The Most Profound Person in Crypto Is Pointing Society to an Asset Class Few Are Paying Attention To.
But they must: It's the most significant financial opportunity in the Crypto space.
I once bumped into Beeple at a rooftop bar in Minnesota—ironically, his Twitter account got hacked the same night. He’s quirky, madder than a bag of frogs, and swears like a drunken sailor. But make no mistake, he’s a creative genius set to redefine crypto and internet culture.
I know people are eager to read about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, but we need to look further down the risk curve to seize significant opportunities.
Be sure to read this at least once—and then read it again! Trust me, it’ll be worth your time.
Michael Winkelmann, who goes by his artist name "Beeple," is a quirky American artist committed to drawing one piece of art every day since 2007.
He hasn't missed a day.
Beeple’s original collection of 5,000 pieces, known as "Everydays," pulled in a staggering $69 million at auction, launching him into the ranks of the world's third wealthiest living artist.
To which he responded:
“I would be lying if I said I'm not affected by this all—of course, I am, I'm a fucking human, and I sold the fucking thing for $70 million dollars."
Beeple says—"I'm not a really well-rounded person. I don't have a bunch of other interests. My entire adult life has been all about art. “Everydays” just started as a way to get better."
I once ran into Beeple in the men's loo, which was pretty random. The guy swears like a pirate, and his sci-fi-inspired art takes jabs at internet culture and politics while throwing in a shockingly high number of penises—yeah, you read that right, lol.
He draws things people think but otherwise wouldn't say and has this almost baby-adult humour in his work, which nails the absurdities of online culture.
Beeple says the embodiment of internet culture is that it's super immature. It’s clear to see when world leaders are posting poo emojis or the wealthiest man in the world is pumping a dog coin.
It just shows you what people are thinking.
He's now brought attention to an asset class very few are paying attention to.
Here's the scoop you've been waiting for,
NFTs
Before you spit your tea out, clench your but and slam your laptop shut, please lend me an ear for a minute and approach this with an open mind.
You can hate NFTs, and you can have your opinion on Art or not even be that into it, but the fact remains that Art is at the epicentre of every cultural change, and right now, we are going through a digital renaissance period.
NFTs can solve the problem of digitally owning a piece of art instead of having it as a Jpeg on a computer. These original art pieces will be seen as the fossils that carry the entire digital space for the next 1000 years.
I know it's heady, but it's a big friggin deal.
Beeples said he's been making digital Art for over twenty years:
"Before NFTs, there was no way to collect my work without the NFT part of it. It was a technology that came along and allowed ownership over something virtual, and that allowed people to collect what I do, similar to a painting, like any other artist."
NFTs will make your Crypto coins look silly.
My significant unlock to understanding the Cryptocurrency echo system is that the entire space is highly sensitive to the liquidity cycle.
On my 8-year journey, that idea was a real aha moment for me.
Election cycle
Debt refinancing cycle
Bitcoin Halving cycle
Interest rate cycle
Business cycle
These events mirror each other every four years and lead to increased liquidity.
We're now on the brink of a new cycle as financial conditions show signs of improvement—prompting crypto to anticipate this shift and rise in price.
These liquidity events are set to continue to rise well into 2025.
However, the part people miss, and I saw this in 2021, is that folks look for expressive assets when significant wealth is created in an echo system.
People want to tell the world, "Look, Mom, I made it".
The old world bought watches, cars, physical artwork, and fancy suits, which I imagine will not change. But something different is starting to happen, and this expressiveness is happening online.
People hike up mountains for an Instagram shot or visit fancy restaurants just to snap a pic of their food. In an online world, we crave visibility—it feels more impactful than just strolling down the high street with physical assets.
When individuals achieve life-changing wealth, they want to signal it to their community, and NFTs have become the ultimate social signalling tool in crypto.
People buy NFTs and flaunt them on social media, which is no different from social behaviours like sharing 'I voted' badges on Facebook or paying Uncle Elon's Birdie app to get your blue tick. The same social habit drives it.
The most formidable influencer in Cryptocurrency, who goes by the pseudonymous name Punk6529, said this:
"In an extreme example, people go and die for their national flag. In less extreme examples, people tailgate every week after a football game. In other less extreme examples, people will pay $10,000 for a watch when a $15 watch does the same. I'm not here to tell you this is bad. This is fundamental to human nature. It's how we are: identity, community, and emotion matter. NFTs are the moment we can take all those feelings from an off-chain world, on chain."
Current NFT data is eyewatering.
The NFT data from 2021 to 2023 is pretty scary.
When NFT Scan crunched the numbers, they found that out of 73,000 NFT projects, 70,000 are valued at nothing.
That means 95% of the 23 million NFT investors are sitting on worthless assets—including yours truly.
They found that even 18% of the top 5% of NFTs have no value. About 41% are worth between $5 and $100, and less than 1% of that top group is worth over $6,000.
It’s a major wake-up call. To be successful, you’d need to invest with almost surgical precision.
For perspective, if you blindly invested in 10 projects hoping for significant returns ($6,000+), the odds of all 10 making money are about one trillionth of a per cent, thanks to the current failure rate.
To put that in context, you’d be more likely to win the Powerball in America 616 times.
So, it’s no surprise everyone thinks NFTs are dead. Just like back in 2000, when people said:
“The Internet is just a passing fad.”
They were wrong then, and they're making the same mistake now.
To quote one of the best digital marketers and entrepreneurs in the world, Gary Vaynerchuk:
"It's (NFTS) the biggest technology that has ever happened in the history of life outside of things like f**king fire and the printing press."
"I already know, sitting here, that the public wallet with all your NFTs in it will become the next social media. When "Jason" hits my radar, and we decide, are we gonna hire this guy? Just like we looked at his Wikipedia, if he had one, LinkedIn if he had one, Instagram if he had one, but in 2027, I'm gonna look at his wallet, and I believe what's in his wallet is a much better indication to who he is, than what pictures he decided to PR to the world."
Capture the value of the opportunity.
The New York Times called Beeple the next Andy Warhol—a man who sold one piece of art for $200 million.
But unlike physical artwork, digital art is accessible from every corner of the globe with a wifi signal, which means you can purchase it online without friction or the ridiculous auction house fees.
The entire market is also so inefficient that some of Beeples's work sells for $500. Outside of my Solana and SUI positions, I’m trying to collect more of this man's art.
Raoul Pal said:
“I think this space goes from $2 trillion today to $100 trillion by 2032-2034, that would be the largest, fastest accumulation of wealth in all of human history.”
He added that a significant portion of that wealth would come into NFTs, with Beeple and Xcopy being the most significant artists of this generation.
(Note: Xcopy is the Banksy of NFTs, but that's a blog for a different day)
With fewer than 300 pieces available, the beauty of these NFTs lies in the real-time supply friction. Let me be clear: we’re talking about the greatest artist of this generation, and he’s got only 300 pieces up for grabs, with an entry price of around $500. That’s a seriously wild mispricing.
Right at the start of my NFT journey, I got lucky because I bought into one NFT historian's thesis very early on, and I'm glad I did.
"There is no limit to the supply of tokenised assets that will emerge in the future, but there is an iron-clad hard cap on the scarcity of those in the past."
It's spot on.
Even with countless projects crashing to zero and founders pocketing millions before bailing, there's still a strong belief that the earliest blockchain art from the most significant artists will evoke a sense of nostalgia for this digital renaissance period.
People hold onto the idea that these pieces will represent a pivotal moment in art history despite the chaos.
If you believe we'll become more digitalised, which to me is obvious, these early pieces will significantly impact culture and continue to increase in value with each new wave of adoption.
Take Beeple's genesis collection called "Politics Is Bullshit", which he launched on October 30, 2020, and sold each of the collection of 100 pieces for $1.
He made $100 selling the art.
The artwork (a gif) showcases a bull with an American flag and a Twitter bird, poking fun at politics in typical Beeple style.
It quickly became a notable piece in the NFT space, and now the lowest one sells for 99 ETH, which is $235,000.
The great thing for Beeple is that thanks to the metadata embedded in the artwork, he gets a 10% royalty each time one of his pieces sells (in perpetuity).
This is a game-changer because traditional artists only benefit from the initial sale and often have to dilute their supply by releasing more work—to cash in on their success.
Final Thoughts.
Full disclosure—I own three pieces of Beeples art without owning any physical artwork.
Not because I'm anything special, but because the market is so damn inefficient that people don't even realise how significant he is when they sell his pieces for a measly $300 (my cost basis).
Regular readers know I don’t dish out advice on buying, but I share my thoughts on what’s caught my eye. Right now, I see a solid asymmetric bet in the digital space—one worth considering—even just for the conversations it could spark in ten years.
NFTs are at the edge of the risk curve, so they are the last to gain liquidity and the first to lose it.
I quote the world-class macro investor Raoul Pal often — he explains that you only need to watch the rotation of capital to see why NFTs will be significant. There's nowhere further for capital to rotate once people make significant gains in crypto.
Once people are in crypto, they will rotate out into traditional finance less and less.
As people's risk appetite improves, they’ll lean into expressive assets. More recently, that expression has been channelled through NFTs. The beauty of this is that NFTs have built-in supply friction, so they have these parabolic price rises.
It just so happens that art is the first use case, and Beeple is arguably the greatest digital artist of all time.
His art sold as NFTs will have cultural relevance and the "Lindy effect," meaning that if they've existed for some time in the past, they'll survive long into the future.
If that happens, it's the opportunity you'll have wished you paid attention to.
What on earth are we talking about here?
How to buy legit beetles.