Speaker A: All right. Hello and welcome everyone to another episode of Waiting to Be Signed. We've got a special interview episode for you all today. It's a collector interview. We're joined by McLlama, who you might know from the FX Hash sales feed mostly, and also his Twitter account, which I actually should have had it open because your name isn't @McLlama on Twitter, but we'll plug that in a moment. Hey man, thanks for coming on the show.

Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for having me. It's an honor. I've been looking through some of the episodes that I missed in the recent months. And yeah, I mean, you've interviewed my favorite artists and some really cool collectors. And so yeah, happy to be here.

Speaker A: Oh, nice. Yeah. What stood out to you on the artist side?

Speaker B: Well, Erik Swahn and Zancan, for sure. I would say they're my favorite artists. Yeah. So I had actually listened to the Erik Swahn one previously, but I think the Zancan interview was somewhat recent. So it was good to catch up on that. Yeah.

Speaker A: Recent in terms of the episode numbers, cuz we've reduced the number of episodes we've done a lot. So it's probably not that far back. But yeah, let's kick this thing off and I'll ask you of course to introduce yourself however you like and tell us a bit about your background and collecting and how you came to start collecting NFTs and in particular generative art?

Speaker B: My general personal background is I work in sort of a data engineer type role, so I'm on the computer all the time. So that naturally works out pretty well with the collecting. I'm able to, you know, keep tabs on things really easily. But yeah, I mean, as far as getting into the NFT art, I really have no formal experience in art whatsoever. It was all through crypto, as I'm sure is a common story. I kind of got into crypto around 2017, you know, bought the top of that first cycle and have experienced full market cycles, you could say. And the same with my collecting for, you know, my entire life, you know, from Pokémon to NFTs, I've been through market cycles. And I used to also trade high-end basketball trading cards. And so I've experienced the pain of selling grails too early many times. So I think that's a large part of my sort of conviction with collecting these days. And NFTs are just kind of a natural thing. Um, it really feels the same, you know, even when you're collecting physical collectibles, you're on the computer all the time browsing eBay, browsing social media. So it, it really just feels natural to me. And yeah, it's been a really fun time. And this is one of those collectible categories, if you will, that just I don't see ever leaving. You know, I might sell physical trading cards and kind of get out of that for a while, but I'll never be able to sell all my NFTs. So I'm here for the long haul, for sure.

Speaker A: If you look at the offers in fx hash, you might think there's some stuff that you're definitely never going to be able to sell. Yeah, like, for sure. For sure. Like, I did a little bit of selling recently, just small stuff, 3 tests, 5 tests here and there just to clear out the wallet a little bit. And it's like pretty dire out there. But as far as your collecting, so did you, if you came in through crypto, did you start with the NFTs on like the PFP side and then cross into art through Art Blocks? Like, was that your path?

Speaker B: Yeah, kind of the typical path, I guess. Started out kind of minting the hype PFPs I saw on my Twitter feed, most of which are, I mean, all of them are pretty much completely dead at this point. Did dabble with Art Blocks. I think I was late to Art Blocks. So, you know, I was minting factory stuff and really didn't have the funds to collect anything serious at the time. Despite that being kind of the peak of the bull run where I did have, you know, the most crypto of my life. You know, like most collectors, you tend to come in at the top.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And that's, that's what happened to me. Yeah.

Speaker A: Well, let me ask you a little bit about your philosophy for collecting and, well, actually let's start with this. Like, so I feel like the cohort of people who are still here and collecting art, and I, like yourself, like I did not come into crypto thinking that I was gonna get really interested in art, you know, and still be engaged in doing this stuff. It was very accidental just finding Tezos through someone I knew. Finding Hic Et Nunc and just minting a few things, cuz I had this Tez and I didn't know what else to do with it. And I thought that was cool. And then obviously fx hash comes along and like, I guess swept up in the Discord and the community and just waiting up all night for mints and all, all that fun stuff from back in 2021. So for yourself, I mean, what was it for you about generative art and I guess art in general that struck a chord and got you interested in collecting beyond just speculation?

Speaker B: So starting off on Hic Et Nunc, it really felt just kind of raw. And I don't know, there was a certain aesthetic to it. It was really basic. You just had to browse the feed of random art and there was something about it that just was really enjoyable. And, you know, I did find that I gravitated towards certain collections that I kept running into and eventually became some of the biggest collectors of some artists there. And I think, you know, when fxhash came out, that's when the addictive part of my personality came out. It was like ripping packs of Pokémon cards. You don't know what you're gonna get. Yeah. Get. And I think that's really fun. And I still do. And so yeah, when fxhash came out, I was kind of doing the, you know, oh, I'm going to mint 2 and then sell 1 and cover my cost basis. And that works for a while. But then you realize what you missed out on when it comes to the real grails. So I think I learned a lot through that. And I would say it was kind of after that initial rush, you know, months after, like months to a year or so after that fxhash rush that I really started to like connect with the projects. Like Farbteiler, for example, I just kept coming back to it and realized like, I want to hoard these. Like, it's not enough to just have a few. So I developed these connections to certain projects. And, you know, from there, I think my feed just became purely art, really. Like, it went from crypto Twitter, you know, meme posting, whatever you want to call it, to, oh, wow, like most of my followers are artists and art collectors. So It was a lot of content to take in. And I think just over time, I've realized that I do actually genuinely connect with certain projects and artists, and it's more than just making a trade. So that's kind of how I reached that point.

Speaker A: Have you gone so far to the point of like getting, you know, prints and plots and like starting to arrange stuff around the house? Like, I remember when we talked to Eric, I was kind of trying to suss out from him, you know, like, For Farbteiler, was it something that was plottable, or have you ever experimented with that stuff? And I think he said he had some experiments that he is, you know, obviously never went on to sell. But for someone like you who maybe has so much of his work, I mean, do you have anything from Erik up on the wall or any other artists that you want to talk about?

Speaker B: Yeah, so as far as prints and plots go, I really value having that being gated by the artist. Like, I really want the signed print. I just don't, I don't want to print it myself. Just as someone who's historically collected physical things, I really value that it's like, there's a real physical connection. It's not to say that I'm against anyone printing stuff that they own. Like, that's awesome. That's just for me. It's like an additional layer to the collection, if you will. So yeah, I have a really cool plotted piece by Joanie Lemercier. And by the way, I also wanna say apologies if I mispronounce any artist names, collector names.

Speaker A: Mm-hmm.

Speaker B: All of this is in my head from this online world and I don't, I don't talk to people about this in real life very much, so apologies in advance for mispronouncing anything. But yeah, I have a really cool plotted piece from them. I got a print of one of my KGMs from Zancan and Yazid. So that's like a giant piece in my living room. I actually have a signed Ganbrood piece too, which is kind of rare. He doesn't do a lot of those. And yeah, a few, a few random plots here and there. I would say my physical collection is still pretty small, and especially with my recent pickups, I'm—

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: interested in getting more physical stuff. You can tell my room here is very barren. And that's kind of intentional, because I take work calls in this location. And so I just, I don't know, I don't like to open it up to conversation with random colleagues and acquaintances. But, um, yeah, I definitely want to keep growing that collection of the physical medium.

Speaker A: Cool. Right on. What is your philosophy now? I mean, I think for all of us who have come into NFTs, We all came into it with some level of like speculation and hype and hopes and dreams for where they might go. And perhaps you still have a long view that we're gonna get there. I'm totally undecided myself at this point on what the long view is, 'cause it's such a challenging time right now. But for your particular, like, let's say collector psychographic, how do you value the projects that you collect, the artists that you collect beyond just the aesthetic? Like, oh, I love, you know, I love Erik's work, or I love Zancan's work. You know, I remember there used to be a lot of discussions about being in the first 100 fxhash projects and the importance of that legacy and history there, or same thing with the early Art Blocks projects. I mean, a lot of the early AB stuff, you know, perhaps like Ringers and the Big Grails aside, a lot of the early stuff doesn't look that good to me anymore. It looks quite bad actually.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But there was a time, and perhaps there are still some completionists out there who feel like You need to own those first X. So do you prescribe to any rules like that? Because I imagine obviously with things like Pokémon, right? Like, yeah, the vintageness of things does matter there beyond just the playability of a card necessarily. How do you think about it? How do you approach it?

Speaker B: Yeah, I wouldn't say I have any rules. There are times where I'm just browsing historic collections and I'm like, wow, this is one of the first 100 projects and this is really cool and I need to buy this. But I wouldn't say it's a rule or mindset that I intentionally have. I think obviously, it's really easy to just look at all-time volume as far as determining what the most important projects are. So that's an easy way to look at it. And yeah, I think it's like historic volume plus how you connect with the art. So like, it's not unique to say that Garden Monoliths are a grail, right? Like anyone could say that. But actually really looking at the collection and the depth of the outputs and getting into it has been something that I've enjoyed doing over the course of the last several years. And it's not just the historical pricing and volume, but really just looking at how I appreciate the art. So yeah, it's a combination of things. I would say I collect intuitively, or I like to think so anyways, in terms of market cycles and whatnot. But we really haven't had a market cycle with these pieces. So it's just really what I want to collect. Yeah.

Speaker A: So how do you feel long term? I mean, there were so many narratives, like we're gonna see the auction houses adopt And we did see that to a small degree, and we're going to see institutions adopt. And we've seen some high-profile donations and maybe even a few here and there purchases from museums, like into collections, but those did not seem like inciting events, right, that I think the community might've expected them to be in 2021. So do you hold out hope at all for like crossing into the mainstream more, be it either trad art or the other direction, which is like— Do we think it's just forget those institutions, crypto is not about that, we're going to scale crypto 100x from here. And these collectibles are going to be interesting in and of themselves when there's just that many more people who might want to collect this stuff?

Speaker B: I guess I don't know, I could see it being a combination of those ideally, right? I would love to see more institutional adoption and whatnot. But I think that's like really long-term horizon as far as any of those institutional investors are going to have long-term horizons, right? And I think a lot of the crypto market right now has shorter-term horizons, and that's why everyone is so frustrated. Get the NFT bull run this cycle and whatnot. And so I don't know exactly how it's going to play out, but I think there's a lot of opportunity seeing this price action, which is horrible and complete lack of liquidity and whatnot, seeing it as an opportunity to like really, as just a normal person, acquire these pieces that just 2 or 3 years ago would have been absolutely impossible to buy. as a normal person, right? Like the pink GM that I bought a month or so ago, for example, like that would have been unfathomable just 2 years ago for me. So I see it as an opportunity to kind of make your place in the history of whatever plays out. I can't tell you what's going to happen. But yeah, I see it as an opportunity. And it's, it's been really fun.

Speaker A: It was probably about 2 or 2 and a half years ago that Le Random acquired their pink GM, right? And it was a big deal. Because I think I can't remember what the USD equivalent was. But it was certainly $10,000 or tens of thousands. It was, it was quite expensive.

Speaker B: You might want to fact-check me, but I think it might have been over $100K.

Speaker A: Over $100K. I know they timed it very closely with the purchase of the RGB #1 also. So they definitely made their mark, like grabbing 2 keystone pieces from the fxhash history there. Anyone who was kind of building a collection 2 and a half years ago has got to be looking now and going like, wow, like imagine what we could have had. So yeah, I've browsed your collection a bit. Obviously you're very Erik Swahn heavy. And a lot of that increase has come from the recent activity as we've seen, like so many longtime collectors, for whatever reason, starting to divest, at least, you know, from fx hash, if not across all chains. So do you just kind of see this trend and decide like, now's the time, like I'm going to jump in because we're down 90% on this stuff? Or have you been slowly acquiring along the way? What inspired you to jump in now in all of this chaos?

Speaker B: I've been collecting the Farbs pretty heavily for the last few years. So that's kind of just a constant, I guess. You know, I could keep buying them, but at a certain point it gets ridiculous. But obviously recently I've been really just focused on, on the grails, right? Like the Garden Monoliths and the dragons and whatnot. And it's partially what you said about, yeah, the prices are down so much that it's very appealing to buy them right now. But it's also just the timing of my other market cycle that I've been participating in. So I actually did buy quite a few vintage Pokémon cards around 2024. So I was actually buying those more than I was buying NFTs at the time. And They did really, really well early this year. And so I started selling some of them and that's kind of been funding my, my grail purchases on FXHash. So it's kind of like life hands you this opportunity and the timing of things just makes sense. And I like the price of the art right now. And I got this liquidity that I can tap into now. And so it's a combination of things. Yeah, I think it's like just, just the fact that people are even listing these Grails is fortunate too, right? Yeah.

Speaker A: Do you give any thought or concern to the viability of like chains and stuff? Like, you know, I think for as long as we've been collecting on Tezos, there's always been FUD around the chain being a ghost chain, be, you know, a lot of ill will towards the founders. And I think the way they handled the ICO, that just never really— I think a lot of people forgot about it, but then kind of just the stink on it never really went away.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Constantly expecting the chain to fail despite the fact that it's been around. I mean, you think about like the whole like Lindy idea, right? Like Tezos has been around for quite a while and is not earning any of that for whatever reason.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: At the same, same time now we're seeing people come in on the ETH side. Like, I'm sure you follow a lot of these ETH people, but like the Bankless folks, for example, have finally turned on ETH, right? And like sold all their ETH. And there's all this FUD around the foundation and the way they handled the L2s and They're cannibalizing their fees. So maybe a better way to phrase this is, have you put a lot of thought recently into preservation and like what happens with all of this stuff? Like, should a chain go down or should a platform, which we'll probably talk about soon, like fx hash go down? What is your approach to that stuff currently?

Speaker B: I guess I'll start by addressing the Tezos FUD thing. So I mean, as someone who's been in crypto since 2017, I can tell you that a lot of those crypto OGs who are really hating on Tezos right now, used to absolutely love it. Like in 2019, 2020, Tezos was all the hype and people were treating it as a real investment, right? And a lot of people got burned by the price action. Fundamentally, it is a really great blockchain and in some ways superior to Ethereum, I think. And I have absolutely no problem using it as a basic user. I love it. But I think that it just left a bad taste in, in those crypto OGs', you know, opinions. And That kind of perpetuated through the NFT cycle, I think. And then of course, everyone made millions of dollars on ETH and Art Blocks. And then it's like, well, look at Tezos, the price is just going down constantly. Why would I collect there? So it's just kind of elitist psychology combined with the fact that they at one time did actually like the chain. But now it's kind of an emotional thing, I think, for a lot of people. Do I fear that the blockchain will ever shut down? Probably not in the foreseeable future. No, I don't have any fear of that. But to transition to the next part of your question, yes, preservation has become extremely important, especially with the impending, if you will, shutdown of fxhash. Obviously, we don't know. But yeah, I mean, I wasn't really expecting that to happen so suddenly, right?

Speaker A: Mm-hmm.

Speaker B: Like, there was this several-week period where there was some bad news kind of lurking in the air, but no one knew what was going on, and there was no communication from the team. And so, Yeah, it can happen suddenly and you need to be ready for that. Have I done anything myself about it? No, but I've thought about it. But there are people like Raster came out immediately after that and said, hey, sign up, create an account, and we'll back up your art for you without— you know, it's not— they're not pinning the IPFS for you, but so it's not a complete redundancy. But, um, there are people who have been thinking about this seriously for years, so that gives me hope that Nothing is going to completely disappear.

Speaker A: Yeah, I noticed that Raster thing. I was like, this is brilliant. And of course I connected and I had connected to Raster a while ago, so I don't know if they had already done it for me, but it was awesome to see that like 90+% of my NFTs, like there were a few corner case ones probably from like Versum or some other defunct platforms that they weren't able to cover. But that was great to see. I, you know, obviously we haven't like battle tested that to see If I ever lose access to my fx hash account, 'cause the platform, like, I have no idea what the experience will be like viewing that stuff. Someone who we've always talked about having on the show is like Regina Hersani. If you know her, she works at the, um, I probably messed up her name, but she does like digital preservation. You can find great videos of her on YouTube talking about the challenges of it, not just through NFTs, but dating back to like digital art.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: From, you know, like the '80s, '70s, and how challenging it is to make sure that it actually can still exist and live in a way that was how the artist intended it to. Not just like in a bare bones, like, oh, we still have the file, but like, no, it's like displayed on the right machines. Right. And can actually, the colors will match and things like that. We would never think about in 2021, like collecting on fxhash or Art Blocks. Right.

Speaker B: Right. Yeah. It's more fragile than I thought. Like, even some of the on-chain stuff on fx hash sounds like it's more of a headache than the IPFS projects from some conversations that I've seen. So it's definitely concerning. Am I panicking? No, for sure. Definitely not.

Speaker A: I have my fingers crossed that no matter what goes down, Ciphrd will not leave us completely screwed. Like, it seems like he's still plugging away and If for whatever reason they just are gonna be put in a position to shut down the platform, I hope and perhaps expect that that might be an unfair word, that he'll come up with something for us, right? To make sure at least things still function in some, in some fashion. But yeah, let's talk about fx hash a little bit because it's been such a crazy few months, but also in a way a crazy 2 years being a show that like primarily covered it and trying to figure out everything that's going on with them and all their pivots. Like I shared some notes with you in advance and I was like, they moved to ETH, they moved to Base, they announced a kind of curated program called Vertex that had one release and then they never did anything with it. And then obviously like past things like params and fx and now OpenForm and the fx hash token. So you've been here the whole time collecting, engaging. What's your holistic take on the history of the platform? And, or if you wanna start with like the most more recent stuff with the tokens, like wherever you wanna start, like I'm down to talk about all of it.

Speaker B: Over-engineering has been one of my fears for the platform for the last couple years, really. It wasn't just the recent art coin thing. I do feel like creating novelty was kind of prioritized over doing more of a curated approach and getting really big projects to mint on there, right? Because we had the big grails, and then after that, the artists that really succeeded kind of moved on to different platforms and blockchains. So I did fear about the over-engineering thing, definitely. I will say more recently, you know, I felt that there was a bit much to drop art coins and open form at the same time. It was Ciphrd's project, right? The open form project that kind of unveiled the whole art coin thing, right?

Speaker A: Yeah. Genomes, right?

Speaker B: Oh no, this was after Genomes. This was—

Speaker A: What was the more recent one called?

Speaker B: Generations.

Speaker A: Generations. Okay.

Speaker B: Yeah. So it was fully open form, meaning unlimited number of iterations, and you could also evolve your outputs and mutate them and create new outputs after you had minted it. And to me, that technology-wise and art-wise is cool, but I think it totally removes the scarcity and the value aspect of the art as a collector, right? Like, why would I put any significant amount of money into minting something that I can change after I mint it, and then there's an unlimited number of outputs, right?

Speaker A: Hmm.

Speaker B: So I thought it was really cool, but it kind of removes the financial aspect of it completely. And then simultaneously, you're dropping art coins, which has nothing to do with art, and it's all financial, all about community and cult followings, right? And I just think that that combination didn't quite land right for me, at least. So that was a little bit kind of weak. Like, if they had come out with, you know, art coins, and then I'm just going to use an example, like Zancan dropped a really cool project with the art coin. dropping the same day, it could have generated quite a lot of buzz. So I felt like the release kind of fell flat. There was a period where I still believed in the concept, you know, the fxhash token in particular was promising. I mean, we saw— I actually took note of this— the Zora token went to $450 million market cap.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I think fxhash peaked at $15 million. So like the potential that was there for the fxhash token was so great. And I really thought that like, yeah, I could see fxhash token going to $100 million easily, Right. And it just didn't happen. I thought it was going to for a while there for sure. And it just didn't happen. So that was disappointing. And then from there, it was kind of just, there was no momentum at that point. Crypto was kind of starting the bear market from the highs we saw. And obviously NFTs were not doing any better. So a lot of it is just, yeah, it didn't catch the hype for whatever reason. And that was kind of the window of opportunity was that 6-month period where Base memes were pumping and Zora was pumping and fxhash seemed natural and it just didn't happen. So yeah, that's kind of my take on the situation and how I perceived it.

Speaker A: My only answer is that fxhash made the mistake of launching with too much of a product and actually being like, no, you're going to go here and you're going to collect real art and you're going to explore it. And it's not going to just be you click a link on Twitter to some meme and you go and you just like YOLO into it and then sell it 2 hours later. Right. Like they were actually trying to create something. that was too hard in both senses of the word. Like, it was like a hard use case, but also like hard to use compared to other, other ways. Like, if you're gonna go speculate in coins, why go through all the trouble of like understanding the art and the artist? You can just go follow big meme accounts or whatever, however people found whatever they're gonna buy and so on, right?

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think ultimately, they found that while the people who were interested in using the platform weren't, at this time, speculative investors, they actually did want to mint cool art. And There was just this disconnect the entire time where the user experience was getting worse because, you know, the art coins complicated things. And whatever cabal overlords there are decided to not pump the tokens, right? Yeah, it just didn't work out. Yeah.

Speaker A: I don't know if you listened to the episodes we did kind of around it. We did an episode with Cypher because it was obviously just such a big moment for them. And, you know, they were very candid, like, if this doesn't work, the platform's in a lot of trouble. This is it.

Speaker B: Mm-hmm.

Speaker A: You know, which I was, I kind of suspected, but was surprised that they would actually admit to that on the episode. And it kind of made sense to me though, from a career perspective for an artist, like in my mind, like thinking back, if someone like Zancan, like if in 2021 or early 2020 or late 2020, even this whole art coin thing was there, like the idea of having a career coin where the supply constantly goes down and every time you release something, And it doesn't necessarily have to be OpenForm, but like, right, like it kind of makes sense if you could go back in time and launch it then. But as a Hail Mary move for a platform and also expecting them to pair it with OpenForm, which is this new kind of discipline, very few of the artists who did release that way, I think, really pulled it off well.

Speaker B: Mm-hmm.

Speaker A: It just felt tough. And then when you don't have a follow-up quickly, you just see the price action and the volume stagnate on those tokens because Once all the natural minting is done, then all that's left is to buy and sell the token and do nothing else with it. And you're waiting and waiting and waiting. And like, I think we only saw one or two artists ever even create a follow-up project that like used their same coin and just, it's a thing that needed years of time to prove itself out. And crypto doesn't have the time for that. And the platform didn't have that time either.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, that's the risk you take getting into that territory. It's as far as crypto cycles, you know, many cycles within a bull run happen really fast and Once you lose that momentum, it's kind of over.

Speaker A: What do you think about their more recent ideas around opening up the platform, doing a DAO? Are you fully out of fx hash, like fxh, I should say? Like, I'm sure you got like a decent chunk in airdrop.

Speaker B: Yeah, I sold a little bit of my allocation at first. I think I held most of it. I think what I have now is worth like $100 or $200. But, um, I don't know, I've never really seen the DAO thing play out. I think that's a great concept. I guess I don't really have an opinion on it. I really would like to see, personally, assuming that there's going to be no miracle funding coming in, which there might be. I mean, they've been talking about something, but I'd like to see them pivot more towards preserving the art and enabling the marketplace to persist. I think it kind of maintains that legacy, right? Because it's— I mean, FXHash is such a significant chapter of generative art and maintaining that platform in some degree.

Speaker A: Mm-hmm.

Speaker B: No matter what, is what I want to see, whatever that means. I don't know about the technical details and whatnot of what that would require. It seems like they need to trim down their infrastructure costs quite a bit for anything to be possible.

Speaker A: I mean, obviously it would be awesome if they could have the platform persist in some way. I think they were kind of floating, like, obviously keep secondary going because that's probably the only place they're really making much revenue these days, if they're making any. You know, I guess kind of the idea was perhaps like you could do some curated stuff and it would just be like 1 or 2 or 3 releases a year. And then that way they keep their costs down because they're not constantly having people putting up like—

Speaker B: that's what Art Blocks is doing right now, right? Like, if I understand correctly, doing just a few releases, but they've kind of encapsulated that 500 projects and really wanted to focus on preserving those as best as possible.

Speaker A: Yeah. It feels like Art Blocks is in such a weird place because yeah, they're not really doing formal curated stuff, but then they have whatever their new version of Playground is. So like in theory, anyone who has worked on those contracts before can, without permission, come and publish work there. But I think that they had this issue that without the prestige of being curated or even being, um, what was the one just below curated that they did, like, where it was still selected?

Speaker B: Art Blocks Presents.

Speaker A: Yeah, whatever their, their second tier of curation was. When it was reduced down to like, this is an open platform, but just for artists who have been picked before. They weren't selling out. Some things sold out, but some things really did not perform well. So it's the exact same problem that FX Hash had, which is like, it just feels like the whole community, artists and collectors both turned towards being curated, getting some kind of, not even necessarily the marketing behind them. 'Cause like, I don't know that I would say like someone might buy a release from Verse, for example, because the marketing was so good. I think they're buying it because they like the artist and they like that the platform is like staking like a bit of reputation on them and saying like, this is good, right? Come buy this. And that's why it's the price point it is. And that's why we're giving it all this space. So I know you've collected on Verse, like, how do you kind of feel about them being the last, at least as far as I guess there's also, there's one other platform, but like one of the last, like really curated experiences out there?

Speaker B: All I can say is like, I've really enjoyed the projects that Verse have put out. You know, obviously I'm an Erik Swahn fan and several really good releases there. And I love how they're bridging that gap between the digital and the physical. I think you had maybe alluded to, is this turning more towards traditional art galleries and less decentralized? And I don't think it's that. I think that platforms like Verse that do both is great to onboard new collectors and kind of give more legitimacy to what we're doing. Like, if you have real people showing up and viewing this digital artwork, it's awesome, right? Like, so I don't see it as like a long-term shift towards traditional art necessarily or anything like that. I just see it as A cool way to release cool art. And they've done a great job with that.

Speaker A: I've kind of thought about it 2 ways. Like, I feel like there should be an open platform somewhere. And I would love for it to work for like anyone who's maybe someone like me who maybe decided I want to get into coding and like, I make a project that's like not, not amazing, but I want to put it up there and I want to be able to like say like I published something. And I know like Verse was never going to do that. And like, I've never been on Art Blocks. I'm never gonna be able to put it there. And I don't have the technical chops to like run my own website and spin up my own contract. So I feel like there is a use case and like a need for almost like the Hic Et Nunc thing, like a very like punk DIY platform to exist where anyone can publish stuff. But there just doesn't feel like now, this doesn't feel like it's economically viable unless you just are willing to accept that it's like a one-person thing. You're going to be the one person who does it and maybe some months you'll make $100 and some months you'll make $10,000 and you can't be all in on it beyond that, right? Beyond almost like a hobby with upside.

Speaker B: Yeah. So a few thoughts. Well, one, Verse had an announcement recently about something about going fully open, right?

Speaker A: They did.

Speaker B: Yeah. I have no idea what's going on there, but yeah, they're moving more towards that, it seems like. And then, yeah, I mean, there's other little platforms popping up like Bootloader, right? It's kind of like early fx hash in terms of functionality. So I don't think that opportunity is gone, you know, as someone who just wants to dabble and mint something and see what happens.

Speaker A: Yeah, I don't understand the Verse. Like, I know that they've been expanding their contracts out to like more galleries, and they've kind of gone through like branding and rebranding of like, we're the gallery, and now actually we're like, Solos is the gallery, and then there's like other curators, and actually no, now those curators aren't a part of us, but they can still You know, Lonli's no longer there, but now he's spun up his new thing, The Garden.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And his first project's of course on Verse with their contracts. So it's like their whole kind of identity and role in that way has been all over the place. We've interviewed Jamie probably 3 times over the course of the, of the program.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I feel like he's always been skeptical of the open platform idea because you want your brand, like your, you know, their Verse brand, you want it to have some kind of premium, some prestige to it. And the second you let anyone now jump on the platform, And muck it up with random sketches, then you're gonna get into this problem that I think FX has struggled with, which was like, how do we allow anyone to publish here, but also elevate and highlight and curate the projects we think are actually gonna make us money? And I know OBJKT's gone through that issue too, of like people who have been salty and been like, I've never been on the front page of OBJKT and I've been publishing there for 3 years. And like the whole politics of who gets front page, like notoriety on OBJKT.

Speaker B: Mm-hmm.

Speaker A: I have no idea what their plan is for that. I'm super curious to see how it all plays out.

Speaker B: I just want to like also shout out OBJKT because in the midst of a potential fxhash shutdown, having that extra layer of security in terms of the preservation is right, so reassuring. And they've done an excellent job. I mean, the functionality of the platform, I like using it more than OpenSea, you know, and they do a combination of things, you know, they've done some drops with Casey Reas, you know, where it's like, Kind of long-form generative art dropped on OBJKT, right? And I think the more options we have and the more stable platforms we have, the better. So just wanted to throw that out there, that OBJKT has been really reassuring throughout this turmoil, for sure.

Speaker A: And Bootloader is like a side project from them too. And they finally added p5 and like JavaScript support there as well, because it was originally just like SVG and like native HTML stuff. So it's cool that they're there, but it, you know, they're still Tezos only. One of the reasons that fxhash left, they felt like the artists that left them left in part because they felt collector demand to put their art on ETH, or they had maybe been blessed with an Art Blocks curation and now they had this whole like ETH collector base. We've kind of seen like you can't drag them back to Tezos, not in great enough numbers at least. So like, I think fxhash thought, okay, like, well, we need to have this other chain supported and I don't imagine that Bootloader or OBJKT is ever going to cross over.

Speaker B: Yeah, that'd be wild. I don't fault fxhash for wanting to move towards ETH and Base. I mean, that's how they got that Coinbase venture funding, right? So, you know, it's unfortunate that there wasn't that kind of breakthrough moment where a big project generated a lot of hype and whatnot. But it is also kind of funny as someone who loves Tezos and loves Tezos art to see that Pretty much all the volume is Tezos legacy grails, right? Yeah, partially thanks to people like me.

Speaker A: I'm so tempted to talk to you about Pokémon because of my history with it. But I guess I would also like to ask, since you've been in the crypto space for so long, and like how weak this last cycle felt, not just the issue that it never shifted to NFTs really, which sucked for all of my art. But you know, like I held Bitcoin and ETH and stuff since 2020. And missed that opportunity, that window in 2021 to sell. And then I just held, right. And I, you know, I finally got out close enough-ish to the top in this cycle. But again, it was like still nowhere near the top that anyone who likes to do the charts and the cycle theory stuff would have said we were going to get to. You've been here, I think, one cycle longer than me, or maybe even like one and a half. So like, what do you feel about the space in general? How PvP it's become, how we just seem to be getting these shallower and shallower cycles? Like, do you hold out hope for that?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: the tech or hold out hope for it as a speculative asset at all?

Speaker B: Like, longer term? I mean, I'm always a long-term Bitcoin bull. Basically, all I hold right now is Bitcoin and NFTs. I've completely liquidated all my meme tokens, whatever you want to call these tokens. Um, I don't hold any ETH, I don't hold any Tezos long term. I think that Bitcoin is, is the digital gold, and that thesis is still great. Um, I think, you know, it actually makes sense to see shorter, less explosive market cycles, you know, as that market matures. And it's just completely different now. I mean, we have ETFs and so many ways to invest in Bitcoin, and naturally it's just going to get less volatile as it matures. And, you know, we did see some crazy subcycles, like the Solana meme token trading was pretty insane.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I mean, that rivals anything I've ever been a part of in crypto, the stuff that was going on there. It was pretty short-lived, of course. For another NFT cycle to happen, it requires a convergence of just a lot of different factors that are timed correctly within the crypto market cycle and the global politics and all this stuff. I can't say what's going to happen, and it is disappointing to not see, you know, like a real NFT bull run, but I still feel if you're buying quality art that has historical value you'll do fine in the long run.

Speaker A: How much more buying do you think you personally would— will do? Erik Swahn aside, right? But like, are there other things that you're still targeting that you're like just kind of waiting and watching or putting in offers? I think we've moved down probably 90% twice on a lot of these projects. So there's always the potential to go down again. And what's $30 today could be $15 in a year. Like, are you Your Farbteiler is pretty complete because you've got all your monos. You've got so many awesome ones. I was actually looking at your stuff because I was like, I minted a mono. The one Farbteiler I minted was a mono and I was disappointed and I flipped it because I was like, I don't want— like, this is such a cool project. I love the colors. I got this weird mono piece and I was like, oh, I wonder if you incidentally had mine, but it wasn't. I think I had a green one. There's probably some more stuff on Verse you could be looking to get from him or other artists. Like, is there a point where you're just going to go like, Yeah. I feel like I've got enough of the old stuff, or if it goes down 90% again, you're going to be back in the Farbteiler zone, you know? Like, what's—

Speaker B: Well, if it goes down 90% again, I'll be buying more Garden Monoliths. That's right.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: But yeah, so I still have a few goals with the Farbs. Obviously I'm extremely happy, but I do have a couple more specific goals. So I have the primary and secondary color wheel for mono outputs. I'm just a few away from getting all 12 colors, including tertiary.

Speaker A: Oh, okay. I didn't know you were gonna say that.

Speaker B: So that's one goal. It's going to require some outreach to, you know, these wallets are hard to track down and there's really only a couple mono outputs for each color. So it's going to require some help from some people, but it might happen. So I think that would be really incredible because it's, I mean, just the fact that the algorithm produced a few mono outputs from all 12 colors is pretty incredible, right? Like it worked out so perfectly and To even be able to collect all of those is pretty insane. So that's one goal. I think I'm still interested in more Dragons and Garden Monoliths, to be honest. I just think that, you know, they're the top dogs, and I've only grown closer to the collections as I have been doing this grail hunting, and it's kind of becoming what I'm really laser-focused on. And then to kind of reiterate that I've been selling Pokémon cards, I have kind of been trimming down my collection to what— okay, obviously I love these cards, but do I love them more than a Garden Monolith? And usually the answer is no, right? So I will be selling some more Pokémon cards regardless of whether that market is topped or not. I enjoy setting off the sales bot in the Discord, and I think it'll happen a few more times. I can't say, um, well, I almost don't want to say too much because there are some specific pieces that I have my eye on.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, don't, don't get like—

Speaker B: And, uh, what do you think of that? That anonymous wallet that's been scooping up dragons and gardens for like high prices.

Speaker A: Yeah, I've noticed it obviously, because I think it was just like a 15K Tez sale of a dragon that wasn't even—

Speaker B: I mean, it was a nice dragon, but it wasn't really nice, to be fair.

Speaker A: Yeah, but it wasn't a like paper one or a gold one or, or any of the other really, really rare scarce ones. Because I think you got your gold one for like 4K or 5K Tez, right?

Speaker B: So, uh, 6K Tez, the As I call it, the ancient dragon I got for, I think, 5.5. It's interesting. So I actually looked into their wallet. They've just been holding like 40,000 Tez for a year or two, did nothing with it, and then suddenly started buying.

Speaker A: So did they have any stuff though? Like it was just a dormant Tez-only wallet or they had art?

Speaker B: They sent Tezos from Bybit and they were getting staking rewards and did absolutely nothing else.

Speaker A: Until recently, maybe it was someone who like lost their keys or something for an extended period of time. I don't know.

Speaker B: I mean, I like the pieces they've selected. It almost seems like they're making a statement, like these prices are all a joke. Mm-hmm.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm looking at what else they have here. So they've got well, so their their FX hash wallet is only two dragons and two garden monoliths.

Speaker B: They did buy a um a rare tezard.

Speaker A: Okay, interesting. This is definitely a wallet to keep track of and see if they keep buying. I do want to ask you about some Pokémon stuff. So aside from collecting Pokémon when I was young and being a fan of the franchise, I'm much closer to like Magic: The Gathering on the TCG side. And Magic is a game that's been around for a long time, since 1991, 1992, has a huge history. I think even you probably— I don't know if you play Magic, but I'm sure you know what a Black Lotus is just being a CCG collector, right?

Speaker B: I've heard of it, yeah.

Speaker A: You just know it. So it has these iconic cards that have Escaped their core collector base. And the thing that drives the value in Magic almost exclusively, besides, yeah, being rare and old because, uh, just back then they didn't make as many cards, is playability. And like, is the card actually good? And is it used in decks that are—

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: That can win? And not so much like— well, I should say almost not. There's some exceptions now, but like historically not just, oh, this is a foil version of that, right? Like, so my impression of looking at all this Pokémon content, which I get so much of on TikTok now, is that a lot of it's Pokémon is driven by aesthetic more than anything, and the various tiers of rarity and foiling and alternate art stuff that they do. So first of all, like, what's your background in Pokémon? I assume you played way back in the day.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I'm guessing we might be similarly aged. And then like, how does it— how do you pick, like, how do you kind of go into a collection Do you trust your eye to be like, that's a cool card and I know that people are going to want it? Like, what's, what's the driving thing behind that?

Speaker B: Yes to that.

Speaker A: Um, yes. Okay.

Speaker B: I think it's entirely aesthetics for me. Like, the Pokémon cards that I bought in 2024 were almost exclusively vintage Japanese cards. One, because they're so much cheaper than the American first editions, like 100 times cheaper, and the holographic quality is actually better. They're not as scarce and they're easier to grade, so naturally they're not as valuable. But that was kind of my thesis, was like, I love these, I think they look better than the American versions, and I'm just gonna hoard these. And it actually played out quite well. I think the vintage Japanese cards went up about 5 to 10x over a course of weeks earlier in the year. So yeah, for me it's all about aesthetics and rarity. You know, I'm aware of rarity, right? Like, I keep track of, you know, what the pop report is. So I also collect PSA 10 graded cards, so you have that population report, which is really helpful information. when you're collecting, right? So yeah, for me it's all aesthetics, uh, has nothing to do with the playability. You know, I dabbled with that as a kid, going to Toys R Us and battling kids and trading and whatnot.

Speaker A: Does playability even matter so much in like the high-end collectible collector hobby? Because I like so many of these cards, it seems like people are either sitting on sealed product or they're cracking packs and grading them. It almost feels like a nightmare scenario if there's like a very desirable card that actually is competitively good because more of them will end up in slabs than in decks, right? Like, does the Pokémon— like, do the designers, do they have some awareness of this and they like make sure the playable cards aren't chase, like, so that way people can actually play?

Speaker B: It's a good question. For the modern stuff, I don't know. The modern cards also have crazy designs and very busy artwork, uh, really busy artwork and textures. They're cool. But as far as the value goes, I don't think that playability is so much associated with value from what I can tell.

Speaker A: Gotcha. You mentioned the Pop Report thing, like that to me is such a fascinating collector metric to latch on to. And I've seen that you mentioned, you mentioned this too, but I've seen in the videos people say like, oh yeah, the Japanese 10s, there's just too many of them. The population is too high because the cards are better made and the condition is better. And so like ironically, they're worth less, like compared to like the trash, you know, US cards, it's so much harder to get a 10 because they're they're misaligned, or they, you know, they've got some already— they've got some wear on the edges when you open them. It's so interesting that there are these like core platforms that own and like control this information, and often they're also the ones doing the grading, right? And I see so much like great grading paranoia and conspiracy too. Did you buy those Japanese cards raw and grade them, or did you buy them already graded when you—

Speaker B: I always buy them graded on eBay. Okay. Yeah, eBay is really The only resource I use for buying and selling. Yeah.

Speaker A: Do you buy into any of the skepticism or conspiracy around the various grading companies? And like, I'm sure you've seen those videos where someone's like, they crack it and they resubmit it and it gets like 2 grades higher. What is your impression of that stuff?

Speaker B: There's been some pretty crazy situations there. I don't look too much into it. Um, there's a bias towards new certifications, which is those that were more recently graded. They tend to be more stringent than those that were graded years ago. So there's a strong bias there, but I don't look too much into it, honestly. If it's a 10, it's a 10, and it's actually fairly liquid, like the Pokémon market. You can move these things in a matter of days if you want to. So I think that the PSA 10 is respected despite obviously a lot of inconsistencies that people point out. That's just gonna happen, right?

Speaker A: Mm-hmm.

Speaker B: I mean, it's impossible to do it. I mean, there are some egregious examples for sure. I don't look too much into that. Yeah.

Speaker A: Gotcha. You've just like, you got in last year, you've already 10x'd, and you're like, I don't even need to follow the controversy. Like, I'm just selling and buying art.

Speaker B: Like, yeah.

Speaker A: So do you see yourself continuing with the hobby much, or you're gonna keep the ones you like and then that's it?

Speaker B: So I have a binder full of graded PSA 10 cards, and I've been kind of trimming it down as the price goes up and trying to decide what it— like, what is the core collection that I actually care about? So I'm getting closer and closer to that. So At a certain point, I will have to decide, like, do I keep selling these or do I stop? And I think we're reaching that point. But I mean, we'll see if we get another, you know, the 30th anniversary set is coming out soon and that might generate more buzz and we might get another vintage pump too. So who knows? If things go really crazy, I will sell almost everything for sure.

Speaker A: Did you play as a kid? Was this— so there was some nostalgia for you or did you get in for like—

Speaker B: I mostly collected. I wasn't much of a player as far as, you know, the decks and whatnot. Mostly just collected for fun. Yeah.

Speaker A: But when you decided to jump in in 2024, was it just like purely this arbitrage thing that you noticed between Japanese and American? You're like, this, this is just too wide of a gap. And like, it just feels like there's too much potential. That was it.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, there was, there was a lot of buzz around Pokémon in general, right? It all came full circle. Right. And I did start, you know, buying the modern cards and whatnot and it just felt kind of corny. And I was like looking at the prices of these cards that I, that were just legendary as a kid. Right. And they were so cheap. And so it wasn't so much like, oh, I'm calculating that this will be a 10x, you know, whatever. It was just, wow, these are cheap and I want to buy them. It was kind of just like that. And yeah, it played out really well.

Speaker A: What you said right there is like one of the things that informed a lot of my more recent collecting of vinyl records. So I got back into collecting vinyl and actually collecting in a real way about 2, 2 and a half years ago. And I would go on Discogs, which is like the main site for trading vinyl records. And also it's like the database of everything. And I would say, oh, here's a record I want to get. And you'd see the original pressing and all the subsequent represses. And on some of these records, like the difference in price between an original pressing from the '70s and a 2025 repressing is only like $20.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And that to me intuitively, again, being like a lifelong collector of various things, like that doesn't Makes sense, you know? And in some cases, okay, like, yes, there were, there were points in the history where they were printing so many records because it was like the most, you know, it was the only media format that people could get music on really. But that's when I was like, okay, I'm going to start collecting only first presses because I expect that moving forward, like if I want my collection to hold any value moving forward, I can't just be buying represses at Walmart and Target. And like, you know, even if the music sounds mostly the same or comparable.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And so like, that's exactly it. I was like, this, this doesn't make sense. There seems to be a disconnect in the hobby. And of course then it became a way for me to like spend a lot more, more money in some cases. Yeah, but that's always how it is.

Speaker B: But you know, when you find that lane where you find something that's undervalued and it's something that you appreciate and enjoy looking at, or, you know, in your case, I don't know if you play those records, but collecting them and whatever the aesthetic value is to you, like, that's really to me what a good collecting opportunity is, right? It's apparent when you're in that situation that you want to do that.

Speaker A: Yeah, I do play them. There's some that I probably shouldn't. The whole slabbing thing hasn't come over to records in a big way yet. I think because it is such a— still a lot— I don't do this yet, but like a big part of the hobby for people is also their system and like fidelity and sound quality, and I just don't have the space or the money to do that. So for a lot of those folks, Owning an original this or that and then putting it under plastic, it's like, well, then you can't play the record and then you actually can't demonstrate it's a nice copy, right? How else are you going to demonstrate that this is like a great—

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: It's in mint condition. Like, but I have seen like Steve Aoki, for example, like he's slabbing his music media that he collects and stuff. So there are people out there who are like on the edge of it and starting to do that. I'd be very curious to see like what the hobby looks like in 5 or 10 years. Like there's one label or one distributor now who is, in addition to putting out, you know, their records into, into retail, if you go to their website, they'll have pre-graded copies for you to buy. That's like, these are 10s and they'll have like 50 10s of like the new Taylor Swift album up slabbed.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Because getting a 10 in the wild is actually probably difficult. I've never, I don't know. But anyway, it's just like, it's, it's funny to see, 'cause I feel like it's the Pokémon-ification of other hobbies, right? Like they're seeing this out there and they know there's a premium and it's, uh, it could come over. It'll be an interesting day, I guess, when that happens.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, I wanna jump back to Verse real quick. So I noticed, you know, we, we talked a little bit about their curated stuff and perhaps they're, they're changing the platform and you've collected some of their most recent release, the Brain Rot stuff.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And it's kind of been interesting seeing them between, between that and the Tabor PFP now. succeeding in this PFP space by kind of hybridizing it with art. I think the Tabor one, I mean, I minted them because they were free to me, you know, like the 5 or so that I got because of the way they dripped those out. I did not mint any of the Brainrot ones. But it's weird, right? Like, it's clearly attracted a lot of new people to their platform who are more than happy to come in and complain in the Discord.

Speaker B: Oh, the Discord was a mess.

Speaker A: Yeah, lots of just, just a lot of green leaf users complaining. But is this the game now in a way? Like, is this going to be the, you have to have the candy to support the platform and then you're going to have—

Speaker B: I don't know. I was just so, so like for both of those projects, I was just so excited to see like a 10K PFP project mint out. You know, like, that's such a foreign concept. Like, that's so many editions, right? I haven't witnessed that in so long. I also love long-form AI. That's a whole separate topic I could talk about for 30 minutes. But, um, it was just kind of a fun thing to mint. It's cool to see it kind of succeed and, you know, get the floor price going up and whatnot. Human Resources project in particular has some very devoted collectors who are really doing the role-playing thing. And it's just kind of a fun thing. Like when I see those opportunities, I'm still a crypto degen at the end of the day. I'm going to spam the mint button, right? Like regardless of What I think of the art specifically, but yeah, it's just really cool to see.

Speaker A: Did you ever collect on Emprops?

Speaker B: Yes. And actually, so I said I could talk about this for 30 minutes. I actually dropped a few projects of my own on Emprops.

Speaker A: Oh, did you?

Speaker B: That's how into it I got.

Speaker A: Cool.

Speaker B: It's not something I expect people to notice, but I understand as someone who's done that with AI where you're just prompting and inputting images and then you see the result after people mint it and you're like, oh, that wasn't quite random. It should have been more random, right? Those weren't quite the outputs I want. So it gives me more respect for generative artists and other types of artists too, because like it is hard to get the set of outputs that's as diverse as you want and within your parameters. So yeah, Emprops, I don't know if they're still up and running, but, uh, they're still on.

Speaker A: Yeah, it was a very interesting platform. I collected a little bit off of there and I tried also to like figure out how to mint and use their tools to create something. 'Cause like every time I get, I see this new stuff, I always Try to figure it out and see if I can release something. I was never able to get their whole syntax and like the whole thing working in a way that made sense to me. And then I had a, you know, I have a baby, so it's like, you know, I gave up on it. But I thought it was really cool. And we of course talked to those guys like when it came out.

Speaker B: And I think that platform was revolutionary. I mean, it's, it may have just been a little early in the bear market, but long-form AI is such a cool topic.

Speaker A: Those brain rots really were not interesting to me aesthetically or thematically, but then I know some artists who are, who have also like dabbled in it and they were like, it's just so well done, was their feedback. Like, yeah, you to do 10,000 of those and they all look—

Speaker B: 10,000 is a lot.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it clearly, you know, there must be, there's, there's a lot of craft to that, even if it's, um, you know, I think they're just kind of goofy.

Speaker B: But yeah. Um, I can't say they resonate with me super well, but, um, still really fun.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think the human resources one is pretty interesting. I was skeptical of it until I listened to the Tabor first talks and him kind of like talking about it more. I've just been holding the ones that I've got and we'll see, because I know he's also like, he's an artist that they're betting big on, I think, like long term with the platform.

Speaker B: So hey, it's my PFP on Twitter.

Speaker A: So right.

Speaker B: Yeah, I found the one that I like and I'm supporting it.

Speaker A: Yeah. Is there anything else you want to touch on before we start wrapping up here? Is there anything you feel like we missed that you want to—

Speaker B: I mean, we kind of touched on everything. We touched on the Long-form AI, the Pokémon, you know, my obsessiveness with Zancan and Erik Swahn and those collections. Yeah.

Speaker A: Cool. I mean, yeah, I feel like we got through a lot. It's been great just like chopping it up with another collector and talking about the space. You know, I hope that we get some good news-ish from fxhash at some point here. That would be ideal.

Speaker B: Just to add on to that. So I don't know if, let's say fxhash were to shut down. if OBJKT would perpetuate those existing listings or not. But if they don't, I think that would actually be really interesting to just clear the order books and have like a fresh supply and demand. It's not necessarily a bad thing in the long run.

Speaker A: You'd have to think that a lot of the listings on fxhash might not have been touched for years, right?

Speaker B: Some of the ones that got bought recently actually were listed years ago.

Speaker A: Yeah. When Tezos might have been a much different, different price and stuff.

Speaker B: So it's interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker A: Well, we're still here. We're still kind of watching and lurking and making these episodes from time to time. And, you know, thankful to folks like you who are still happy to come on and talk with us.

Speaker B: Oh, thanks for having me. I hope my rambling was somewhat entertaining.

Speaker A: Oh, it's great. And, you know, best of luck with your continued collecting and the Pokémon stuff. And if you ever get into records, you know, hit me up. I'll give you some ideas of where to start. Cool. Well, that was McLlama, everyone. And let me— I thought I had your Twitter up here. I'm going to plug it for you really quick.

Speaker B: My tag is Pompous LL.

Speaker A: Pompous LL. Wait, maybe we should close on this. Where'd the McLlama name come from?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's actually a great question. So back in 2017, everyone on crypto Twitter was basically some sort of animal. You had Wassis, which are some unidentified animal creature thing. But, um, I started out as the Pompous Llama. That's how I created the account. And it was kind of a real-life nickname that someone had passively given me, and I thought it was kind of funny. So that's how it started. And then, uh, it was too long to type in as a Twitter tag, and so it was just Pompous LL instead of Pompous Llama. Then the bear market happened and people started putting, uh, McDonald's hats on people's, uh, PFPs. And so then I turned into McLlama. Like, I had the, you know, the joke being that we're all gonna be— I remember that. Yeah. Um, so that's kind of how McLlama started, and that's just the name that And stuff and how people know me. So yeah.

Speaker A: There you go. Well, throw, throw him a follow @PompousLL and we'll put all that down below and we'll link to your Raster collection too so people can browse that and see all the Farbteilers and the other great stuff that you've collected there. I scrolled through, you've, you've got stuff from all eras of FXHash and you've got a bunch of AI and other digital art stuff too. Like I see a lot of this artist culture hacker here too. And like, I'm—

Speaker B: Yeah, I like glitch art as well.

Speaker A: Yeah. And some John, J-J-John stuff. So you've definitely, you've definitely been around for a minute collecting all this stuff. That's it for this one, I think, everyone. I hope you all enjoyed. Big thanks to McLlama for coming on, talking to us about art.

Speaker B: And thanks to everyone who's still active in FXHash. I see all of you in the Discord reacting to purchases. Everyone who's active is a legend right now.

Speaker A: That's nice. Legendary status achieved. Cool, man. Well, thanks again for coming on. Hope you all enjoyed. And yeah, we'll be back again soon-ish with another episode, I'm sure. All right. Later, everyone.

Speaker B: Thanks again for having me. Yeah.

Speaker A: Bye.

Speaker B: Bye. We're waiting, always. We're waiting to be signed.