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
Jack Butcher - Artist
Can you imagine a world where your digital creations have property rights as tangible as your home? That’s exactly what we explore with our guest, Jack Butcher, a trailblazer in the Web3 space and a significant figure in the realm of NFTs and crypto art. From his serendipitous discovery of NFTs to his transformative journey as a digital artist, Jack unveils the intricacies of this new frontier. We discuss the essential infrastructure needed to support creators and the value of daily minting and experimentation, bringing to light the critical balance between supply, demand, and market saturation.
What does the future hold for digital art and NFTs? In our conversation, Jack and I delve into the relentless pace of the digital world, the evolving landscape of online property rights, and the potential shifts in how content creators are compensated. Drawing parallels with the early internet days, we confront the skepticism and low-quality content often associated with new technologies. This episode sheds light on how societal views on internet property rights might evolve, reflecting the growing time people invest online.
From navigating the paradox of increasing demand while limiting supply to the thrill of auctions and the excitement of collaborative projects like Opepon, we cover it all. Jack shares his perspective on the influence of marginal sellers versus true collectors and the importance of accessibility in fostering engagement. We also touch on the uniqueness of spontaneous creations and their impact compared to meticulously planned pieces. Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion that challenges traditional perceptions of art collecting and offers a glimpse into the dynamic world of crypto art.
https://x.com/jackbutcher
https://x.com/visualizevalue
https://x.com/checksvv
https://x.com/opepenedition
https://visualizevalue.com/
Who is this? Who is this guy? Who is this guy? Who is this guy? Who is this guy? Who is this guy? Norcal guy, norcal guy, norcal guy, norcal guy, norcal guy, norcal guy, norcal guy, norcal guy, norcal and chill podcast.
Jack Butcher:So it's chill time, norcal, and chill podcast. What the sh-.
NorCal Guy:What the sh-? Norcal and Shill Podcast. What the sh what?
Jack Butcher:the sh-, NorCal and Shill Podcast. So it's Shill time.
NorCal Guy:NorCal and Shill Podcast. What the sh-. What the sh-? Hey everyone, welcome to this next episode of NorCal and Shill. Today we have Jack Butcher In this conversation. Jack discusses his introduction to NFTs and crypto art, his background in design and the potential of Web3. He highlights the importance of property rights on the internet and the need for infrastructure to support creators. Jack also emphasizes the value of experimentation and the normalization of daily minting in the crypto art space. He expresses concerns about the oversaturation of the market and the focus on floor prices as a measure of value. Jack envisions a future where digital art and NFTs are widely accepted and recognized for their cultural and economic significance.
NorCal Guy:In this conversation, jack and I discuss various topics related to the crypto art market. We touch on the value of off-the-cuff content, the volatility of the market, the concept of supply, the role of additions and one-of-ones and the importance of affordability. The role of additions and one-of-ones and the importance of affordability. We also talk about the challenges and opportunities in the crypto art space and share our thoughts on the future of the market. Everybody, please welcome Jack Butcher. Hey, jack, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?
Jack Butcher:Good mate. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. How are you doing?
NorCal Guy:today. Good mate, thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. You know, randomly, because it all happened because of Monster Mike. He was like hey, you should get these people on your podcast. I was like okay, I'll do that. And so I got Shripto on and then he's a big collector of yours and you loved his podcast podcast. And you're like hey, man, good job. I was like hey, if you want to come on, come on over. So here we are, thanks.
NorCal Guy:Well, thank you, Monster Mike, and thank you Appreciate it so yeah, I guess we can just jump into it, because I know your kids are going to be waking up soon. Let's do it. What were your first?
Jack Butcher:thoughts when you heard about nfts and crypto art. Good, so actually, my first introduction to any of this was somebody who was a part of um. I started this visualize value instagram page maybe five years ago now and, aside from everything that's happening on Instagram and Twitter, I had, like, these different private groups that would move around all these different platforms Slack, whatsapp, at one point, telegram, and then I think it was a Slack message. At the time, somebody reached out to me who was, I think, studying something crypto related, and at that time, I had, like you know, maybe a tiny bit of crypto exposure. I was still like, just focused on on other things. And uh, he was like, oh, you should check out, uh, nfts. Like you've been making digital art for such a long time, have you ever thought about selling it? And I think he either sent me a link to OpenSea or I Googled NFTs and I ended up on OpenSea.
Jack Butcher:Okay, yeah, and without any context. You go to OpenSea and you're like what is this? I have no idea what I'm looking at here, right, right, I just had no clue. I was like this is like and this must have been like mid 2020 or something. So there was thousands of things on there. No-transcript what I was looking at, but it was the ux of foundation that really made it click in my head and, um, yeah, that was uh. My first impression was to answer the question was I have no idea what this is that's fair.
NorCal Guy:That's a fair. I mean, yeah, looking back on open scene, just like what is going on, like I can't find anything, what am I even supposed to look for? Like I remember those first days. I'm like this is like, unless you know the artist, it's like lost, zero social layer at all.
Jack Butcher:It was just like it was. Yeah, and it would have behooved me to do more research at that point in time, obviously because you probably could have bought yourself a crypto punk for a couple hundred bucks right, right for sure, yeah, and even like rareable rareable seemed like it was better back then, like better than open c. Yeah, that's so the yeah, the the crowns have been changing heads right, right, right.
NorCal Guy:So why did you choose art or what brought you to this art space?
Jack Butcher:well, it's funny, I think I wouldn't. Maybe I wouldn't characterize it as an accident, but it's definitely been this iterative process for me. So I studied design when I was 15, 16, in the UK school system. You have to do work experience.
NorCal Guy:Okay, yeah.
Jack Butcher:So normally there's like this binder full of jobs that you can pick out of and you can also apply or like ask to do something that's not in the book. And I had my cousin at the time worked for this design firm I was like, oh, that'll be fun to go and do that for a week instead of, you know, working in Tesco's or the local supermarket, basically. So I asked if I could do that. His boss at the time agreed to let me sit in the office for a week. If I could do that, his boss at the time agreed to let me sit in the office for a week. And I was a huge uh like, I was hugely into skateboarding. For, like that you know, four or five years of my teenage, right, and uh, that was my assignment for a week was come up with a skateboard brand. So sit in the computer for a week designing this brand, putting presentations together like designing decks and t-shirts, and and that, I think, put me on to like design as a eventual career path, right, right.
Jack Butcher:And then I ended up like, through a lot of different strange circumstances, uh, in the like design, advertising, marketing world, I moved to new york when I was 21, off of craigslist.
Jack Butcher:I got a job on craigslist that's a very long story but sent a bunch of emails I was living in the uk at the time to all the craigslist classified ads for design interns. I got one response end up moving to new york and, uh, just bounced around the agency scene in new york for like 11 years, 12 years, just doing uh, all sorts of different stuff like big agency stuff, um, you know, like shooting commercials to websites, to like in stores that just like every basic, every um aspect of commercial design. I had some like toe in that at one point, yeah, and it wasn't until maybe just before covid it was like 2019 or so that I figured out what visualized value was, and a couple years before that I started my own agency business. I was just sort of like I hated the corporate environment but I loved working on design problems, like I just like getting my brain uh ticking that way. But it was just to say I do six months in a place get to like a certain level of like.
Jack Butcher:I'm not producing work anymore, I'm sitting in meetings arguing about, like, how to price it and so I can't do this anymore and I would just keep bouncing around, just running into the same problem over and over again and then, like wasn't smart enough to foresee the fact it was just like an incentive problem. I was always going to be that. I started my own agency business and still naively thought I could do it differently and that didn't turn out to be the case. You know, nine months of um got very lucky to like land a client and what I thought was like my dream, my dream job at a supercar client for nine months in an independent agency, so shooting car commercials for, uh, like a big supercar company, but it was still like 80 of. It was just like pure pain. You know, admin, all this stuff and that was like the fork in the road was like I'm not doing this anymore. I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna run a like everything to everyone creative agency. I have to just pick something.
Jack Butcher:I'm gonna do and, weirdly, that's where visualize value came out of that process, which was like the thing that I had been reasonably good at across all those jobs was making these pitch decks. So I'd like condense thousands of or hundreds of pages of stuff into these like really simple visual narratives oh, wow, okay or pitch meetings and stuff, and that's how I first got traction commercially with it.
Jack Butcher:It's like I'll help people do that. I'm gonna not gonna do anything else except for helping people like tell their story really succinctly, whatever, and I did a lot of unsexy work in that world like hedge funds and yeah yeah, logistics companies and people who have like this intangible like product that they sell or service, and what I would do to promote that was make these visuals for instagram.
Jack Butcher:Ah, so I would take these ideas like, instead of doing the like horribly laborious, like efficiency of a 3pl company, I would read a book and find like a couple great quotes in the book and then turn that into a visual. Okay, as, like the creator, I was like kind of creating the oh sorry, scratching the creative itch that way, and then the commercial application of that was like do something. You know, that is like really tedious to explain as a product. So I did that for a little while. And then the advent of nfts basically meant that the stuff that I was using previously as like promotional material became the thing that people were coming to me for. It's like this massive paradigm shift from like advertising essentially to the artwork that you use to get attention actually just functions as artwork. Right, so that was the. That's the succinct version of the transition to art.
NorCal Guy:Yeah, wow um, did you do any of those grunge jobs before you got into design like? Like? I worked at a grocery store. I delivered tvs. Let's hear some of those jobs back in the day I've.
Jack Butcher:I worked as a. I worked in a hairdresser's once, like a pensioner's hairdressers. When I was a kid, I worked in a um, an industrial shredding facility which is uh, it's called iron mountain. You've probably seen the trucks around. I worked there for a little while. Uh, I worked at honda on the production line for nine months or so before I went to university oh wow, um, a lot of weird jobs.
Jack Butcher:Uh, I'm trying to think what else? Before the advertising stuff, I worked in the like the local supermarket, the co-op in the town. I grew up in mowed lawns for a bunch yeah, a lot of odd job stuff when I was a kid, trying to figure it out.
NorCal Guy:Yeah, I love that. I feel like there's so many young people that miss how much people grind before they get to where they are. Yeah, and there's definitely a lot of grinding. I mean, even just once you got into the design world, like you ground, you were grinding for like nine plus years yeah, that's a, that's a.
Jack Butcher:Um. I loved working in that industry, but it's like a design is funny. It's just like there's an infinite amount of work you can do right it's like the deadline.
Jack Butcher:You just work until the deadline hits you in the face. Basically it's like and when you're just work until the deadline hits you in the face, and when you're like young and idiotic, like you have no semblance of balance, so I would work, just like horrible. I worked more for you know the jobs I had early in my career than I did for myself. Oh yeah, when I started my business, just like it was a horrible, horrible imbalance, but yeah those reps definitely the zero of you later in life.
Jack Butcher:For sure they have done in this case, for sure so what are the best things about web 3 today?
Jack Butcher:I think I mean just like, I guess, at a uh, philosophical level, the things that I was trying or the environment I was trying to create with visualize value initially on instagram and twitter and things of that nature. It was like very much a one-way conversation, right. It was like you put, you make this media, you put it out there. There's like some comments happen on it and you know it gets shared around for a little while and then the next day you do the same thing and this idea of composability or authorship, and like the fact that people can mint media to respond to what you put out into the world. It's like a real, quote-unquote, real or more real conversation, because the dialogue becomes this real two-way thing. And then just markets in general are fascinating, right. Just like the idea that you get this signal from your work. That is so much different than just likes on an instagram platform like the open edition thing.
Jack Butcher:I use this analogy back when the the checks open edition first came out, it was like it got 900 likes on twitter, I think, and it was minted 16 000 times. It's like that. That yeah relationship was so inverted and it's so fascinating to think about the different signaling and value and all that stuff is like from all the pitch deck days. All that stuff is so fascinating to me. But, yeah, I guess the dialogue of it or just like the always on nature, it's like the things that make it difficult at times, those are its greatest assets too. Right, the fact that it just never quits and it's this relentless back and forth between you and the world. Yeah for sure.
NorCal Guy:So where do you see digital art and nfts in five years?
Jack Butcher:well, hard question, I mean. I think the. I think the strange thing about the current perception of it, I guess, or the like the way it was put out into the world and reacted to in the last two or three years, like, obviously, stop a person on the street and ask them what they think of this stuff, they'll be like as you know, a practitioner, I'm betting that other people will come around to my point of view at a certain point, which is, like, property rights on the internet are interesting and this won't be a controversial position.
Jack Butcher:Yeah, in five years, like, if you're going to put 10 hours of your attention a day into a screen, do you think like 95 or whatever percentage of your labor input, publishing whatever, you're just giving it to somebody, like you're literally just giving it away and building the value of a network you have zero ownership in, like zero influence over? It's just a fascinating thing that we just sort of come to accept and I think like a lot of technical changes historically have gone that way. Right, it's like you dismiss this thing as right, unimportant or uninteresting or like nobody cares about that. And then Just the shift in how we consume the Internet and how, like the Internet is a place in a lot of ways that the people dismissing the idea that the Internet isn't a real place is like a fascinating thing, right. I think like everybody's actions are inconsistent with their position on that. So, so much of the time. Yeah, like you, yeah, your actions reveal your preferences and yeah, in my mind it's just incredibly obvious that people will eventually demand this or like this will be a like, an obvious yeah.
Jack Butcher:If I create something on the internet that people enjoy or want to consume, then there should be infrastructure for me to support the ability that I created that and I get some upside from it and people can collect it if they want and trade it amongst themselves. It's an amazing thing. In the same way that you know you want to make a product in the real world like you, the quote-unquote real world I should say you wouldn't do that for not, you wouldn't do that for nothing, right, or just completely like right, give up the idea that there's any ownership in that. So I don't know, it's uh. My view is also so niche because I've been operating in the like the internet has been where I've worked for almost 10 years now. Right, right, right. So I, like my business, has been internet native. I haven't gone into an office or I haven't, like produced a physical object and been paid for it in a very long time for sure. And even when I worked in advertising agency, you know like worked in digital agencies.
Jack Butcher:The products you build aren't tangible not physical yeah but you get paid millions of dollars for producing them, and it's a bizarre, it's a bizarre thing that that like isn't an obvious. Well, I say it's bizarre, it's obviously, it's completely, uh, logical that it's not obvious because so few people view the set of technologies that way, but feels to me like it just will catch up to it just because, um, even like the, I think, even like the political positioning around this stuff is changing, where people like you have to take the internet incredibly seriously and majority of people have an internet existence that is almost separate or completely parallel to their right real world and you like the, the rights that you wish to preserve in the real world. Eventually, I think, people will realize that those same principles exist in the place where your mind is spending 10 or 12 hours a day.
NorCal Guy:Right for sure do you have any concerns as all this expands?
Jack Butcher:oh, very, plenty of concerns. Yeah, it's it. I guess the funny thing about it is like when you hear the criticism, like 99 percent of this stuff is is garbage or rubbish or in dishonest, it's like that is kind of true in the real world. Yeah, maybe not to the same extent because it doesn't have the like, the effort required to deploy something deceitful. It's probably much higher in the real world, which is definitely a massive disadvantage. But just coming to terms with the idea that that number isn't going to go down, it's like as the internet gets more accessible, like are there is the ratio of good websites to bad websites going up or down the longer the internet stays on right, it's like it's going down violently, you know, like the, the outliers are fewer and far between because the barrier to participate is just going getting lower and lower, so that I guess that is part of it is, while this stuff is labeled with the name of the technology. That's kind of I guess that's another answer to the five-year question, right, it's like when you escape just being associated with the category, then you have the opportunity to be accepted or seen differently or actually evaluated on the merits of the thing, not the infrastructure that the thing is built on top of. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In the same way that I wasn't like. I was like uh, 12 or 13 when the dot-com bubble was going on, so I didn't like. But I imagine that there was a similar narrative occurring, right, and this is not a new point. But just because something is a website doesn't mean that it has like lasting value or is interesting or whatever. And in the same way, just because something is built on ethereum or is an nft doesn't mean it's complete bullshit. Right, it's like the inverse of that.
Jack Butcher:Um, yeah, I think that's the probably the most recent equivalent thing and, having gone through like the advertising meat grinder, there's so many of these like moments in time where you have these buzzwords where, like, the agency just jumps on this thing for like a year or two years. Like we have to say this in the earnings call, guys, because companies are trusting us to like steer them in the right direction. I have to say metaverse, you have to say internet of things, you have to like all of those things across over my career and there's so few like actual use cases for this stuff and ai is like in that category. Now it has to be like we're're gonna put an ai button on the toaster, we're gonna do this like just ridiculous stuff and it's all downstream from those idiotic incentives, right, it's like. It's like you actually benefit in the short term as a company from bullshitting about this stuff, right, and then, in like 10 years of feedback from the real world, nobody everybody's forgotten about the like yarn you spun anyway.
Jack Butcher:Right, so it's true. Yeah, there's so many parallels that and I I just genuinely have not been able to look away or not been able to stop doing this stuff, and that's like the only like feedback or signal that I need. It's like, right, yeah, I like in a vacuum. I find this incredibly fascinating, so that's really all there is to that keeps my participation going beyond like oh, is everybody interested in this or not? It's, uh, it's just a fascinating thing to play around with.
NorCal Guy:Yeah, for sure what would you like to see more of in this crypto art space?
Jack Butcher:I think we're sort of seeing it now, but just like experimenting stuff, especially on the art side. Yes, I think this is one of the things I loved about your conversation with Shmipto was the surface area of your work as an artist is often just like nowhere near big enough for you to get anywhere close to recognition, and we're not like the financial side of things. I think the 2021 era just created the most ludicrous expectations, right?
Jack Butcher:and like as a practicing artist, it's like it's mad, like to even sell something for 10 bucks. As an artist, you know how many people in the world make art or make stuff that they were trying to get five bucks for 10 bucks, or it's like majority of people will never make any money from their creative output. You know their hobby or whatever it is, and like the distortion that happened with the market in 2021, it was so bad for people that, like genuinely create things that people want to own. Yeah, because they are. They're like comparing comparing the appetite for their work against that. Yeah, and it's like that was not. That had nothing to do with the appetite for the work. Right, just like complete frenzy mania and like I benefited from it. You know, on both sides, like I, I put work out at that time. Like I bought stuff at that time, sold stuff at that time, and you know we're all sort of in that moment thinking that this is yeah, actually you're not.
Jack Butcher:Like some of the realizations I had back then was when stuff tried to make the jump from the internet to the real world. That's when it all went wrong. Oh, yeah, it's like, yeah, these things have some real world utility or they grant you and and it's like, guys, this is like you cannot break the laws of economics here. You know, as soon as you introduce like a material expectation in the real world with this artifact, the Delta, the price Delta is so like moronically massive that you can't like nobody could justify owning it. Yeah, like it was way back when it didn't do anything Right, and this is the, the punk's argument and all of it like the X copy, like they are priceless digital artifacts from you know this paradigm shift or this inflection point in art history, and there's many people that took the bait in the other direction.
Jack Butcher:But, yeah, like I think there's there's like murmurs of this right, zora I'm a huge fan of zora as a platform um, they have this like entire subculture that you don't see on twitter, where there's like people make an image, they put it out to be collected. They make a couple hundred bucks by selling thousand pieces of it. Whatever, no one has any expectation that there's going to be like 900 million dollars of secondary volume on that in the next day.
Jack Butcher:Right but if that artist goes on to make like an incredible body of work, or even if they don't, like you had the opportunity to like have this. Yeah, send this economic energy their way, because you appreciate what they're doing. It's a, it's a beautiful thing and that does feel like this. We're still like in the hangover from that, but there are like versions of that popping up now where there's things happening where you know you just want to, and foundation is doing great work here, too, now on the like, the things that make this so interesting and schmipto was far more articulate than I was on this too is is the point made about like over minting, because you're creating this like this, like hype cycle with the way you release your work, the thing that and like I could practice this better myself the thing that is so fascinating about not minting your work is like, if the internet is your medium, then, like the act of minting, the thing is adding massively to its meaning and provenance.
Jack Butcher:Right, like right, if you're making something that's a commentary on a moment in time in digital culture, then you come back six months later and and mint it. It's like it's almost. Uh, you know you can make the argument that that's way less interesting than, like here's what's happening on the internet today. I minted this thing to capture the moment and nobody wants to collect it. I don't like that's not. I'm not doing it for it to be collected today. I'm doing it because in my body of work and I struggle with this too like across my body of work over years and years I saw something that day that I wanted to record, yeah, and that, like, tells an incredible story. Over time. I have examples of this where I'm like, uh, market's a little bit quiet right now.
Jack Butcher:I better not do that, you know, and like you, come back in three months later you're like, why did I do that? Like I had this idea that now, or you see like another version of it, or you see like an interpretation of it, and you're like, oh man, I should have just, I should have just done it when I had the idea, right, um, so I think that, like the normalization of like using these tools to just participate rather than you know, everything becomes this like yeah, event that you have to promote so and and that in in a way that feels like the only um sustainable model for it anyway right is is, if this thing is going to live and have a future, then the 2021 style thing is is not going to create that right. It's not going to create an environment for people where they want to participate. So it's, but there's so many baked in like cultural uh.
Jack Butcher:The reason people reject it in the first place, like the transparency of it is it's one of its greatest strengths and one of its biggest drawbacks too. It's like the, the relationships and the expectations that get created around this stuff, and I've like had this conversation with a lot of people about somebody just needs to be the first one through the wall on this stuff and be like no, I'm just, I'm minting every, I'm minting something every day, right, right, right. And if you're starting out, you have a way like you really should do that. Like if you are beginning your career, like start as you mean to go on the the you know the cliche idiom is really true there, right, yeah? And another point by shrimp to in that podcast, the person that sells the piece for 100 eath or whatever. Then they're just like oh, what do I do now?
NorCal Guy:I'm, I'm, I'm cooked, basically right, yeah, I mean, yeah, the that whole cycle was like crazy. It didn't make sense. The economics of it, like you know constantly raising your floor, supply decreasing like not increasing your supply at all, and creating these.
Jack Butcher:Yeah, your point on that podcast as well as stuck with me is the momentum piece. Oh yeah, that's what I'm getting at. Well, it's like you have this demon on your shoulder. That's like you have to simultaneously increase the demand for your stuff while not making anything. It's like, how are you going to do that? Right, it doesn't just like. That's never been possible in history, right?
Jack Butcher:Yeah, like a lot of these things that come back to have these massive stories and values and think have like all of this context surrounding them that make them interesting. And, yeah, the the curse of like coming out of the gate massively strong and then being essentially pressured into not continuing your art career in some, in some ways you could interpret it that way or delaying it, or reducing the speed of output is, uh, is crazy. And then the point of the internet being the medium it's like that almost requires you to be like to make stuff at the speed of the internet, or at least like have it recorded in a way that's consistent with the medium that you plan to practice on for a very long time. So I think a lot of it also comes down to like the way we think about the value of the collections too, where the the floor price metric is such a fascinating. It's fascinating that that's become the ultimate measure of value. It's like the person who has the least conviction in this work is dictating the entire perception of it to the market.
Jack Butcher:That's true, that's a good point. Yeah, like, we've arrived at that and you expect people to be like overjoyed about that or like that's, that's a crazy, it's just a mad thing. Like and this because it's transparent, because it's global, because it's you know, that person could be anybody in any situation. And like this is not me saying you shouldn't buy and sell whatever you want. I'm all for it. Right, I practice in this space. But to extrapolate the value of like an artist's career from like four of those people, it's like you're nuts man. Like it's crazy. And I noticed this.
Jack Butcher:Honestly, one of the first times I noticed this was I went back to try and buy a bunch of derivatives from the checks era last year. Like people made collections where they do an open edition and maybe sell like 20 or 30 or something. I should go back and try and buy them. There's none, they can't buy them. Oh yeah, yeah, because nobody has them list. Like they bought them because they wanted them and they thought they didn't think, like I'm gonna make, like, uh, I'm gonna sell this tomorrow and I can't get them. Like I can't buy it. I'm like what's the value of those? Then?
Jack Butcher:There's so many weird dynamics in this market. It's so nascent and even an addition, with a massive supply. Maybe there's 10 people that will sell it for X amount. There's also 500 people that will not part with it for any amount of money. Right, very true.
Jack Butcher:Maybe I'm exaggerating there, but you get what I'm saying. Right, the difference is massive between, like the marginal seller and like the quote unquote collector, and that, to me, is also makes this whole thing fascinating where, like, it really only takes a couple people with conviction to come in and change your career as an artist, like, ridiculously, overnight, for sums of money that are nominal when compared to traditional art world. Right, like people buying paintings that, like I, spend a good amount of time studying art and you see painting selling for millions of dollars I've never heard of the people who made them or, like, like, relative to the market cap of traditional art, this world is still ridiculously tiny. Yes, it is, and that's the other thing where this luck surface area comes into play. Right, it's like you want to be like if you want someone to happen upon your work and have the opportunity to change the perception of the stuff you have out there.
Jack Butcher:You have to be like if you want someone to happen upon your work and have the opportunity to change the perception of the stuff you have out there. You have to have stuff for them to be able to collect. And, uh, I'm gonna say one more thing. Uh, yeah, oftentimes when I see like an artist on twitter or something, I'll see a piece that they post to the feed and then I'll go to their foundation or something like this stuff is doesn't even closely resemble the stuff that is. Or I'll see like five or six pieces and I'll go and it'll be like they will have artificially like limited the stuff that's being posted there.
Jack Butcher:And I have this issue too the stuff that just like firing out, it's like off the cuff, is the stuff honestly, a lot of cases that people want to collect, yeah, but then you're like the stuff you really think about and sit like for a week tweaking is the stuff that you min and make a like marketing campaign and all this. And it's like the inverse is true of like the stuff that is just you're receiving as an antenna and just firing out into the world is like, in many cases, so much more uh, resonant and that just being like these networks that are starting to create that as a part of your participation. Where it's like right to participate, you mint the thing. Yeah, it's kind of fascinating and I think we're too like. It's way too nascent for people to still be applying the expectations of a, like you know, just manic period of time to a very different market, shall we say, right now.
NorCal Guy:So, changing it up a little bit, does one ETH equal one ETH?
Jack Butcher:I, I try to understand what this means. On the last podcast, I think my answer is yeah okay.
NorCal Guy:Well, it's just saying like okay, does eth have the same value?
Jack Butcher:oh right, like ten thousand dollars versus two thousand dollars dollars you know, I think in the, the evolution of this market because there's so much optionality, then the the short answer is no right, right is the is the like this stuff tracks with the expectations of everything else that's going on and and different ecosystems that are of everything else that's going on and different ecosystems that are like liquidity fraction around in all these different places. And you've sort of seen that that's not the case with how art is valued. Right, there's a dollar amount range that will stay within Because, I think again, an early industry where people are participating and experimenting, there's more of a correlation to your real world expenses. Perhaps that's probably the pressure that actually puts it on, because this is not like people buying stuff, buying stuff at christie's and if every three months you go and do the evening sale and you're spending, you know, generations and generations of capital on building an art collection, this is like I need to, you know I need to buy a car next year or whatever. It might be right.
Jack Butcher:Like those, those, those, I think, because the participation in the market is so permissionless, like the volatility comes from that and people like hate the volatility, but it's like the feet. That's the feature right, it's like the fact that anybody can jump into this overnight is what makes it amazing. But that produces volatility by definition, right for sure. It's not institutions that are like grinding the stock market up 0.1 a day, right, and you I think that's funny, you can like look at the. You know a two percent drawdown in the like s&p will be like the world is ending.
Jack Butcher:It's a crazy, right, right, it's just an absolutely nutty level of, because I think I read that time, I read that somewhere the other day and I don't really pay attention to traditional markets that much, but like that would be considered like black month, like insane either two, two percent drawdown across the market would be insane. And you like watch the pundits talk about this. You're just like, isn't that like a healthy expectation that you know things wouldn't just linearly? Just we've, we've built such a bizarre cage for ourselves, having that become the expectation, right, right, and this is why people go on the company earnings call and say we're building a metaverse and we're you know everything's going according to plan, guys you know, it's like we're hitting the targets, so let's just grind up another couple percentage points.
Jack Butcher:I forgot what I was even saying there what was the question?
NorCal Guy:it was the one e equals one e, but yeah, I think.
Jack Butcher:I think it's like. This is the like until people think of the crypto economy as a like, an actual economy and the things that we talked about earlier in the pod, where it's like, where people take the internet seriously, only then will one eighth equal one eighth, and we're not there yet, for sure, for sure.
NorCal Guy:So another one, which I mean I know the answer to this for you, but for some of the other people that may not does supply matter.
Jack Butcher:Yes, it matters, you need a lot Fair, that's fair. Well, I went on. I had the privilege of writing a chapter in the punks book with Jalil, who's my partner, on Chex and Opepun, and we wrote about this idea of a fractionalized portrait. So, like, the idea that punks is 10 000 pieces of artwork is is a ridiculous thing to say. Right, it's like the, the desire to like map, or like skeuomorphically map like old world stuff to new world stuff is like you can never escape it. Like people need the semantic bridge to get there. Right, it's like andy warhol did 50 000 pieces of work in his career. Yeah, lava labs have done 30 000 pieces. It's like no lava labs done like four, you know, they've done autoglyphs, punks me bits. Like they've done projects that happen to be divisible and ownable by 10,000 people. Ah, got it, got it. And that's because they exist on a new set of technologies, a completely different paradigm. And do you want them to stop at four pieces of work? No, they should like.
Jack Butcher:Even the amount of time it takes to create a punks, for example, is like, yes, there's a huge investment of time, but it's not the only thing that they're capable of producing in their working careers, and I think, like having that assumption, or like operating in a market that has that assumption around your work, is a very unhealthy thing.
Jack Butcher:Like you want them to be, yeah, like I want to see what's in their head.
Jack Butcher:I want to see what, like, the next thing they want to make is, but a lot of people are just, you know, not able to get past the, the barriers presented from outside about thinking like that. So that, I think, is the cure, though that I think it is like part of the antidote to how you increase supply as an artist, is the semantics have to change around this being thousands of pieces of work. It's like this is a piece of work that is ownable by this many people and it happens to have these like that's the beauty of crypto art, right, that's the beauty of the internet the zero cost of replication for the variants of this thing. You can write an algorithm that outputs 10,000 pieces, but it's one piece of work. No artist thinks of those things as 10,000 pieces of work. It's one thing that you made that happens to have this ability to mutate itself and put itself out into the world. Like that, which also goes back to my point about the value being incorrect.
Jack Butcher:When you're valuing it, you're extrapolating its entire value from one person who wants to bridge to blast in five seconds tomorrow, like you know like that's the, the fascinating predicament, and I think that like to go back even to the beginning of this conversation, where like visualize value, where all of this idea, like stemmed from in the first place, is like maybe there is a better way to display this stuff. You know, maybe there is a better way than one number representing the value of, you know, this artwork that a hundred thousand people have owned for over the course of many years and all these, yeah, there's this. I don't know how often you use blur, but you know there's like the, the depth, there's like a okay, there's a depth curve. On the addition thing, I think like not to bring too much like financial. I think the financialization thing is we shouldn't shy away from that idea.
Jack Butcher:Right, it's like you're literally making art on money like it's it's a the, the denial of that being the medium, or like the you, you know, frustration with people treating it that way. It's like that's what provided the opportunity in the first place, the fact that people are just intrinsically interested in this stuff. But I do think the supply, the supply thing, has just been so lost in semantics. It's it's yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting point. It's really a a like.
Jack Butcher:There's so many thought experiments you can run. One of them I've always tried to think about is like if one of or the biggest artists in the space did an open edition every day, how many days would it take until somebody didn't buy it? Yeah, that's interesting. Never, right, I don't think it would ever. I don't know what the price would have to be, but even at like a very reasonable price, if you're already an established artist, you've already made decent money, like the interest.
Jack Butcher:I think there is a like fascinating experiment to be done there, but somebody has to like potentially like bust themselves reputationally to. It's a fascinating thing and and you know, you can make an argument that there was one two years ago like yeah, but it's, it's a really difficult problem to solve, but until it just becomes like the net, like just the, the blanket um underlying set of principles that, like, instead of posting to twitter or whatever else, we mint our work and then it goes places. You know, like that to me is the like. The big thing to overcome is like ethereum is the first place you post your work, not the last. Right, right, right, right.
Jack Butcher:And I'm like I'm I'm not even consistent with that, but that's what I. So you could argue that I don't believe that, but I know the market doesn't believe that, but that's where I think it has to go. For, like, any kind of sustainability or longevity to come out of it, you have to like there's, there's a balance in that right. You tiptoe it one piece at a time, you tell the story, you try and get people there right, but over time I think that's how it will like it's already kind of being proven out with a couple of um, a couple of these l2 ecosystems that are like much more affordable to transact on, we'll get there so I'm curious your thoughts on editions versus one of ones and how they, how they should work together or not work together.
Jack Butcher:But just yeah, you know what's that. Here's another maybe controversial idea is like I tried to. Well, I did this thing a couple weeks ago with sotheby's on ordinals, where I sold a one of one and an edition with the same artwork. Uh-huh, all right, so you can buy what you can buy the one of one from sotheby's. It was an ordinal, so like just played with the idea of it literally being inscribed earlier and having all these children inscriptions and that whole idea of the of crypto infrastructure being so it's built for network formation. Right, that's what crypto is.
Jack Butcher:It's like this thing affords you the ability to like identify anybody on the internet that wants to become part of a network, and whether it's free or affordable or however much it costs. Because there are great examples at all levels. I would say like uh, sam spratz, goals of lucci is a, a great example of like the, the ultra high-end, tight network of economic energy with very little churn and, you know, very tightly curated, but still like an incredible network of people. And then there's 10 000 people that want to spend three bucks on something, and of the, there's a great uh, I've struggled to find this clip. There's a great elon clip about affordability of cars. Okay, it's like you don't realize how many more customers you get for a car if you can drop the price five grand, oh right, right, right, yeah, like. If you're a shareholder, you're like oh, we need to sell, we need to keep the price high and we, you know, like we can't be doing and like for some. And this is, you know, an egregious example, because a car is a necessity and collecting art on the internet is not a necessity, but like, even if you compare it to, like in-game purchases on the app store, like people spend money on the internet, that should be a great proving ground for the fact that people value stuff they're experiencing on their screen by making your work affordable.
Jack Butcher:It doesn't necessarily. I think this is the the main point. It also doesn't mean that you create a three dollar piece of artwork. If you're like that x copy, um collaboration, the mutatio fly, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think there were four bucks each or something, those things, right, right, that's a four million dollar piece of artwork. It's not a four dollar piece of artwork. There's a million pieces out there, yeah, and there's probably a collector that would buy the one of one of that same exact thing for the, for the like, the artist signed it as the original. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Jack Butcher:So so much of this is in my mind is like all weird perception stuff where, yes, there is value to owning the only version of something, but there is also value in how many people that you know would be economically, uh, excluded from participating in this one-of-one auction that would like to collect a postcard of this thing. Right, right, yeah, like, if you go to a museum, you can buy a poster of any image, not any image, but you know the, the stuff that people travel to museums to see you can buy in the museum gift shop versions of, for sure, and there is a clear difference. And we're like in hilarious territory here because there's literally no difference. Right, like the designation of the token and the prop is like, the file is exactly the same. Right, the amount of the cost to produce the thing is exactly the same, but in a fascinating way, it like it proves in and to like this.
Jack Butcher:The podcast you did with schmipto was, I think, one of the best pieces of content around this that I've ever heard.
Jack Butcher:So I'm trying to put everybody on to proves in and to like this.
Jack Butcher:The podcast you did with schmipto was, I think one of the best pieces of content around this that I've ever heard so I'm trying to put everybody on to listening to that is like you want to gauge true demand for what you're doing like and even releasing one of ones all the time is like. In my mind, there's a much stronger case to be made for like, no people just like with this, this massively high supply postcard version of this artwork. People actually want it. Yeah, you know, like, they want to own it, they want to collect it and yeah, they're like, through doing that, how much more likely is it that your network expands, for you to find 10 people in the world that have orders of magnitude more capital to collect to be like a proper patron? You know, like, like the old style art patronage yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, and you can even say like as the collector of the one on one. The flex of that is like yeah, 50 000 people wanted to own a copy of this and they paid.
NorCal Guy:Yeah, yeah, no, it's interesting. I mean, I feel, and I and I've wondered about this a lot with like uh, because I'm fine with like the additions. You know, like people artists have been like, okay, you have this 101. Do you mind if I make prints of us like dude, I don't care, I want those prints out there right and right.
Jack Butcher:When it gets into digital the terror, it's different, it's weird, it's weird.
NorCal Guy:It's weird to think about and I don't know if like throwing a border on it or not, something type thing.
Jack Butcher:But right, I think that's like a crazy, like put a watermark on it or something you know right, but I mean at the same time, like anybody who knows, like anybody who has the ability to, or anybody who cares maybe is a better way to say it can tell the difference. Right, that's true, that's true, and those are the. That's the network you're participating in. But there are also these, like primal, you know, basal instincts, where people just react to it as like you can't do that true right and it's just like, oh, you can't do.
Jack Butcher:You can't do because in the real world that is, like you know, cardinal sin if you're found out to be, and so much of the last few pieces of work I put out, I've been around that the hearst, like all the controversy around that. Like, yeah, you just make up when you did it, or like I had the idea. Then, like in a way, I'm like, oh, you know what? Yeah, like yeah, make that part of the artistic statement. Like how much does that really affect the value that? Uh, you know, it didn't get made in 97, it got made in 2002. Who gives a shit?
Jack Butcher:yeah yeah, like, like that, the, I guess in cases where the date is like, not as integral to it. I don't know, it's just a fascinating conversation that the like we still we're obviously gonna mirror all these mechanics and dynamics from the traditional art market, but we're operating in such a different world and we have an opportunity to change the way that that is looked at, right, and I don't think it's been cracked yet, but we we've even considered doing. It'll be interesting to hear, if anyone listens to this, what their reaction is to. Uh, we were going to do a platform where you auction a one-of-one like literally a one-of-one and a 24-hour edition at the same time. Okay, yep, so you'd have a platform where you're looking at both and this is one way to do it where the result of the auction or the open edition would determine how the artwork is released. Oh, so if the one-of-one bidder wins, it stays a one-of-one forever.
NorCal Guy:If the crowd wins, it gets oh my goodness, that's a fun idea. Oh my goodness, that's a cool idea. That's really cool.
Jack Butcher:I like that a lot I like that a lot, so you like what we've lost I think was so amazing and you were like a huge figure in this is like the, the like spectacle of the auction from 24 it's so fun. Yeah, it was incredibly fun and like we lost that and even at like the lower amounts, the auctions just aren't as fun. You know, like that's just the, that's just a human thing, right? It's fun to watch it go for a ridiculous price or like an open edition to mint a million times.
Jack Butcher:It's just fun. Like to watch the network just go frenzied is so much fun and it is fun.
NorCal Guy:I love the auctions, I love it. I feel part of the fact is like we've all become friends, so there's no like, yeah, it's competition. That's true too that's very true.
Jack Butcher:No, it's kind of, uh, yeah, the randomness or the anonymity of it at the beginning. That's like what I experienced when I first yeah, minted work in 2021 too was like, who are these people buying this stuff? I have no idea, right. How fascinating is that? Yeah, yeah, and maybe that's, you know, it's just analogous to we say it's like analogous to the art world, but it's like that's just uh, like human nature has just been revealed more, you know, it has had more time to reveal itself in in that world. So, you know, we history does not repeat, but it rhymes, so if you were an animal, what would you be and why?
Jack Butcher:oh man, was this in the I prep? I didn't see this one in the prep because I remember I missed it. What would I be? What would I be? I'm going to go with.
NorCal Guy:That's an impossible question hey, we can skip it.
Jack Butcher:we can skip it, no worries let's go to the next one and I'll let it process in the background, do you? Have a favorite food uh, um, I grew up in england so I like I live in the states now but I miss, like the full english breakfast is one of my favorite meals Bacon, egg, sausage, beans controversially toast it's hard to get a good one around here, man. Yeah, because I mean you don't value it in the same way.
NorCal Guy:No, they definitely don't True. It's very true. Oh yeah, do you have a piece of advice that you've been given, or like a mantra that you kind of have in your head?
Jack Butcher:oh yeah, I have a good one man like my, one of my first bosses, who I, who I owe a great deal to, was the guy that gave me the craigslist job in, uh, new york. He, uh you, give me these assignments at um in the agency business, where I was like go and like make a pitch or come up with an idea for this. Well, and I remember one time I was like half finished something or something. It's like we had this meeting set up to review something. I walked over to the table. I was like um, it's not really finished yet, it's not ready yet. And he's like why the why the fuck are you showing it?
Jack Butcher:to me if it's not good enough. I was like you know what, I don't know, just because we had a meeting or something he's like just tell me it's not good enough and then we won't have a meeting. You know, like fair why are? You just arbitrarily showing up with something that's not good, like why are you wasting my time so that stuck with me forever and I know that was like an off-the-cuff thing from him. You know this was not him trying to be like yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, a mentor or anything, even you know.
Jack Butcher:I think that probably in most cases that that's the best advice you get is when people aren't like right tempting to give you advice, you're just like, oh shit, he's right I like that.
NorCal Guy:It's like dude, don't waste my time, it's not ready, just say it. Uh, do you have any questions for me?
Jack Butcher:I mean I'm curious for your like what where you've been interested in or what you're participating in, or just curious for your like last couple year I mean experience yeah, I mean right now.
NorCal Guy:I mean like the markets, you know it's slow, it's hard. Um, you know, I still support artists here and there, not as regularly as I used to, but, um, you know, if I see good I'll try and snatch it. Um, this artist, this, uh sorry, this podcast every week, you know. So I'm focused on doing this every week. Still, um, you know, coming up on three years of doing it weekly, that's a massive contribution. So that's been fun. And then I just been uh, working on click create with clutch. I've just been working on Click Create with Clutch, which is like a cohesive kind of decentralized, curated art drop thing every week. So that's been fun. That's badass. So, yeah, yeah. But yeah, other than that, I mean just keeping my kids alive and playing with them.
Jack Butcher:Yeah, I know it.
NorCal Guy:I know it well yeah.
Jack Butcher:Any other questions? No, man, just keep at it, we'll keep going.
NorCal Guy:Do you have any projects you're?
Jack Butcher:working on you want to talk about. We just shipped a new update to a project called Opepon. I don't know how much you know about that. No, we just put a new yeah. Yeah, we just put this new interface into it. So basically it was an open edition that not like had. No, uh, there was no real intention to turn it into anything in the beginning and it became this very specific. It was iterated to the point where it became this like constraint. So all the visualized value stuff was born from a very specific constraint this black and white vector style artwork. It became a silhouette. This is a very specific silhouette and anybody can come and remix this silhouette, take any style, any artist, and we've had a platform where we show all of those submissions in different ways, like people will come in and present six at a time, 80 at a time, excuse me, and we have we're turning the blank pieces into curated sets over the course of yeah yeah, and there's going to be 200 releases within the 16,000.
Jack Butcher:Wow, so 80 tokens are converted permanently into an artist's interpretation of it, based on feedback from everybody who holds tokens. Okay, and we just shipped a new front end, which is basically Tinder for Opepon.
Jack Butcher:Oh, so you load up the site, go to opeponorg and it will just show you one at a time and you say yes, no, yes, no oh, wow, no, wow, and what that does is just creates this like global taste feed on all these different interpretations and the goal is to get artists feedback. Get feedback to artists, I should say, for clarity on what they've submitted privately. Oh, got it, yeah, yeah. So as an artist, you can go in and like I can upload 10 interpretations of this thing. Then I'll go back in and see like, oh, there's 100 up votes on this one, yeah, yeah, I should go and like build that out into a set or a collection, right, right, so we, we have this uh line we use for that. It's called content.
Jack Butcher:Consensus is temporary uh yeah, which is like, uh, you know, a commentary on many things associated with everything, but particularly the world that we operate in, and the whole idea is getting to consensus on 80 tokens at a time. So this is like a new interaction paradigm that we put in there to be able to get fast feedback on stuff. Yeah, and then those things can be staged and put into sets and yeah, it's been a fun. Uh, we're 52 sets into the 200 right now oh well, we've got a ways to go.
NorCal Guy:Yeah, that's amazing well congrats on that. Thank you, man. Well, man jack, I just want to say thank you for thank you for having me for your time, and I really appreciate it and it's been a pleasure. And, uh, man, I hope to uh see you at one of the events soon.
Jack Butcher:You, you will do, I'm sure, I'll be uh grounded for a few months here, but then I'll be back on the road in 2025. I'll see you there. Sounds good, man. All right, mate NorCal and chill.