NorCal and Shill
A podcast where NFT artists tell stories, hosted by NorCal Guy. https://twitter.com/GuyNorcal
https://twitter.com/norcalandshill
NorCal and Shill
Chikai - Collector
Episode 87: Show Notes.
Welcome to the next NorCal & Shill Collectors Vault episode, today’s guest is Chikai. Chikai (Ohazama) is the Founder of MONOLITH Gallery and Creator of Circle of Frens. He is also the Director of Web3 for Niantic Labs and the Co-Creator of Google Earth. Join the conversation as we hear from Chikai as he shares his answers and thoughts on a wide range of questions from what he thought when he was first exposed to NFTs, the best piece of advice he’s ever received, and how a comic book collection just sort of happened. He shares what sparks his interest and sways decisions when it comes to buying a piece of art, what two things you’d never guess about him, and his personal preference when it comes to meeting new people in the NFT world. Don’t miss out on this great interview, so tune in now.
Key Points From This Episode:
• His thoughts on first hearing about NFTs.
• Why he would want to live in New York, for a set period of time, (and also Japan).
• The best piece of advice he’s ever received; it takes a whole organization to get to the moon, not just one person.
• He talks about his comic book collection and how it sort of just happened.
• His thoughts on Web3: the best things and the concerns as it expands.
• Where Chikai sees the digital art and NFT space in five years.
• What sparks his interest and sways his decision to buy a piece of art.
• His favorite movie quote (which he heard last night).
• Why he’d like to see more real-life connections in the crypto art space.
• The best thing and the silliest thing he’s ever spent money on (in the NFT space).
• The artists he would commission, to collaborate on, for a piece of art.
• You wouldn’t guess he has a Ph.D., in biomedical engineering, three lightsabers, and one full-sized Mandalorian Nerf gun.
• His thoughts on the best way to connect with new people in the NFT space.
• Hear about his current and upcoming projects, and why he’s so thankful to his community.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
EPISODE 87
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:32] NG: Hey, everybody. Welcome to this next NorCal & Shill Collectors Vault. Today, we have Chikai. Chikai is the Founder of Monolith Gallery and the creator of Circle of Frens. He is also the Director of Web3 for Niantic Labs and the Co-Creator of Google Earth. Everybody, please welcome, Chikai.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:00:58] NG: Hey, Chikai, welcome to this podcast. How are you doing today?
[0:01:01] CO: Good, it's great to be here on this podcast, I've been listening to for, I don't know, how long? For how long have you been doing it? For over a year at least. It's been like –
[0:01:09] NG: Yeah. It'll be two years in September.
[0:01:12] CO: Two years. That's amazing.
[0:01:14] NG: I know.
[0:01:14] CO: I don't know how many you've done, but I love this podcast. This is an awesome podcast. It's totally a huge honor to be on.
[0:01:20] NG: Yeah. It's awesome. I'm so happy. I finally have a Collector Version of it and get to talk to people that I admire and trust in the space. It's fun.
[0:01:32] CO: Yeah. I get to talk to you like in a podcast. I talk to you a lot. It's like, this is not that much different, but it's fun to talk to you. Everybody loves talking to you.
[0:01:42] NG: Well, thanks. It's always a good time. I mean, yeah. I guess, it's more question-focused. We'll get some answers. See what your thoughts are on some things. Okay.
[0:01:52] CO: Sounds good.
[0:01:53] NG: What were your first thoughts when you heard about NFTs?
[0:01:58] CO: I think, as people answer this question, it's been the same react, which is what the fuck is this? Because like, I think I heard about it from some friends and on Twitter and stuff, and then I looked at it. The one that I remember the most I talk about often is I saw Nyan Cat, which is this popular gift that has been around or video forever with the music and everything. It sold for like over a half million dollars. I was like, “What is going on? What is this? Why is this this way?”
A lot of it was just complete bewilderment and trying to then understand it. A little bit I know I'd be sucked in and be one of those people buying a Nyan Cat. Maybe not for half a million dollars, but like, buying JPEGs.
[0:02:42] NG: Right, right. I feel you on that one, because, I mean, definitely for a generation like our generation it’s definitely because we are like on that edge of like we were born with tech, but it came in later in our lives. Definitely, it's more of a getting used to or adopting something new.
[0:03:03] CO: Yeah. It was definitely very new. It was very – it took some time to get it. I mean, for most people either you get it or you don't, it's pretty binary and something happens that makes you think, “Oh, I get it now.” I think I didn't really start getting it until after I started buying NFTs and actually getting into it. Then at some point, it clicked and then all my time and energy and money were going toward NFTs.
[0:03:27] NG: Right, right. I feel you on that one. You could live or move anywhere. Where would you live and why?
[0:03:36] CO: I'm pretty happy where I am right now in San Francisco in the Bay Area, which I love. But the one place that I think would be interesting would be fun to live for some period of time, not forever, but for some period of time is New York, because I spent more time in New York recently, because of all my NFT stuff and different events going on. It is such an iconic city with so many things there to offer that every time I go, I just go there for NFT NYC or meetings, whatever, but not getting much time to sit with the city, which seems to have so much to offer.
We love to get that vibe and that feeling of New York through all the seasons. That's the one place that has come to mind. The other place is maybe Japan, since my family is all in Japan, should be great to spend time there and have my kids get a sense of the place because it's a pretty special place.
[0:04:30] NG: Yeah. I've only been in New York a couple of times and have yet to do any of the tourist stuff there. Japan's definitely on my list. I'd love to go there someday. One day, one day.
[0:04:41] CO: Yeah. I would love to go there. Hopefully, we'll go there next soon. I think my kids are begging to go, but my son wants to go because he wants to go to the Godzilla Museum.
[0:04:50] NG: Oh, awesome.
[0:04:51] CO: Forget like all the tourist stuff and all the famous things. He wants to go to the Godzilla Museum. That's why we're going to Japan.
[0:04:57] NG: I love it. I love it. That's awesome. I mean, I think your kids are old enough like they’ll – it’s going to be good memories for them. That's great.
[0:05:05] CO: Yeah. They'll remember it. I think they'll definitely remember it for sure.
[0:05:09] NG: What is the best piece of advice you have been given?
[0:05:14] CO: I have this friend who I met at the very beginning of my career in Silicon Valley a long, long time ago. He, unfortunately, passed away a couple of years, a guy named Michael T. Jones. An incredible guy, one of the smartest guys I ever met. I think I was pretty young when he said this because I met him as an intern in Silicon Valley a long time ago. Later on, he was telling me about stuff. One thing that stuck in my head is that you hear about going to the moon like going the man first went to the moon and you hear about Neil Armstrong, as the first man on the moon.
When you go for something that big like going to the moon is not just one person who says, “I'm going to go to the moon.” Then go to the moon. It's a whole team of people that allows you to accomplish something that big. If you have these really big, big goals, you can't do it by yourself. You have to work with the people and work with the team and lead a team. It just reminded me that, especially when I was younger you might want to do everything yourself and you can be independent and you like the independence, but if you really want to do something really game-changing, you have to work with the people and convince other people that this is a mission worthy of going after. The idea is that it takes a team, it takes a whole organization to get to the moon. It's not just one person.
[0:06:32] NG: I like that a lot. Yeah, you start off with an idea, but you got to sell it and get a team around you to help, everyone succeed and make that happen.
[0:06:42] CO: Yeah, because you can't just do it yourself. You can't build that rocket and launch yourself into this outer space and then have the command control center to make sure you're going in the right direction or whatever. Just like, it's amazing how much goes into it. I think that's true of a lot of things in our space also, but it is — when you think about something that big, it does take a pretty, a group of people, not just one person.
[0:07:05] NG: For sure. Did you collect art or anything else before NFTs?
[0:07:11] CO: I did not collect art. My wife, more did, we clicked it together, but she's the head creator in our house. Everything has to go through her curational review before it goes on her walls. Mainly through her, but I was thinking like, did I ever collect things as a kid? The one thing I did collect was comic books. My sister recently sent me a whole box of my old comic books and I need to sort through them, but I have a whole bunch of comic books. I was really into like X-Men and New Mutants and a whole bunch of different series, which I didn't really collect them necessarily intentionally, but it just sort of happened.
[0:07:44] NG: Yeah.
[0:07:45] CO: Because I enjoyed the series and I make sure I kept them into these plastic sleeves and stuff. They're hopefully fairly well-preserved.
[0:07:52] NG: Dude, that's awesome. That's going to be fun. You don’t have to like, get a wall in your office and be like, sorry this are all from my comics.
[0:07:59] CO: Yeah. Put it like, I don't know, UV-protected frames or something, but they're pretty cool. I had to bait like, I guess I could sell them, but I mean, I'm not sure how much I'll get for them these days or whatever, but like just the value of it from my childhood and just the memories I think is huge.
[0:08:16] NG: Yeah. That's awesome. That's so cool that you just happened to like, your sister was like, “Hey, I got these. Here you go.”
[0:08:24] CO: Yeah. She was cleaning up my parents' house. She also sent me my Millennium Falcon, my original Millennium Falcon from the, I guess from the 70s or whatever it was. I have that too. I need to clean it up and stuff, but it's the original Millennium Falcon toy back from the day.
[0:08:41] NG: Oh, dang. That's amazing.
[0:08:44] CO: Yeah.
[0:08:44] NG: That's really cool.
[0:08:45] CO: Then inside of it wasn't just Star Wars figures, but it was also Tron figures. When Tron first came out, they had figures, and I think I still have one of the light cycles and everything, which you can actually have a little zip thing where you make it go. I had that. It's in there. It's cool to see that, because it wasn't, they didn't know what Star Wars was versus like Tron. It just got stuck into one package.
[0:09:10] NG: Oh, wow.
[0:09:10] CO: There are all these other things.
[0:09:11] NG: Wow, that's really cool. That's really cool. What are the best things about Web3 today? What are your concerns as it expands?
[0:09:21] CO: The best thing about Web3, which I think most people would agree with is the people. I mean, that is the reason why I'm here. I may have come for the art and come for the spectacle or whatever it was that made my head spin around, but what made me stay was the people, people like you, people like all the artists we know, and other collectors and people in the community. It really is a good group of people. I mean, that's also why I'm so bullish about it long term, because of the people, but that is what I'm most excited about and just so happy about. NFT NYC last week definitely brought that home in a big way. Every year, for me at least, it's been even more and more solidified.
You would think on a bear market year, it would feel worse and less a little more dead, but for me, it was even more vibrant than last year for my core community. I think the space is tough for sure. There are a lot of tough things going on me really crazy stuff going on, but the core group has just gotten stronger, I think. That's why I'm staying. To rhe other half of your question — what am I concerned about long term? I think that the two thoughts, well, the one main thought is I think a lot of the things that we take for granted within the NFT space are not necessarily a given truth.
The two things like that come to mind is one is royalties. We always assume that royalties would be there and it was a given, it was a truth, and it's why we came in, but as we realized recently with blur and everything else, it could easily be taken away. It's not a guarantee. You could see that a couple of years ago. I mean, that was the case fundamentally from a technical standpoint, but everything, where everything was treated, was respecting royalties. As soon as someone didn't and they were doing well and still in market share, it eroded very quickly.
[0:11:09] NG: Right.
[0:11:10] CO: The other one, I'd say that I think people taking it for granted, which I think is not a given and we need to do a lot more work to so truly do a good job of doing well and making sure it actually is something that will hold on long, long into the future is provenance.
Provenance is something that we took for granted. I think in the space that it's a given for NFTs, but I don't think that's the case. I do think that there are ways that people would do contracts or minting or whatever, where it's a blurry or provenance and each platform is actually recording provenance and reading provenance in different ways. It's not consistent across platforms either.
[0:11:51] NG: Okay. I didn't realize that. I didn't realize it wasn’t okay. A standard way in an innocence. Nice.
[0:11:58] CO: Yeah. I mean, a simple example is like with Monolith Gallery, when an artist mints a piece in Monolith Gallery on the super space when you go to the site on SuperRare you'll see their name and as the one that created it and they get credit for it, but if you look at that same NFT on Foundation or even OpenSea, the creator is Monolith Gallery, because it credits to the contract creator, not to the first mint. Then the first mint is a tricky one because if you do a claim drop of like additions, the first mint is done by the collectors, not done by the artist. You have to go back to the contract.
If you have shared contracts, then that's not the case either. If you talk to SuperRare, it's, oh, we did it right. It's written on the blockchain this way. Talk about Foundation. No, they did it wrong. It's like, it’s a really, I'm not sure who's really right or wrong, but all I care about is consistency. It's like, I just want them to do the same thing, but they're not. I think there's a lot of work to make sure we just take a very closer look at it and make sure it's preserved, because that's what's going to create value long term, is that you can trace it back and say, yes, this truly is a ruined woo or next copy or whatever it's going to be, because you see the provenance and it's clearly written on chain.
[0:13:13] NG: Right, right. No, I think provenance is a huge thing. I always think being tied back to that artist's wallet somehow, that you can find. Where do you see the digital art and NFTs in five years?
[0:13:28] CO: That one is a hard question because I don't know what like five years ago, NFTs didn't exist.
[0:13:35] NG: Right.
[0:13:35] CO: Really. I mean, it just started to exist, so much has changed in five years. I'll separate digital art from NFTs.
[0:13:44] NG: Okay.
[0:13:45] CO: I think digital art is here to stay. It'll still be here. It will be growing. People will be adopting it. I do think the idea of a digital property and digital ownership is definitely kicked off. The best place to the current moment is the blockchain to record that. NFTs may evolve and come something more, but I think that concept of digital ownership and digital property, I have a pretty good feeling that that concept is here to stay. I think that will persist. I mean, there's a lot of investment going into it. There's a lot of artists who have developed their careers on it. I think there may be a lull at the moment, but I think long term it will be something of huge value.
In five years, I still see that be consistent. I could definitely see in five years that the technology may have evolved and some other name or some other new standard or something in order to have it grow and be able to expand and have a stronger, more robust contract or maybe it's a different chain that could also – it’s not totally impossible. I think it's improbable that it will be not Ether or Bitcoin. Maybe it'll be all Bitcoin ordinals. I don't know. But like, it will be something that will persist. The technology may be different, but I hope I'm still around. I hope I'm still doing this because that's what I want. I mean, that's all I really care about is, I just don't want to stop having fun.
[0:15:00] NG: Right.
[0:15:00] CO: Whatever I can do to keep the fun going where I'm still involved, supporting artists, having the community grow, everybody's able to sustainably be in here versus just bleeding money. I hope that happens. I hope we all do well overall, especially this core for the OG group that has been here and stuck with it. I hope that everybody does well and continues to be here.
[0:15:22] NG: What makes you decide to buy a piece? Do you like watch the artist to get to know them or is it like a combo of all the above? You're like, “Oh, I got to get that right now.”
[0:15:33] CO: I thought about that as to why did I buy recent pieces of art? I was looking back at it and sometimes it is, I’m following this artist for so long and finally it clicks.
[0:15:47] NG: Right.
[0:15:47] CO: Like, that was true of Omar. Omar and I were close and we talked, but there were months where I never bought his art. I met him. We chatted, but I never bought his art until finally one day I did. That was the case recently with Jack the street, Jack Simpson. I bought one of his pieces called Three of Diamonds. I never bought his art for such a long time. I bought an edition and stuff, but not a one-on-one. Finally, it clicked and it worked. Sometimes there are people like 0009 who came out of nowhere. I just loved it. I just bought it. Then I learned more about it and I chat with them a lot now and start to develop that relationship.
Sometimes like right now like there is some part of me — like I never loved the hunt for buying like vintage clothing. There's some people who love find the deal, the dress that costs $1,000. You got it for $10 and you just loved that hunt. There's shopping, and sale hunting that some people have a lot of fun doing. I never did. I do enjoy looking for the diamond in the rough, the gem that nobody else is looking at that I can somehow get on top of and get for a good deal, because nobody else is checking it out. I do enjoy those, especially in this market because there's a lot less competition or there are segments of the market that have less participation.
All these ones with the big auction houses like Sotheby's and Christie's and Pace Gallery now, like they have a bunch of auctions going on, but you have to dockette yourself to be able to participate. If you're not willing to do that, it cuts the number of buyers a lot. There's an opportunity there because they bring in some good artists. I’ve bought a couple from those that I thought nobody was looking or was paying attention to it, because of this barrier.
I'm looking for those also, because you want to not overpay for sure, but like, you also want to find it's fun to find the ones that nobody's looking at. It's easy to buy the ones that everybody's looking at and hyping up. It's obviously – people are jumping in that train, but it's for me, it's a lot of fun finding the ones that nobody else looking at either a known artist that's a piece that's not being paid attention to or an artist that nobody's looking at that you know is really, really good.
[0:18:00] NG: Yeah, for sure. I'm with you on that like, finding the work that's undervalued overall. No one has eyes on it yet, I think. Yeah, we find the deals, the good stuff.
[0:18:12] CO: Yeah. Also like, you get to support them when nobody else does. There's something really, so rewarding to me to say I believe in you and nobody else believes in you. Nobody else says, you're good or wants to buy your art or whatever. You're the one or one of the very few who say, “Yup, you're good. I'm going to totally support you and do it.” Especially if that artist does well, even if it doesn't, I do enjoy that moment to show people confidence in them when nobody else will, because you've taken the time to look for it and pay attention when nobody else would. That's the part that I think it's a big bang for the buck, because it really becomes meaningful and the relationship becomes meaningful, especially over time. You could be consistently have a good relationship and connect with them. There's something incredibly rewarding to me about doing that.
[0:18:58] NG: Yeah. I definitely agree and enjoy it like that, as well. What is your favorite movie quote?
[0:19:07] CO: I thought long and hard about this one, but luckily last night saved me because last night I went to a movie showing a special screening of Jimmy Chin's new movie, Wild Life. I was lucky enough to get in. Jimmy was there, so I finally got to meet Jimmy in real life and connect with him, because I'd helped him launch this first NFT last year and we've been chatting a lot over text and email and stuff, so it was great to finally meet him.
The movie was about this woman named Kristine Tompkins, who was the CEO of Patagonia and Co-owner of it with Yvon Chouinard, but her relationship and life with Doug Tompkins who created Espirit and they came and Yvon's created North Face also, but like it's an incredible story, absolutely incredible story. There was a quote from Doug in the movie that I remembered and that was, I liked, because it does take this mentality to be able to forge into something where everybody says it's stupid and doesn't make sense, which is, commit first and then figure out the rest later. It was this quote like, just commit and do it. You don’t know how it's going to happen, but just commit to doing it and figure everything else out later.
I felt a lot of my NFT was I did that. I don't know if I did that on purpose, but I did that. I fully committed. I don't know how it's going to turn out even now, but we'll figure it out. There are problems and there are lots of smart people with good intentions and we'll figure it out. I think that is working out the way it is because he did this thing where he was going to go out and basically privately buy all this land in Patagonia and then privately create these national parks for this country of Chile.
[0:20:51] NG: O, wow.
[0:20:52] CO: Yeah. He bought this land and made it happen and he would think like, that's crazy. That like, who would go off and buy millions of acres of land in a foreign country and then give it all away back to the government to form national parks for conservation? It was such a radical crazy idea that you would never think would be possible, but they did it. In the end of the movie, I mean, they show them launching these national parks and it's just absolutely amazing. I think that bit of that spirit, I think, is in a lot of us in NFTs, because we definitely committed first, not knowing exactly what's going to happen next. It's long. But we're having fun doing it and lots of good people, lots of smart people are in it.
[0:21:37] NG: Right, right. I know it's – yeah, I definitely like that. It's very fitting for the space, very fitting. It's a lot of head first. All right, we're just going to go with it, see where it goes and we're going to make it work. I like it. What would you like to see more in a crypto art space?
[0:21:58] CO: I think that part of it would be it's happening now is more in real-life connections. I think that happens once a year. I wish we could do it more internationally, because there are a lot of people who can't come, so trying to create more micro events to bring people together in real life. I think there is something magic about that and that helps sustain a lot of people from a pure like, just filling up your tanks and your perseverance and desire to stay in the space. When you see these people, it definitely fills you up. It's exhausting this past week, but it definitely filled me up in terms of just commitment to the space and wanting to see it succeed, because of all these people.
Other things that hint back to us before is just getting down to make sure we don't take for granted what we have. There's a lot of work that we have to do to make the dream and the promise come to life and sustain. I think that we just need to make sure that we think critically about what's happening and we make sure it's done right, because if we don't do those fundamentals right, I think the dream won’t happen. The dream won't happen without us working hard. It's not just like it's a given.
Now, if the blockchain exists, it's all going to happen. It's like there's a ton of hard work and a ton of work to bring in and educate and have it grow in the right way, because I think the other thing would be is that if you have good actors leading the space, I think you'll go into the place, but if you have bad actors, it could also go awry. How do you make sure the good actors succeed and get the most support possible, because they're often quiet doing the work and heads down and not trying to make a big attention-grabbing stuff? They're just working hard.
How do you make sure the good actors get the voice and support they need, which I think I'm very conscious of as I engage and support people — is like, who are the good actors like you? I mean, I would do almost anything as the guy says, you do this? Okay, I'll do that. It's almost a guaranteed yes because I think you're such a good force and good spirit in the space.
[0:23:59] NG: Well, thanks. I mean, I say the same to you. I mean like, there's definitely a few people that you're like, all right, if they ask for something, I'm going to do what I can to make that happen. You're definitely on that list, for sure like, since the get-go. I was always like, Chikai, he’s different. He's doing something good.
[0:24:16] CO: I appreciate that. Definitely mutual respect, for sure.
[0:24:18] NG: For sure. What is the best thing and the silliest thing you spend money on?
[0:24:24] CO: I'm going to answer this from an NFT perspective, because like, I'm sure there are silly things I've bought in the real and physical life. Maybe I should answer both ways. I'll let you at least answer from an NFT perspective, but the best thing I bought, I think this is because it has so much meaning for me, because these two people were some of the very first people I've connected with in the space. I was never able to buy one of their pieces, either one of them, because they did so well so early on. I finally met them in real life, both of them. I met one of them earlier, one I never met until this last week, which is the collaboration between Reuben Wu and Jenni Pasanen.
[0:25:05] NG: Oh, yeah.
[0:25:07] CO: Like that of like Metamorphe, I think is the name of the collection, is like, it was amazing. I could not believe I got one because John Michelle was continually outbidding me on every single one, I put bids on. He would come in and start like, I'm bidding on this, I was like, what are you doing? He was doing it on two or three pieces. Let me just have one. So, luckily, I got one I was very happy, but that's probably one of the best ones that I just like, I'm so happy I got that piece. The silliest one, because I couldn't afford a legit dick butt, I got a dickel butt. That was the thing. I got it, because like Cath loves dick butts. I'm okay, if Cath loves it, I can't afford a dick butt or one spends that much heat on a dick butt. I'll spend one on a Dickel butt, so I bought one of those.
[0:25:58] NG: Nice. Perfect. I love it. I love it. It's always good to hear those. It’s a solid good buy on that collaboration. Speaking of collaborations, if you could commission a piece and have two artists collaborate on it, which two would it be? It sounds like you may already have that piece.
[0:26:21] CO: Well, that one's a great one. I guess, I do have one that has that collaboration, but if I were to pick another one, it'd still be Reuben Wu. I'm a huge fan of his and like many of us are, but the other one, if Reuben Wu and Rik Oostenbroek did a collab, that would be insane. I mean, I don't know if they ever talked about it, but that would be incredible. I would love to see that. I hope they're listening and hope they do it. If they give me like early access to whatever they do.
[0:26:54] NG: Right. That would be a good combo, because they got, they both have their own unique style, and you'd be like, okay, that's a Wu and Rik collaborator. I mean, I like people have their own definite style that you can tell.
[0:27:10] CO: For sure.
[0:27:10] NG: What is one interesting fact about you that people might not be aware of?
[0:27:17] CO: I wasn't sure if I should go serious or silly on this question.
[0:27:21] NG: Either way, either way.
[0:27:22] CO: I'll do both. I'll do the serious one first, which is, I think it's not very well known, but I do have a PhD in biomedical engineering. It is completely different from art today, or even Google Maps and Google Earth before, but it's just a completely separate field. it just shows that life goes in ways you never anticipate like, I thought I was a professor doing biomedical engineering, teaching, and doing research, but it did not turn out that way.
I went to Silicon Valley, started Google Earth, and that became its thing, and now doing art. You never know how life can turn out, and you just have to roll with what comes and becomes opportunity-wise and just going to go with it. That's how life is taking me. The silly one is, I own three lightsabers and one full-sized Mandalorian nerf gun. I have all these toys. I’m definitely still the kid at heart. All these toys, I wish I could have bought as a kid, and I get to buy them as an adult, because I'm going to spend the money as an adult.
[0:28:29] NG: I love that. Man, I knew you went to school back east, but I had no idea that was what you went to school for. I was like, holy cow, that is not what I expected.
[0:28:42] CO: Yeah.
[0:28:43] NG: Awesome. What is your favorite way to connect with new people in the space?
[0:28:49] CO: It's a simple answer, and it's true for lots of people, for me at least, many people I met, because you could say like the medium like, the space, or tweets, or DMs, whatever, but honestly, the one that is always that could, this consistently has been a great topic and way to bring people in the space has been the art. To talk about their art, to buy their art, to be fellow, or just both admire the same artists and talk about that, that has been a huge connection point for a lot of stuff.
It often is between the artist's collector, because that was my initial role in a lot of my connections are through that as far as a curator, but the art has been a huge connection point. That often is a way to know, get to know them, to ask questions. It's a question that I think people appreciate being asked about is their art. That often leads to so many other revelations and connections and conversations, which I love. That's often a simple answer, but it's the most common and it brings me the most happiness is to talk about that. I like those type of connections.
[0:29:56] NG: I know. That's awesome. That's a great way to approach it. I like that. I like that advice. Do you have any projects, upcoming projects, or anything you'd like to talk about and let the audience know?
[0:30:09] CO: I have so many projects going on with Monolith, and with Circle of Frens, and many of which I don't can't see anything too much about, because they're still in flight. I do want to say, on the flip side, which is, I am so thankful to the community to support these projects. I mean, I’m still blown away by the fact that Circle of Frens did so well in the same week that Silicon Valley Bank — like, cratered and died. It was a tough week, yet I was still able to sell it out, which just still blows me away. A lot of that comes from the community having so much support and trust in what I'm doing. More than anything, I am just grateful for the people. I hope I can do right by everybody in terms of doing it.
I think it's still a learning process of how to manage that, especially a 10K project, which I've never managed before, and to do it right, because there's so many opinions, so many people wanting different things about it and how do you manage that well? I think it can be managed well if you're transparent enough, but that's a journey that I'm on right now. I am just so thankful for what that community and the Monolith community and the artists have supported it and what I've done and believed in me. I think that's the most, the biggest thing to say about upcoming projects is that they're only possible, because that people seem to think I'm an okay guy. I think that I'm not going to rug them.
[0:31:35] NG: Definitely not worried about that, for sure. Well, awesome. Chikai, thank you so much for your time today and doing this quick show with me. I just really enjoyed it. I always enjoyed meeting you and seeing you in person. It's so fun to – I hope there's another time when I can run down the SF and do something with you again. It's nice that it's close enough that we can meet up here once in a while.
[0:32:02] CO: Yeah. I was thinking about inviting you to the Jimmy Chin one, but it was so last minute.
[0:32:06] NG: Oh, yeah.
[0:32:07] CO: I was like, I should have invited Guy, but it was like, so last minute, we just got back from NFT NYC. I thought because you had invited me up to the showing of Kerby Brown's film, Facing Monsters. That was amazing. Plus, you own his Genesis piece. You own Jimmy Chin's Genesis piece. He's a great guy. I thought about it, but it was so last minute, but I couldn't do it, but some other film will have to do something or have to come up to wherever you are. I wanted to go on that track with Reuben. Reuben basically said, “Hey, you want to go up to Tahoe?” I'm like, “Well, I can't get up there that quickly. I'm not sure if my wife will let me go last minute to Tahoe.” But I so badly want to go to hang it with you and him for that.
[0:32:48] NG: Yeah.
[0:32:49] CO: What's it called again? The project?
[0:32:51] NG: ClickMintPass Camera. Yeah. That was so fun. Yeah, it was last minute for me too. I was like, “Wife, there might be a chance and might go to Tahoe?” FYI. She was like, as long as you have someone to cover and watch the kids while you're gone.
[0:33:07] CO: Yeah.
[0:33:08] NG: I'll make it happen.
[0:33:10] CO: Yeah. We were juggling last night, because she was going out to like a party at the SF moment that night with some friends, so I threw this in. I had to time it so that basically I was back at home time and the kids weren't left alone too long, because they're old enough to stay home.
[0:33:25] NG: Yeah. Yeah.
[0:33:26] CO: I came back and took care of the rest of the night, put into bed and stuff, but yeah, it's tricky. Kids are tricky. They're worth it, but they're a little bit of a hassle sometimes.
[0:33:36] NG: You throw some kinks. Definitely. Well, awesome. Well, I'll be talking to you soon, but I will see you soon in person. Again, thank you and I hope you have a great day.
[0:33:46] CO: Yeah. You too.
[0:33:48] NG: All right. Bye.
[0:33:49] CO: Bye.
[END]