that they're
like i don't care if you went to school or not can you produce results and that's that that's what
matters do you know what you're talking about and going to school doesn't mean you know what you're
talking about so what's the point then i mean yeah not saying people shouldn't go to school just
only go to school if you're last example and we can go on i know i kind of ramble and i'm sorry
but there's like uh i have multiple friends who went to school for degrees and they would be
like 10 times better off if they never went to school for that degree and they just went and
got a job in an industry you gotta if you start as a freaking janitor and then you work at the
company for four years if you're good and you actually want to be at this company or in this
field you can work your way up from the freaking janitor there's many people who have started
literally as a janitor to get their foot in the door and they're become a manager or a c-level
executive of the company just because of their tenacity and wanting to work in that industry
and so if you're going to go to school for four years it's kind of like if you're going to invest
in something other than Bitcoin, you need to do the math and see, do you think the investment is
going to beat Bitcoin? Or if you're going to invest in your own business, do you think you're
going to make your own business make more money than putting that same investment money into
Bitcoin? It's kind of like everything's an asymmetric, you know, is a bet against the
asymmetric potential of Bitcoin. And, you know, you kind of got to do the same with school. Like,
is you go work at an engineering firm as some bitch assistant are you going to be able to rise
in the ranks faster than not going to work at a firm not going to work in the field going to a
school that's probably going to teach you an outdated curriculum for four years of your time
and you're going to spend four years worth of money paying them to teach you and then you're
still going to try go and you're still probably only going to get that entry level position
so maybe it's better off to just go get into a field that you are interested in and just start
at low on the totem pole and work your way up and you'll be making money faster you know and
arguably get faster or higher up in that space or in that field than if you had have gone and done
the school so yeah very true and yeah it's just that kind of longevity rather than the like short
yeah the short term like oh do it do it now i want to get rich quick kind of thing and
leading on from that because i think you know gen z and a lot of people that are younger kind of
think that then oh there must be some way to get rich quick where i don't have to put work in or i
don't have to wait there's almost an obsession with this like fast money thing yeah we all see
it on tiktok like guys selling trading courses there's literally so many things that you have
to pay to make money and like yeah all just a bunch of nonsense so obviously all of us know and
every true bitcoiner knows but um i just we want to hear it from your perspective so
what warnings would you have to gen z and anyone else um about that get rich quick mindset versus
the long-term resilience bitcoin demands i have tried to get rich quick many times
and from spending years of my life trying to get rich quick working in the the hemp industry is a
great example i mean the whole industry the whole cannabis hemp industry went totally under with
legalization here in the united states so i mean once they legalized it it basically became i don't
want to say worthless but you know the the value when previously it had been a black slash gray
market you know um the value of the product went went down drastically and so unless you conform
to the corporate structures or were able to be you know had the money to turn into a corporate
business of some kind like you just you got left out you got left behind and like what's interesting
is i never smoked i i stopped smoking marijuana when i was 18 years old so i i actually any of
the time that I spent in the hemp and cannabis industry, I wasn't smoking it. So I was just there
to make money. You know, it was a get rich quick idea for me. And it didn't work. And I feel like
I wasted a bunch of my time that I could have been making art, which I was really passionate about.
And so I think that there's no such thing as a get rich quick scheme. There are people who figure
out how to get rich quick, but it's extremely rare. And it usually involves not just extraordinary
grit and talent but also luck like pure sheer luck or some form of nepotism you know so i mean
get rich quick schemes are for kids who have rich parents or a rich uncle right like if you don't
have somebody who you know can inject at this point um you know hundreds of thousands tens of
thousands millions of dollars into like an idea or something that you have um you know trying to
make money without having money is extremely difficult and the odds of somebody trying to
sell you a course online or some you know whatever latest crypto coin that your friend tells you
about like the odds of you getting rich quick off of it are just they're so freaking low like
statistically they're it's just 100 gambling so sure there's some guy who maybe did this or
somebody who you know sold the top and bought the bought the bottom sold the top on whatever dookie
coin you know it happens all the time out there but like you know your odds are the same as going
and pulling slots in a casino like the odds of getting rich quick are just extremely low and so
you can spend your life wasting your time trying to get rich quick essentially gambling with your
time which is far more valuable than bitcoin or gold or any other anything at all and i mean that
is your greatest asset being young is time i cannot impress that more the older i get the more
i realize how valuable one's time is and go ask any older person uh so figure out how do you want
to spend your time and that is the most important thing because if here's the thing if you spend your
time doing something you're passionate about even if you don't make a lot of money from it
you are going to look back in the future and feel like it was time well spent which is that is that
is being rich in a way you know and spending your time well that's that's true wealth and that's
being rich because the only reason you want to get rich is so you can choose how you spend your time
so if you have the opportunity to choose how you spend your time now with no money
then you know you already are rich so spend your time doing something that you love and that you're
passionate about and that you're going to look back on and be like that was super freaking dope
like that was that was sick that i did that um and odds are if you're doing something that you love
you're going to get rich quicker than doing something that you don't and your odds are
going to get rich quicker than gambling on get rich quick schemes so i mean i guess you want to do
or what you enjoy doing and it doesn't have to be old and uh it doesn't have to be the thing that
you do for the rest of your life but what do you like doing now and do that now so yeah as it comes
down to i mean do what you love and the key concept of just proof of work at the end of
date like you're not going to get any results if you don't put work in i feel like that's what
generation needs to realize at some points absolutely i i you know there's a lot of things
that i did that are cool and i can make them sound cool now um but i do that because i did
them so I you know I'm gonna be just mad that I spent wasted or spent you know wasted my time
doing stuff I didn't want to do or am I gonna make it sound cool and be like yeah that was pretty
cool and I did learn good skills from it that is true but man if I could go back I would have
when I was 19 20 I wouldn't have done a bunch of the things I did and I would have just focused on
making art because I would be way further ahead in my art which is what I was passionate what I
am passionate about you know from then so you know i mean it's all a journey it takes time to
figure out what you love doing and like you know yeah it does it changes and stuff but um but yeah
what you said if you do what you love and you're putting the proof of work in that it that is the
get rich quick scheme so yeah i mean i guess just to round off then if any gen z listener wanted to
start making their first bitcoin art for example or pursue their passion what is one piece of
practical or maybe inspirational advice you'd give to them just to get it going i mean
uh i mean i think it would depend on where someone is in their like artistic career and
their artistic capabilities but think about what is something go look at as much of the bitcoin art
that you can see on the internet um or if you can go to a conference or go to conferences
and there's galleries uh you're welcome to hit me up shoot me a dm on twitter if i you know drop
a comment on my posts and um think about like what's a piece of bitcoin art that nobody else
has made yet you know what's a way how can you conceptualize bitcoin or how can you make a piece
of art that relates to Bitcoin that nobody has done yet and there's a bunch of opportunities here
because the space is still so small so you know what's something nobody's done yet and what's
something that's I think there's like a special combination with art of like something that looks
visually cool and people are just like oh that's that's sick um ideally something with a high
amount of proof of work so like more hours spent on a piece of art generally makes the art better
that's not always the case but generally that's true and then uh what's something some piece to it
that's like intellectually stimulating or very clever or mimetic so like what's something and
if you can kind of combine all of it together then you can you know you're going to probably
make something that people just really love and it's um you know your odds of making a piece of
art that just goes viral and sells for a lot of money are probably they're as high if not higher
than your odds of gambling on some coin like a conference in may and i think i speak for all
three of us when i say we are so it's so excited to see some of the amazing bitcoin artwork that's
coming out of this space.
Yeah, in Bitcoin Island.
So we're super excited to go there and speak there
and just feed off of all the information
that all these Bitcoiners are going to have for us.
Yeah, and ultimately spread the Gen Z message.
Definitely.
Again, the awareness that, come on, wake up.
Yeah, we need to get it going with the youth.
That's awesome.
Which event is this?
Bitcoin Island.
Where is that?
Just in Dublin.
it's in the uk okay that's yeah that's freaking awesome will they have an art gallery there of any
kind um yeah yeah i think that i'm not sure um we've the only artists i know of currently that's
in there is the house of ralphus which is this artwork behind us which is uh and there'll be
four pieces there so it's uh it'll be a very incredible to uh see that uh especially even
more stuff in real life yeah no that's awesome I uh and will you guys are you guys going to be
um are you guys going to be doing anything there yourselves yeah uh we're speaking uh we've got a
panel and also we are also going to start uh like showcasing our as we were saying earlier that
bitcoin school so we can uh again as we said teach the youth yeah and touch a little bit into
our company that's ultimately supported and backed completely by bitcoin yeah yeah that's amazing
that's super awesome yeah you i mean you guys are you guys have got so much just so much potential
in the space um that's really cool to to hear that you guys are going to have your own panel
and super impressive i uh yeah i can only encourage you to to chase down the other events and the
other conferences and reach out to them and straight up cold dms i mean i've done so much
in the space just by just literally cold dming people and if i can't like reach them on twitter
i'll just go comment on a couple of their posts and be like hey check your dms and um so no that's
that's freaking epic i uh i hope to see you guys at all the major conferences by by this year next
year we've you guys have got the orange pill order panel at all the conferences yeah yeah
definitely that's the dream that's the dream yeah i mean you guys are just a testament to doing
something you're passionate about and like being successful with it so i mean yeah to anybody
listening like you know if you if you get out there and get after it and you have half your
head about you you're gonna do well with it so yeah um so uh just before we wrap up this segment
is there anything little known or maybe completely unknown about you or your journey that you've never
shared publicly before but you'd be willing to reveal here on the orange pool order podcast
exclusives exclusives interesting let me think about it for a minute here um no pressure take it
gosh i'm trying to think of something something that i'll dox um
uh yeah it could be about i mean well it would be great if it could be about your art especially
i mean you were you were saying there was a piece behind you that hasn't been released yet i think
Yeah.
All right, let's do, we'll do, I'll do two things.
I've got one art thing that's small,
and then I've got one personal thing that's a big deal
that I haven't said anywhere publicly yet, really.
I'm sorry.
I feel like this is an appropriate podcast to say it on.
Definitely.
All right, I'll start with the art thing.
I've got a, so there's a page in Bitcoin Art Magazine.
And it says cipher key 9-1-2-1-6-9 down in the bottom corner.
And so this is a cipher that can be used to encrypt or decrypt a Bitcoin seed phrase.
I'm going to be making an accompanying seed plate similar to this that has these dots, which are in little groups of nine by nine.
And this is actually for a full 24 word seed phrase.
That's a piece of art using the same cipher key.
And so I think I will have that available for sale at Vegas this year or sometime soon.
And so I will be making a original painting of that cipher key.
And then I possibly will do some very limited prints of it.
And then I will be dropping at some point here when I get a minute,
some little treasure hunts on social media on twitter and nostr of the cipher text part of it
so it'll have a seed phrase that's encrypted to that painting and then the only way to decrypt it
i'll put some little reward sats on there is you'll have to either use the cipher key in the
magazine or find a picture of my art online to get the sats so that's great yeah and that's that's
something i've been working on that i haven't that i haven't really released or talked about
anywhere yet and then the other thing is a personal thing that i've been very hesitant to talk about
publicly or anything at all but i actually have recently become a father and wow wow congratulations
thank you i uh yeah uh we've been pretty good about i'm not really into like you know posting
a baby on the internet yeah that's just creepy and kind of i just it's not for me but um and i
haven't really talked about it much because in a lot of ways it's really vulnerable like having a
kid feels uh you know it's it's just it's yeah especially in the just in the world that we're
living in today it feels really vulnerable so i haven't talked about it very much but yes i am a
father and i have a baby now and uh i feel like you know now more than ever everything that i'm
doing and all of my hope and desire and energy put into bitcoin and helping bitcoin succeed
is for my is for my child now and so you know yeah do it for the kids right and and
the gen z podcast is a yeah well there you go thank you for sharing honestly congratulations
i'll be so honest like that like out of all the things you could have said that was like that was
I was not expecting that at all.
Yeah, that was, yeah, really congratulations.
And thank you for, yeah, saying that on all of a sudden.
Yeah, very honored.
Thank you for having me up here.
And thank you for doing what you guys are doing.
You know, at the end of the day, this is all for,
I mean, we're doing it for ourselves,
but ultimately we're doing it for the children
and we're doing it for our children's children.
So that, you know, someday kids, you know,
Hopefully the goal is that our kids, your guys' kids that you have someday,
unless one of you has a kid already, no.
No.
Don't.
They will grow up in a world that is not run by absolute, you know,
psychotic fiat bankers.
I mean, you know, I don't know if my child,
if that'll be the world to grow up in.
but hopefully kids or their kids or your guys kids get to grow up in a world where the value
of everything is denominated in bitcoin yeah really hope so um as you know this has been
incredibly enlightening and well i'll definitely say motivating 100 so of course we'll tag you on
all your various different social medias. But for the listeners just who want to search now,
where can listeners find your art, the magazine and stay connected with you?
Thank you very much. Thank you guys for having me up here. And thank you for what you guys are doing.
Let me know however I can support you in any way. So let's definitely chat and DM after regarding
that and uh you can find my own art at sovereign remnant.com and you can find me on twitter that's
at osanoa underscore gold and you can find me on nostr at primal.net slash osanoa and then you can
find the magazine at bitcoinartmagazine.com or on twitter at bitcoinartmag and on nostr at
primal.net slash bitcoinartmag and there's a link to my website on the homepage of bitcoinartmagazine.com
but if you dm any of the magazine channels you can also find my channels or yeah but we'll put
any relevant links in the description anyway just to make it easily accessible for viewers yeah
hopefully get some funneling towards your yeah yeah i mean and thanks again for the depth and
ultimately this truly powerful insight you hold into bitcoin and thank you yeah thank you so much
for coming on it's been an honor to have you and it's been great thank you for having me up here
you guys thank you for what you're doing and keep doing it don't give up i mean we won of course
you too you too and listeners if this orange pilled you especially the younger ones subscribe
like stack those sats maybe even grab a copy of that bitcoin art magazine to inspire your own
creations until next time stay sovereign back sats keep hodling