Luckily, I put out so much work, I know that I'm not going to sell ninety percent of it. And so that's like those market dynamics will change. So that's how I treated it, and that's how I treated the first job. Yeah. some of it is ok, but a … Press J to jump to the feed. And so, that's what I wanted to sort of do with digital art, make it so that it's like, "Okay, this can be something that you just passively have in your environment and it makes your fucking room look cooler." Worth the shot. And there's a bunch more that are like legit companies that have made their own sort of like blockchains. The room you're in, your desk you're sitting at or whatever, more vibrant, more fun, more whatever, more creative, more interesting. But then I started looking into it more. Yeah. I own it. So EJ, I know you've got some questions specifically about how to be successful at cryptoart. And now there is technology available to say, no, I do own this video that you made and everybody else agrees. I'm going to keep going along, assuming that it's going to keep going along. In December, he auctioned off multiple editions of three digital artworks, each priced at $969, and 21 unique works, most … What's an NFT? You don't have a big following like you do. Beeple: And so if you have that token in your wallet, you own it. So I realize it could be offensive, but that's never my intention. So, to me, that piece of it, I think potentially, they'll move to make that cross-platform in the future, maybe. What do you mean by that? Got it, okay. And I honestly think that that's how it will be with digital video. So this is something I should do. But the amount that are out there very much matters. But I think as the space matures, again, I could be wrong, I think it will be more seen. I was just like, "I'm not even going to pay attention to this, because it just seems weird." So I think these platforms need to scale very quickly. I honestly think it's going to be around for a long time, but I don't know for sure. So when I take Mickey, and I put it as some weird milking whatever, that, in my eyes, and I truly believe this. EJ: EJ: To be honest, most of them aren't going to get it and they're not going to give a shit and it's not going to be worth it for him because he can sell other things that they understand much easier. The implied scarcity of the work (and the fact that he is insanely talented and these pieces rip) meant that demand grew exponentially. So, from there, I just dove headfirst in and reached out to the CEOs of all these different platforms, and it was like, "Dude, what the fuck? And you're sending me pictures of your wife, putting these boxes together by hand, and you cutting hair off this Beeple doll and putting it in this vial, and I'm just like, "Oh my God." So, yeah, and I want to preface that I'm definitely not an expert in this, but I have been pretty balls deep in it for the last exactly three months. Like there was one of a guy going down on a turkey that you put out on Thanksgiving that I showed my wife, and she recoiled from it. I don't know, you don't know what that thing is. But I also feel like I have more questions now than I did. I sold two things so far. EJ: So, you're kind of working towards the same goal, versus with a client, this might sound bad, but high-level, just high-level market dynamics, you're trying to get the most amount of money for the least amount of work, and they're trying to get the most amount of work for the least amount of money. And the like websites. He's the guy that owns it because of NFTs. Digital artist Mike Winkelmann, also known as Beeple, recently sold a $6.6 million video artwork on Nifty Gateway, a virtual marketplace for NFTs. We found some actor on there, somebody on some show or something she watched. He didn't take any time to explain to his audience what this is. So when you bought crypto years ago, you were definitely speculating much more. But from the what understood, like what makes it sort of decentralized is that somehow every computer that's like part of this blockchain is sort of, I guess like checking it against other competitors and saying, hey, do we have the same information? [crosstalk 01:25:58] if something happens to it, you're fucked. But no no no. Nobody knows. Because the more you're able to listen to that voice, and it's not easy. I think there were some people who identify as cryptoartists, and have a certain aesthetic, or using the programmability of these tokens to make a certain type of art that is more dependent on the crypto aspect of it. And the last piece you mentioned it, but there's a secondary market. The following is a list of characters in the 1964 Roald Dahl book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, his 1972 sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, and the former's film adaptations, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005). It's not like, "Oh man, he was super into crypto before this." And so I don't know what the tax situation looks like. I wouldn't say never, but I will say my day rate went way the fuck up. I kind of, to be honest... Yeah, not really. It's a shiny sphere that I could do right now, or it's someone's tutorial, like Jonathan Winbush is like, this dude just did my tutorial, and he made like two grand off of it. And you were like, oh, I actually have a computer science degree, so I could actually speak to that. And the point of view I looked at was just like, I don't care the technical aspects of it. Beeple: I mean, you have it in the name of your website, just Beeple Crap, and I think everyone has that mindset, the imposter syndrome, like, "Who am I? Beeple: EJ: Beeple: Kind of in preparation for this. Nobody knows if one of his buddies has a stack of prints that are signed Banksy prints that anytime he runs low on money, he just throws one of those up for auction and makes a bunch of money. Let's do that." That's how I approached this, too. He wasn't bringing in new collectors. And I don't know, they always do that, but it's like, I don't know. That's it, If nobody wanted it, there would be no value. This is just money. Sagisag PH is a multimedia network which creates unique contents highlighting Entertainment, Lifestyle, Travel, History, Sports, Technology, Beauty and Fashion. Yeah. Beeple: I think it will be a very viable alternative for some people, but not everybody. They're something that I spent a few days on. You want to learn more about it, this or that. I have to disagree that objectively in my eyes at least there is no objectively bad art. That's all gold. But here's the thing. So I'm not looking at this. Things and programs and different use cases to be built on top of it. They're artists in the MoGraph scene and they are making a shit load of money. It's fairly speculative. That this is something that I spent 13 years doing this cryptoart, or this phase. I don't know, shitload. That's why I was so excited about it, because it was like, "Oh man, I can think of so many artists who I would love to have in something like this, and so that I could just see their art and have it be a part of my life passively." Ethereum is a blockchain. That's a good question. They're not like, "I'm trying to give you the maximum amount of money for the little amount of work." So there's a bunch of different kinds of NFTs. The reason Sotheby's sells things for more than eBay is because anybody can put something on eBay. It would take a lot of social posts and a lot of explaining to explain to his fan base what this is. Beeple: That's all that this is. Okay. and I thought people would be able to flip it for maybe 100 bucks or something like that, eventually. I guess I'll make up a little story about this little character, and it's like a Tamagotchi, make sure to water it," and try to put a little story behind it. Beeple: Joey: Is that a Beeple?" I thought it'd be maybe somewhere between 10 and 100 bucks, because again, it's one of 100, so it's like, okay, well, how much is it really worth? I don't think I made a fricking electronic, digital crypto- You know what I mean? All right, gentlemen, EJ nice as always to have you on. So Mike, I guess the last question is how is this changing your life? Beeple: EJ: I believe that very much falls under Fair Use, and I would be very surprised if that was not the case. Got it. That's just not how client-designer relationships work. Joey: They are places where you can instantly upload artwork and immediately start selling these things. It's not like, oh, it's in Ethereum, so it's locked in this crazy thing that you can't get it out of. . So, within 45 minutes, somebody resold that thing that they paid $1 for for $1,000. Honestly, it was like, I'm always just going to do my own fucking whatever. So, then I kind of had to do it before the election, because the whole thing was like you were buying something where you didn't know the ultimate final video that you were buying. Okay, sweet. And so I think it's going to be a bit more organic. So, first off, I'm just curious, does it feel different to you to be paid for a piece of art, it literally is marketed as art, and people are buying it because it's art, versus your clients that used to hire you? CGI master Winkelmann has been creating one illustration a day from start to finish for the last 10+ years. How does it relate to cryptocurrency and blockchain and all that stuff? Beeple: Your work is bad. Beeple: And they had different properties of how fast they procreated and what like different personalities they had. Does that make sense? So, that is definitely a factor in the fees, and something that you could deduct. This doesn't fucking make sense. However he does his markers, that could easily be reproducible. It's like, "You could do that. Who the fuck knows. Of course nobody would have said, "Yeah, no, people are really going to want to see that. EJ: Jeffrey also answers to Jeffrey M Winklmann, Jeffrey Michael Winkelmann, Jeffrey M Winkelmann, Jeffrey M Winkelman and Jeffery M Winkelmann, and perhaps a couple of other names. That's what it is. I mean, it's almost like this validates all of the Instagram artists that posts all the time because they build up a following and people are looking at these everyday artists, like, "You're not going to get client work on this. And it's been growing for the last roughly two years. Beeple: Beeple: I'm assuming that, like, I don't know if you're being paid in like dollars or Ethereum. So, on Nifty it's all done in straight cash. That being said, there are options to sell this stuff. And Ethereum, the difference between a theory of, and Bitcoin is Ethereum allows you to sort of like add programming to the coins. So my whole thing was this, this is an alternative income earning... Beeple: That's cool. Motion design. Right. Yeah. And again, I didn't know any of the shit I just said over the last fucking two hours, three months ago, none of it. That's not the fucking real thing.". Beeple: Yeah. So that's where it goes back to what I was saying. Joey: Here's the very first Everyday." You don't own it. Yeah. R rated movies, swearing, those aren't for everybody. So, I was like, "What if we did something based on the election?" They started using them for these different metaverses that are sort of like worlds that are used NFTs to kind of like prove ownership of different land in the worlds or different avatars in the worlds or different items in the world. Think of it as like a foreign currency, but it's a foreign currency that goes up and down real often, and it can go way up and way down. Joey: So NFT is non-fundable token. It feels like there's a lot of low hanging fruit. I own the file, I own the token. I don't even remember the question. So I think it's going to take a bit longer than people think. It could be. My God, so much. So, that was auctioned off the next day, and both of those auction pieces went for $66,000. Yeah. That it's like, "Okay, how can I make sure this looks like something that's very different from Instagram, that you can instantly recognize this is different from Instagram?" Beeple: I think this will be seen as the birth of digital art as an actual appreciated movement in art, similar to graffiti, or similar to some of these other vinyl collectibles that we take for granted. So me personally, doing Everydays, I know I'm not going to sell it, so there isn't as much. You talked to a lot of people in this space and stuff like that, and I'd like to know, was there any talk about... Just from an outsider's perspective, it seems like there's a certain aesthetic that collectors really are going for. What makes something valuable? Joey: There was a low supply of art, high supply of collectors. Beeple: People just disappeared. You [inaudible 01:15:36] that. So, does it feel different, though? So yeah, it's a very different, very different world like auctions and these open editions and limited editions. His stuff, his name's Jerry, he was the first 2D artist that I actually saw on some of these platforms. They don't know about like the people that you know in the space who haven't come into it yet, who it's like, Oh, that's, you know, like somebody like Ash or somebody like that they don't know about Ash, because they know about crypto and they know they want to collect art, but they don't know that much about like, where some of the artists coming from. I'll just give you my strategy, where it was I minted my work, which is basically like printing your token, printing your money or whatever, and I was like, "Hey, I'm doing the cryptoart thing. All art is completely subjective. I don't like this thing. I've always looked at it as I am playing the fucking long game, because I've always thought that when I hit maybe 20 years of Everydays that there would be more attention paid to, "Wait, what the fuck did this kid do? So, that's why I see this sort of space having a big advantage over sort of the traditional art market. So much. Justin Roiland. And so that's the other thing is people who have things on the blockchain, they have wallets and a wallet could have money in it, like Ethereum, it could have Bitcoins or it could have these NFTs. Is any of that in your head? But it's sort of a proof of ownership attached to a piece of artwork. So, by the end of that night, about four hours later, somebody sold one of those $1 things for $6,000. But as far as like you, your crypto art or fuck Render's crypto art, you know, it's like, we have our view in our motion design bubble of like who we think do amazing work and who who we think maybe doesn't do as great amount of work. What I see eventually happening is all of this will just be rolled into Instagram. Similar to traditional artwork, the concept allows you to buy, sell, and trade digital goods as though they were physical. That sounds like an insane amount of money to the average artist, the average working artists, but to the average VC, that is like a nickel, you know, and it's just a bet. You made millions of dollars and I'm sure there's a lot of just your everyday motion designers out there looking at this whole Cryptoart thing and are just like, "Well, how does this apply to me?" So my strategy was a little bit of posting, posting on Instagram, and hoping people like it, hoping people buy it. So there is that speculation part of it. EJ: Joey: It's not like I'm going to change the style, and I wouldn't recommend doing that. Some of them are a bit more sketchy and some of them are a bit more sort of like speculative, but there's all different ones. I think the prices will come back to what I believe, like valuations that are a bit more, I don't know, based in reality or based in how things were before. But that was sort of the very first like NFT. A couple things. No one's going to find any value in anything I'm doing that they're going to pay Ethereum or money, or even Monopoly money. Like you could just right click and save the file. So it's like... Beeple: I guess everybody has a different copy or the same copy of the same thing. Gas fees are... Nifty includes that in their 20%, so that's something that they, again... Because they're a little different. "Mike Winkelmann never used to call himself an artist. And you could've immediately converted that Ethereum to dollars. I mean as far as like, of course there's like that's art, that's crypto art in general. But yeah. Oh, this is what everybody's doing," but I think the more you can stand out, the more it will actually benefit you, versus trying to fit in. So, that's something that you need to sort of think about when you're an artist who is making money on this stuff, is that it is much more volatile than cash. I would love to see a lawyer with a bunch of your Everydays in the courtroom. And who is this person that even made that thing? So there's a bit of, that's where I go back to the supply demand and balance with the collectors. Yes. So, I went to my brother and my parents and was like, "Well, why don't you guys try and buy it so you could flip it?" I mean, I saw this stuff and I was like, "Okay. So, again, these things can change because the token can point to a file, it points to a video file, but it could also point to a different video file. It’s a beautiful challenge that everybody should try. And that's very, probably, telling, but that was the analogy I came up with off of the top of my head, that it would fall into a pile of piss. That's kind of what it is. Like that's not possible. Wow. EJ: One of them is called Rareable and another one's called OpenSea. Beeple: So, I was like, "Okay. It's very hard for it to just be part of your everyday life, that you don't choose to do it, and it's just something you walk past. Yeah." But then you start to see like, "Oh," talking to Nick Campbell and he's like, "Oh yeah, I got my hands on one. And so it kind of makes it more or less impossible to falsify information, right? You say it all the time, your work's crap, garbage, whatever, and I think the same thing about myself too, but there is this moment-, Beeple: If you were a young artist, I would dip your toes into the water here, but you need to grow an audience first. It's super cool. But the two biggest different blockchains, and these are completely separate blockchains. So I'll take the Justin, what's his name? So that is partially why that is that whoever did that has probably been around in this space longer than you and they've built up a name in this space with the collectors. And it is tokenized then. EJ: MakersPlace is very similar to Nifty. Yes. Yeah. Beeple: Beeple: Crypto Art: Fame and Fortune - Mike "Beeple" Winkelmann. I will say my day rate went way the fuck up. Obviously there's got to be some fees that go to Nifty. And so the early collectors and a lot of the collectors now still too, will put up a significant amount of money. And so it just so happens too, and that's where I feel super lucky, it just so happens that they decided to speculate on exactly what we make. It is and it isn't. Beeple: Let me just stop you for a second there because I feel like people really do think that this is Monopoly money. and you say, "Okay," and they pay you for the picture, and they decide what the picture is, and you draw them their picture, and that to me is a designer. “#everyday #cinema4d - binaural color mauws //”. So there's actually two crypto artists on this podcast. See more ideas about art, cinema 4d, concept art. There was a lot more hype around it because I just have more people following my work. If I knew how to launder money, we wouldn't have this podcast Mike. How are you kind of looking at your career now in light of this? And I'm in a unique position that I have a shit-load of art that I could put up for sale, but what is the way to do that in a way that long-term will make the whole collection the most valued, that I'll be able to get the most value out of it. Assuming down the line, you could potentially sell your other artwork for a lot more. I saw that and it's like, that's awesome. I know I'm going to try and sell, to be honest, keep it one to 2 percent of the Everydays. But when you did your second drop, me and a few other artists were just like, "Oh my God, we got to get in. There's a lot more leeway with Fair Use than I think a lot of people do. His collage “The First 5,000 Days” is currently up for auction at Christie’s until March 11 and will be the first purely digital work sold as an NFT by a major auction house. I definitely never thought that. Beeple: Beeple: Because you're fucking human and you want people to like the things that you're doing, and I'm the same way. Beeple: What the fuck?" Just like keep doing every day's work a little bit less, once a quarter, the Beeple fall collection comes out with some nice warm colors for fall and you make a million bucks and then you're done for a quarter. I sold a-, Beeple: I mean, it's like diversifying or portfolio. So to me, if you're offended and you're butt hurt about this, I don't know what to tell you. Beeple: Sometimes incredibly valuable, as the infamous, Mike Winkelmann, a motion designer/madman from Charleston, SC, already had a successful career in digital artwork including short films, Creative Commons VJ loops, and VR / AR work. And if I understand you also get a cut of secondary sales of your artwork, so it's not just you sold it once and now that's all you're going to get. Beeple: Joey: And that's why you see the prices because of those things. The other part of it is, I made a bunch of teasers and I really tried to make it feel like, "Okay, this is an event. [crosstalk 01:22:51] I'll let you know. Digital artist Mike Winkelmann — better known by his online alias, Beeple — made headlines recently for selling the NFT of the 10-second video he created, shown below, to an investor for $67,000 US last fall. So, I immediately looked at the person who was making the most money on Superrare, and that was an artist named Murat Pak, and I had talked to him before, so I immediately texted him. If you do something that's a single edition, it's the only one, only one person can own it, and so it's worth more. EJ: And so artists can sort of take the artwork that they've already made and basically mint it, or tokenize it, which is the process of putting it onto the blockchain, which sort of cost money because you're basically telling all these people who are sort of mining Ethereum, Hey, I want to add this to the blockchain. Thank you. So I was like, "Okay." I can tell. When you buy crypto art, what are you getting? So I'm not picking any of this Trump shit, or any of that crap like that. Today I'm going to be showing you how to make the easiest summer treat for a hot day! But the technology behind it enables basically many, many copies of that spreadsheet to exist and they all kind of talk to each other and compare to each other. EJ: Let's do this thing." I made 95% of my money as a designer prior to this, and so it's a very different sort of paradigm, client versus collector, and it's actually way, way better, because to be honest, when you have somebody who is collecting your artwork, they're kind of on your team because you are both working towards the same goal, because it benefits them to see you succeed as an artist because then the value of what they've already spent will go up, and it benefits you to see their artwork go up because that means your artwork is worth more. And so if Ash is not there, or Beeple's not there, or EJ's not there to make art, they're going to buy whatever's there. So I've always been sort of slow rolling this thing. I don't really give a fuck about the [NFT 01:25:08] crypto part of it, that part of it's there making it more valuable and sort of backing it up. Yeah, it's very interesting, but I was, again, like I was saying like, "How the fuck does this make sense for these people?" How do I get away with the IP stuff, or the weird, gross, disgusting shit? But for simplicity sake, it's basically just a proof of ownership, an NFT is a proof of ownership, a token on the blockchain that says you own this file. I think that time has come, and I think that's where we're at for digital art. Thinking of yourself as an artist, and what are you going to sell? "No." There's no cross-platform royalties. I mean, I got paid in Ethereum for my first piece that I sold, and-. There's a couple caveats to that. I'm going to do my own shit. But this hypothetical Banksy friend that has all these prints lying around, how do you even verify that they are actually real Banksys, that they're actually... Beeple: They started using them for games. Beeple: Beeple: They're registered on the site, ready to sort of buy this thing as soon as it goes on sale. It's just something you have siting there. Joey: There are the eBays of NFTs that anybody can instantly start selling stuff on. So could celebrities bring a bunch more people to this? Beeple: Like Mike, I don't know who are the artists that like motion designers that you first saw that you're like, Oh, I know these people, these people are making money. And so you're going to see a huge influx of supply, art supply. some of it is ok, but a lot of it kind of blows ass … Press J to jump to the feed. There was a lot of risk. Like, it seems crazy that, you know, I think it was like an Australian VC fund bought one of your pieces for $66,000 or something like that. ", Beeple: They don't know what the fuck this is. And so they are used to speculating. A new picture made from start to finish by Mike every single day. Well yeah, I mean, it's no different than on Instagram, like with likes. It's just some fucking splatters on the fucking canvas. So, on Nifty, or on all these places, these platforms take a cut. Again, I have a computer science degree. The screens are cheap enough now, you have the blockchain piece of it so that you can have proof of ownership around these things. Like first it's this new thing. Could diminish, but if I'm in your shoes, I'm thinking, "Okay, this is definitely where I should be spending my time right now. [crosstalk 01:11:16] I would love to see that too, because if that happened... That's the other thing, people worry about. So EJ, I know you've been kind of watching this very closely and kind of... Joey: It's really pretty powerful, some of the images you make. Right. What gives something scarcity? Joey: It's like, "Really?" Beeple: EJ: [inaudible 00:22:49] four times. Because I'm, you know, I have art hanging up. Beeple: I don't like it. I know I'm not going to sell ninety percent of it, so I can still do shit like that that's like, "Okay, no one's itching to sign this, I don't sell it, there's no fucking pressure, it is what it is.". And so that's not how I'm looking at it, and that's not how I ever looked at my career. If you attach to a physical screen like that, it's not this weird thing that you have to wrap your head around. And yeah, that's really all it is. Yes. I'm interested to see what some of the people who are very new to art collecting, what they will do with them. So, I talked to a lot of people, and so one of the people I talked to, one of the first people I talked to was the people at Nifty, and they had actually reached out a month before that or two months before that, and I just ignored it because I was like, "I don't know what the fuck this is." But the difference is you, well, you can do that.