Since 2019, the Bitcoin Convention Artwork Gallery has invited artists to do one thing radical—at the very least by conventional artwork world requirements: value their work in bitcoin—not as metaphor, however as methodology. What started as a modest experiment in peer-to-peer artwork gross sales has, by 2025, advanced right into a rising physique of labor that displays the motion’s shifting values, symbols, and cultural debates. With over 65 BTC in cumulative artwork gross sales, the gallery hasn’t simply challenged legacy pricing—it’s constructed a visible archive of Bitcoin’s ascent. To cost a portray in sats is to say that worth may be sovereign—that inventive labor needn’t go by fiat establishments or legacy artwork techniques to be actual.
This yr’s Bitcoin 2025 Las Vegas exhibition options among the most bold items but: monumental work and mosaics, hand-carved relics, poster campaigns, and recursive digital portraits. The ten artists featured on this Q&A span various media and intent, but share a typical urgency. Whether or not invoking Renaissance fantasy or elevating meme tradition to the size of temple fresco, they discover worth—financial, symbolic, and non secular. These aren’t simply observers of the Bitcoin motion—they’re shaping its iconography.
Within the following Q&A, ten artists share their views on their work, providing insights into what they created for B25.
Most works featured on this interview might be out there by the convention public sale, hosted in partnership with Scarce.Metropolis, the place each bit might be priced natively in Bitcoin. The total preview gallery may be considered right here.
Bitcoin Apex has change into one of many extra incisive visible commentators within the Bitcoin cultural sphere, with contributions starting from exhibitions at Bitcoin Amsterdam to the 2024 launch of his e-book Apex: Bitcoin, Artwork, and the Delusion of Worth, which maps the evolving mythos of Bitcoin by hyper-detailed drawings. For B25 Las Vegas, he unveils a brand new authentic—meticulous intimately and symbolic density, rendered in a Dürer-esque model that echoes the depth of conventional engraving. Apex has voiced hesitation about promoting originals, making this public sale a uncommon and significant alternative.
Q: What has it meant to reside as an artist after adapting to a Bitcoin normal—and what has it meant to you to worth your time and labor in sats?
BITCOIN APEX: These are fascinating questions. Being a Bitcoin artist has utterly modified my life. It’s modified who I’m, how I spend my time, and made me understand that by my inventive work, I’m encouraging others to get inventive and have interaction with Bitcoin in their very own distinctive approach.
In virtually three years of actively creating pencil drawings as a self-employed Bitcoin artist, centered on this paradigm shift influencing so many points of society, I’ve been delighted to listen to from many Bitcoiners (particularly on social media) who’ve both began utilizing Bitcoin artistically for the primary time, returned to drawing or portray after a protracted pause, or discovered a brand new path to Bitcoin-related self-employment.
For me, it’s nonetheless a particular and surreal expertise to stroll this path. After greater than 10 years working in a grocery store, filling fruit crates and stocking cabinets, I can hardly consider I now have this privilege.
The liberty that comes with this work is unmatched. Not solely within the act of drawing itself—formed by various influences like historic structure, spontaneous ideas, or meditation, which I consider is an infinite supply of concepts—but additionally within the freedom to plan and reside my life past drawing and past Bitcoin, according to my very own pursuits and desires. In comparison with the time earlier than I used to be self-employed, it’s a totally new outlook on life, and I’m grateful for it on daily basis.
Bitcoin isn’t only a theme in my artwork, it’s additionally how I receives a commission. In my view, accepting bitcoin is the easiest way to stack it. I acquire a number of benefits: I assist the Bitcoin round financial system, entice prospects who need to pay in sats, and now not depend on exchanges or apps to accumulate bitcoin. That’s one thing I actually worth.
The primary time I acquired bitcoin for my art work, it felt like actual cash—regardless that I’d lengthy understood its superior properties. There’s a distinction between utilizing Bitcoin and easily holding it. Spending or receiving it makes its potential actual in a brand new approach.
The final three years really feel like a decade. A lot has occurred; exhibitions, journey, and numerous studying experiences that proceed to form me. However one of the significant points is realizing that over 3,000 prints of my drawings now hold in houses throughout 50 international locations. So many distinctive folks, all intersecting by Bitcoin, united in a shared perception: constructing a greater world, particularly for future generations.
Salvador Dalí as soon as stated, “A real artist isn’t somebody who’s impressed, however somebody who conjures up others.”
Mining imagery from the web, mass media, and artwork historical past, Pepenardo (also referred to as Nardo) explores the function of web memetics inside modern artwork by a mix of classical method and digital language. Earlier this yr, he offered a sold-out solo present at Bitcoin MENA, centered round a Subway sandwich meme—a playful but pointed reflection on shopper tradition and worth notion. Now, at B25, he returns along with his most bold work to this point: The Citadel. Titled after a 2013 Bitcoin meme, The Citadel attracts on the visible language of Medici-era Renaissance portray—using grand structure and spatial hierarchy to depict a stratified, satirical imaginative and prescient of energy. Historical symbols are reworked into a up to date narrative about Bitcoin, concerning themes of management, accelerating change, and logarithmic worth creation.
Q: Is that this the Bitcoin-era model of the artwork that has at all times emerged at historical past’s turning factors? And what may Hieronymus Bosch consider such a chunk?
X-NARDO: Sure, however solely within the sense that each period’s best artwork holds a mirror to its dominant mythologies. The Citadel isn’t merely an art work, it’s a reckoning. It confronts the viewer with their place on a speculative hierarchy that feels each prophetic and surreal. It’s a world the place Bitcoin has reshaped not simply markets, however which means itself. Hand-painted in oil but constructed like a multi-layered Photoshop file, it drags the digital detritus of 4chan or Reddit meme aesthetics into the studio, and suspends it in a composition not not like the chaotic allegories of Bosch or the vertical wealth narratives commissioned by the Medici. On this sense, it’s the Bitcoin period’s Backyard of Earthly Delights – a dream, a warning, a satire, and a prayer, unexpectedly. It’s also a deeply private work, a response to the nameless 2013 Reddit put up from the so-called Bitcoin Time Traveler, a put up that, like fantasy, can’t be confirmed however continues to abstractly unfold.
If artwork as soon as documented the divine proper of kings, and later the rise of man, what does it imply now when sovereignty is self-issued, and the citadel gates are fabricated from code?
Flo Montoya’s visible observe attracts from protest signage, revolutionary iconography, and grassroots aesthetics—framing Bitcoin inside a lineage of resistance-based artwork. In 2024, she co-founded the Artwork of Freedom Twitter Areas with UK-based artist Insurgent Cash, creating an ongoing platform for dialogue and mutual assist within the Bitcoin artwork motion. Her Genesis Block Inflation Posters debuted at The House in Denver and return to B25 in an expanded iteration, put in throughout two outsized gallery partitions beneath the phrase “THE ART OF FREEDOM.” Introduced alongside a serious exhibition of Ross Ulbricht memorabilia and prison-made artworks, the posters underscore the deeper stakes of freedom. A free, downloadable wheatpaste model was additionally launched for street-level set up and public engagement.
Q: How do visible traditions of resistance—revolutionary, diasporic, or rooted in on a regular basis battle—inform your framing of Bitcoin as a instrument for cultural and financial sovereignty? And the way has the general public response to the wheatpaste model, encountered outdoors conventional artwork areas, formed your sense of how on a regular basis folks understand Bitcoin as a option to confront inflation and reclaim company?
FLO: To grasp Bitcoin as a instrument for sovereignty—financial and cultural—we first have to look at humanity’s relationship to cash, and to artwork. Each are rooted in our means to assign worth: to acknowledge what’s scarce, lovely, or significant. This capability helped early people evolve and construct civilizations—and it’s exactly this intuition that has been manipulated by these in search of to regulate cash and notion.
Should you can redefine what folks see as useful, you may management how they behave. Right this moment, simply as we’ve overlooked what cash is, we’ve additionally misplaced readability round artwork. Bitcoin affords a option to reclaim that intuition—to separate cash from state management and return the facility of valuation to the person. A thoughts free of fiat begins to belief its personal senses once more.
The wheatpaste poster venture was born from a need to achieve the on a regular basis passerby. We began with a easy query: What’s inflation? From there, we developed clear, accessible language, ending with Bitcoin as a attainable resolution. Every artist created a poster designed to have interaction each most people and people already accustomed to Bitcoin themes.
Pasting them within the streets was my first time doing avenue artwork—and the primary time I positioned my work outdoors of Bitcoin areas. Conversations emerged. I observed the discomfort in folks, the intuitive sense that one thing is fallacious. I don’t know in the event that they scanned the QR code or if it modified something. However for me, the act was performative, and it stands by itself—entire and full.
We later created a restricted collectible version of the posters so folks might assist the venture and personal one thing scarce, lovely, and intentional. And now, at B25, we’re increasing the sequence to incorporate 14 new artists. I’m extremely pleased with this physique of labor. The total set of 21 Artwork of Freedom posters speaks not solely to inflation, however to the deeper prospects of artwork as activism.
Madex is a Canadian artist, designer, and inventive director of Bull Bitcoin, famend for his dedication to craftsmanship and creative integrity. His work usually critiques the commodification of artwork within the fiat financial system and explores themes of sovereignty and authenticity. In 2024, he launched the Madex Manifesto—a rejection of fiat-fueled artwork commodification and a declaration of his dedication to craftsmanship and creative integrity. That very same yr, he publicly clashed with Bitcoin Journal CEO David Bailey, calling out the journal’s political alignment—significantly its assist of Donald Trump—as a betrayal of Bitcoin’s core ideas of neutrality and decentralization. Now it’s 2025.
Q: You’re returning to Bitcoin Convention Vegas amid ongoing cultural digitization and AI, renewed infighting over block area and Bitcoin Core, Vice President JD Vance taking the stage, and your own home nation of Canada teetering on political unrest. Given all of this, what does coming again to this occasion imply to you—and the way does your present work reply to or wrestle with these overlapping tensions?
MADEX: First, let me appropriate the report: I by no means clashed with David Bailey over Trump. That’s not the problem. What I referred to as out, and can proceed to name out, is Bitcoin Journal’s willingness to promote out Bitcoin’s core values by pushing scams like ordinals to trusting followers, and selling state-aligned initiatives like a “strategic bitcoin reserve.” That’s not decentralization. That’s state seize.
My critique isn’t about social gathering politics. It’s concerning the fiat mindset infiltrating Bitcoin by fits, bureaucrats, and rent-seekers. I’ve at all times believed that tradespeople, builders, and artisans are the true allies of Bitcoin; not funding bankers, politicians and bureaucrats who lie, cheat, and produce nothing of worth. These persons are parasites; fiat profiteers and Keynesian cultists who’ve drained the world of wealth, magnificence, and which means.
Bitcoin isn’t about appeasing them. It’s about bankrupting slave masters and returning sovereignty to people. That’s what the Madex Manifesto stands for: a name to makers, craftsmen, and artists to withstand the fiat system’s corrupting affect and stay loyal to their work, their creativity, and their values. It’s about reclaiming creative excellence and rejecting the satanic sludge peddled as “trendy tradition.”
So why am I exhibiting as much as the Bitcoin Journal convention in Sin Metropolis? As a result of I nonetheless consider within the energy of sign. I’m coming to broadcast my message, loud and clear, to capital allocators who need their wealth to imply one thing, to creators that dream of reaching their full potential. I’m right here to show that inventive power constructed on integrity and mastery, not compromise, is important to the development of our sovereign desires.
Bitcoin Journal and I could disagree, however I do know there are folks in that constructing, possibly even of their ranks, who starvation for greatness. And so they perceive that if anons witnessing Madex can awaken even one sleeping large, it’ll all have been price it.
We’re coming into a decisive period. Fiat is crumbling. AI is accelerating. The state is flailing. Creation stays our best energy. The longer term belongs to the maker, to the entrepreneur, to the craftsman. I’m right here to awaken the sleeper, to ignite the beacon.
Anik Todd is a multidisciplinary artist whose background in portray, sound, and precision carpentry informs a observe rooted in materiality, labor, and symbolism. In 2024, he contributed to a number of Bitcoin exhibitions, together with Adopting Bitcoin in El Salvador, the place his text-based drawings stood out for his or her conceptual rigor. For his first contribution to the Bitcoin Convention, Todd unveils Proof of Paradigm-Defining Work (Previous / Future)—an bold hand-painted diptych totaling over 400 hours of labor. Impressed by the memetic energy of the “Purchase Bitcoin” signal, the two-panel work capabilities as each tribute and proposition: a visible testimony to the conviction and collective effort behind Bitcoin’s emergence, and a name to the continued proof-of-work—financial, non secular, and philosophical—that lies forward. Monumental in each execution and intention, the piece gestures towards a brand new period the place worth is reclaimed by effort, religion, and shared goal.
Q: How does time, effort, and precision form the which means of those works? And the way do you see the artist’s function evolving within the paradigm Bitcoin makes attainable?
ANIK TODD: The unique ‘Purchase Bitcoin’ signal to me was so highly effective exactly due to its speedy execution and immaculate timing – a speedy execution which nevertheless was the apex of unfathomable quantities of time and passionate dedication which had laid the trail to it showing as and when it did. With my work I wished to monumentalise that huge and hidden undercurrent of visionary effort – each wanting again in time but additionally ahead within the indented blank-page ‘future’ piece – elegantly easy at a primary look however meticulously laboured and decidedly human upon nearer inspection. Every scribbled line is exactly reproduced (by hand relatively than mechanical means) and so is a real human homage to the magnitude of the wonders of Bitcoin.
I additionally wished the bodily scale to signify Bitcoin’s development for the reason that time of the unique signal in order to visually talk the enlargement we’re witnessing, and settled upon the expansion in market capability which produced an actual 100x129cm dimension!
Though I recognize the worth of humour and modern tradition in sure Bitcoin artworks, the true great thing about Bitcoin artwork, to me, is the visible expression of the time that Bitcoin has granted again to humanity – and the ensuing need to as soon as once more create works of excellent craftsmanship and awe. In an age by which our guide abilities and age-old skills are quickly turning into redundant, I discover it paramount that artwork can anchor us to who we’re, what we’re individually able to, and encourage us to proceed striving for greatness alongside the trail forward.
From illustrating the enduring Bitcoin Curler Coaster Man—a meme without end etched in Bitcoin’s lore—to portray a large mural in Nashville and performing authentic music from his 2024 album Blues Earlier than Bitcoin, Marcus Connor has lengthy formed Bitcoin’s cultural ascent. A foundational contributor to the artwork gallery since its early years, his observe carries a distinctly analog sensibility: wooden, working elements, hand-cut wheels, and purposeful objects that recall the tactile ingenuity of folks museum shows. At B25 Las Vegas, Connor levels a brand new immersive set up—a wall-sized graphic overlaid with bodily artworks that collectively kind a playable recreation with movable items. Connor treats interactivity as greater than engagement; it turns into a car for one-on-one connection and shared discovery.
Q: How have tasks like Blues Earlier than Bitcoin, and now The Recreation of Cash, knowledgeable your method to interactivity, and in what methods do you see these bodily installations shaping how folks hook up with worth, freedom, and cultural reminiscence by Bitcoin?
MARCUS CONNOR: All of my Bitcoin artwork shares the identical sensibility: it’s about exhibiting that Bitcoin is enjoyable. Not solely is Bitcoin enjoyable, however it’s additionally accessible to the everyman. My artwork is supposed to demystify Bitcoin and present that it’s not only for shadowy tremendous coders and techno nerds. Its playful nature is supposed to attraction to everybody—with a little bit of innocence and a welcoming smile. One other vital side is letting folks know that all of us expertise the identical emotional ups and downs that include volatility—and that we will face all of it with a smile.
My newest piece for Vegas, The Recreation of Cash, continues this theme: we’re enjoying the sport, and we’re having fun with it. As a baby, my father instructed me that life is a recreation we play, and the sport of cash is one a part of that bigger recreation. We improve our freedom by recognizing the sport so we will play it—and play to win. One angle of this new venture is the concept Bitcoin is the sport—or the gaming of cash itself. From its inception, Bitcoin was designed to outplay fiat by introducing a contest fiat was unprepared for. However most significantly, Bitcoin is enjoyable and accessible. I hope my artwork brings a smile to the faces of those that see it. I create to unfold positivity and reality—as a result of Bitcoin is verifiable reality.
Properly-known Bitcoin artist Brekkie returns to B25 Las Vegas with Bitaxe Gothic—a hand-carved stone show for a purposeful Bitaxe gamma, full with 24k gold leaf, gothic lettering, and a distinct segment for an Opendime pockets. Famend for his dedication to conventional stone carving—a cloth whose permanence echoes the immutability of Bitcoin—Brekkie reframes open-source mining {hardware} as an object of formality and lasting significance. The piece is signed and marked with the block peak at which it was accomplished.
Q: How does the gradual, bodily labor of stone carving form your relationship to Bitcoin’s quickly evolving {hardware} panorama? And in evoking the visible language of spiritual relics and medieval craftsmanship, what legacy do you hope Bitaxe Gothic will carry inside Bitcoin’s cultural canon?
BREKKIE: Once I first discovered of Bitcoin, it was nonetheless attainable to mine it utilizing GPU’s. Since then, we’ve seen the rise and evolution of ASICs and now the thrilling resurgence of residence mining {hardware} like the assorted Bitaxe iterations. Whereas the {hardware} continues to alter, the basic nature of Bitcoin mining, the proof of labor required, stays the identical, with each miner, large or small, making an attempt to beat the percentages and discover the subsequent block. As an artist working in stone, I prefer to assume that my course of embodies that very same proof of labor. There’s no avoiding the power expenditure wanted to work in stone, simply as there’s no option to cheat at Bitcoin mining. And as I be taught and develop as an artist, my very own talent and effectivity goes up, a lot because the effectivity of Bitcoin mining improves as {hardware} evolves. I really like this parallel between my craft and mining, and it solely deepens my appreciation for Bitcoin on the whole.
Although I don’t personally subscribe to Bitcoin as a faith, I do assume Bitcoin is among the most, if not probably the most, vital developments within the historical past of humankind. To many, a Bitcoin miner is simply a pc, however to me, the {hardware} that permits Bitcoin to exist and thrive is worthy of elevation and possibly even slightly veneration. Bitcoin {hardware} on the whole, whether or not for mining or working a node, deserves a spot of honor and respect in our society. I hope Bitaxe Gothic can function a place to begin for the way Bitcoiners take into consideration showcasing the expertise that’s so very important to Bitcoin and bettering our collective future.
A primary-time contributor at B24 Nashville, Ariel Birdie debuted with works like Bitcoin Buddha, which draw on mythic and historic references to border Bitcoin not merely as a technological breakthrough, however as a part of an extended continuum of sacred and symbolic techniques utilized by civilizations to encode worth, energy, and transcendence. By collapsing temporal and cultural distance, she positions Bitcoin as a modern-day relic—one thing each historical and emergent, invoking perception constructions as a lot as market constructions.
Q: How do you utilize visible language to recast Bitcoin as a web site of fantasy, reminiscence, or sacred worth? What themes or evolutions can viewers count on in your new work at B25?
ARIEL BIRDIE: I began making Bitcoin Artwork in 2020 to discover the connection between Bitcoin and the Divine. Our photos of God… the best way that people have perpetuated photos of Divinity all through historical past with using lengthy lasting and recognizable symbols and awe inspiring artwork and structure, what’s left behind is true proof of labor with longevity and worth. Bitcoin is analogous to God and to Artwork in so some ways. These connections are huge and there are infinite alternatives to create visible smorgasbord. I acquire and re-document the small print I like probably the most. I prefer to layer imagery I discover lovely, highly effective or humorous and I like enjoying with the extra frequent narratives that exist. I hope I don’t upset folks an excessive amount of.
Coming to Las Vegas I’ve two artwork items I’m excited to indicate. I acquired detailed with these and have advanced a bit with lettering and political commentary. One theme is the Battle of Good versus Evil and the enduring illustration of Angelic and Demonic forces. One other is Vegas Themed with imagery that mixes historical mayan inscriptions, Artwork Nouveau and Time Journey…. A little bit of Alien Visitation and Paranoid Conspiracy Concept is thrown in there too for good measure.
Coldie’s stereoscopic portraits layer depth with symbolic cost, drawing on Cubist and Futurist methods whereas embedding Bitcoin figures right into a lineage of cultural myth-making. His Filthy Fiat sequence—launched at Bitcoin 2024 and projected contained in the B24 Dome—options glitch-based compositions constructed from deteriorated greenback payments he buried and later unearthed from his personal yard. The primary work within the sequence, Warren Buffett – Filthy Fiat, was auctioned at Christie’s in December 2024, marking a uncommon institutional entry for Bitcoin-inscribed bodily and digital art work. For Bitcoin 2025, Coldie returns with a brand new magnetic portrait from the identical sequence, designed for viewers interplay and tactile rearrangement.
Q: By inviting viewers to recompose your magnetic works, are you asking them to take part within the symbolic reconstruction of worth—very like Bitcoin invitations people to construct alternate options to fiat and centralized management? Past the magnetic piece, what else can attendees count on to see from you at B25?
COLDIE: A serious breakthrough since B24 has been realized with my newest bodily works utilizing magnets. My physique of labor performs with the phantasm of 3D depth on a display screen whereas additionally being interactive. I started fascinated about how I might take this observe and switch it digital. Utilizing magnets to carry items on a backboard that may change place, I’ve realized the imaginative and prescient of making customizable residing compositions. The viewer is now the collaborator. The artwork is supposed to be touched.
This idea involves life in Jack Dorsey – Decentral Eyes, a magnetic portrait and the most recent evolution of my interactive sequence. It’s a chance to reconstruct identification and worth. Dorsey’s Twitter helped reshape digital self-representation, whereas his assist for Bitcoin aligns with the decentralized nature of the face items—separate elements coming collectively to kind a unified entire. Constructing monetary alternate options by reconstructing the definition of worth is a core theme embedded into this sequence. This would be the first public show of considered one of these magnetic portraits, and I’ll be within the B25 gallery for 3 days to assist viewers bodily customise the piece in actual time.
The work featured within the B25 gallery displays this dual-track focus: Magnets and Filthy Fiat.
Alongside Decentral Eyes, I’m exhibiting two different works. The primary is Filthy Flag, a Filthy Fiat–themed residing art work. It’s a U.S. flag fabricated from greenback payments that refreshes format based mostly on native time and date—appearing as each a clock and calendar, referencing moments in USD and Bitcoin historical past. The hourly change to the orange stripe reminds the viewer that it’s at all times time to decide on Bitcoin. This piece can be inscribed as a 1/1 recursive ordinal.
The second is the Michael Saylor – Decentral Eyes print, initially launched as an ordinal on the day of the 2024 halving. Each Saylor and Dorsey are central figures in Bitcoin historical past, and these portraits discover the reassembly of public personas and the shifting nature of worth in decentralized techniques.
Filthy Fiat is a wild story—take a look at filthyfiat.cash for the deep dive.
Spanish artist Luis Simo is understood for producing among the most bold and visually commanding works for the Bitcoin Convention artwork gallery. At B23 Miami, his multi-panel mural Pepernica reimagined Picasso’s Guernica by the lens of Uncommon Pepe iconography—fusing historic gravity with meme-driven absurdity. As a centerpiece of the exhibition, Pepernica mirrored the ideological battleground Bitcoin confronted on the time, turning satire into political commentary at monumental scale. For B25, Simo returns with KEKIUS MAXIMUS, a monumental pixel mosaic composed of over 30,000 hand-placed resin tiles. Styled after an historical Greco-Roman flooring piece, it depicts the meme-god Kekius Maximus using a mystical bull, his Bitcoin-woven cape billowing as storm clouds half to disclose radiant gentle. At 78 x 59 inches, the work serves as each a shrine to meme tradition and a maximalist gesture towards Bitcoin’s mythic potential.
Q: What attracts you to tackling such large-scale, labor-intensive works—and the way do you assume monumentality transforms how meme-based artwork is perceived? Do you see this bodily scale as a sort of cultural counterweight to the ephemeral, fast-moving nature of meme creation on-line?
LUIS SIMO: For me, working at a big scale is each a inventive choice and a approach of responding to how briskly and disposable the web world has change into. Memes are designed to go viral after which disappear, however whenever you take that fleeting power and anchor it in one thing monumental and bodily, like Pepernica or Kekius Maximus, it alters how folks interact with it. It forces a pause. It invitations reflection.
It’s a press release that this unusual, internet-born tradition issues—that it’s definitely worth the time, the labor, the supplies. That gesture alone resists the concept meme tradition is trivial or short-lived. At that scale, the work begins to operate extra like a shrine or an icon—even when irony nonetheless performs a task.
It’s my approach of resisting how forgettable digital tradition has change into. Memes explode sooner or later and vanish the subsequent. However historical civilizations understood methods to make which means final, they carved narratives into stone, assembled mosaics that also communicate to us right now. I’m making an attempt to do the identical with Bitcoin and meme tradition: to present these symbols a cloth presence that calls for consideration.
I’m not making an attempt to make them sacred in a conventional sense, however I do consider that memes—nevertheless absurd—are shaping beliefs, economies, and techniques. By committing to the time, the craft, the size, I’m asserting that this isn’t simply noise. It’s a part of one thing a lot bigger. For me, maximalism isn’t simply an aesthetic—it’s a approach of turning digital ephemera into trendy mythology.
A longtime contributor to the Bitcoin Convention artwork gallery and a foundational determine in Prague’s Parallelní Polis scene, Cypherpunk Now returns with one of many exhibition’s most bold works. Bitcoin isn’t the bubble, however the pin makes use of glass—a medium each fragile and defiant—to border Bitcoin as a drive puncturing the inflated constructions of fiat finance. Half propaganda relic, half alchemical object, it performs with themes of fragility, permanence, and symbolic disruption.
Q: How did working in such a breakable medium form your method to Bitcoin’s imagery—and in a world nonetheless clinging to its bubbles, what sort of rupture are you hoping this piece provokes? Because the sculpture itself suggests, have we ever been nearer to witnessing the fiat bubble lastly burst?
CYPHERPUNK NOW: Working with glass made me replicate on fragility—not simply of the fabric itself, however of the constructions we proceed to tolerate in our financial techniques. Glass is a paradoxical medium: seemingly delicate and fragile, but in the proper kind, extremely sharp and robust. Very similar to Bitcoin—a expertise usually perceived as summary or “fragile” in comparison with conventional establishments, but able to piercing by them with drive.
On this piece, glass is not only an aesthetic selection—it’s a metaphor. The fiat world is a bubble: inflated, however with a skinny floor. The pin, representing Bitcoin, isn’t harmful out of malice—it merely makes rupture inevitable. I hope this work provokes questions—about what we maintain collectively purely by perception, and the way prepared we actually are to reshape the world when that perception bursts.
And are we shut? I’d say we will all really feel the stress constructing. It’s about to pop!
Returning for his fifth yr on the Bitcoin Convention, MEAR ONE arrives following main exhibitions on the Museum of Graffiti and a North American tour of Metaphysical Surrealism. His work continues to discover metaphysical themes that more and more intersect with the mind-expanding nature of Bitcoin. At B25, he unveils two new items—together with The Magician—accompanied by a restricted version print sequence, and a second portray [insert title], addressing themes of liberation from debt slavery.
Q: In a second dense with financial omens, your work evokes the reemergence of the archetypal magician. What alerts do you understand within the cultural panorama—and the way do they inform your sense of what comes subsequent for humanity?
MEAR: To me, the magician represents our inventive ingenuity consciousness, a revolution in a single’s thoughts. The extra I be taught concerning the mechanics of actuality, I start to look at these philosophical and metaphysical manifestations in my every day life. I subscribe to the considering that actuality is an settlement of assorted thought patterns. Concepts fall out and in of being actual based mostly on necessity and finally disappear once they change into out of date. It’s at all times the stranger who introduces novelty into our world, presenting one thing by no means earlier than seen, but so acquainted that we settle for it into our collective consciousness. Nikola Tesla was considered one of these exceptional figures, so too was/is Satoshi Nakamoto. These archetypes introduce stability in a world of nefarious ill-intended charlatans; the magic in our thoughts is how we make the intangible tangible.
My works have been recording a chronology of occasions for over three and a half many years, exposing the conspiracies of our lives and in search of alternate options whereas selling an internal state of revolt in opposition to the authorities. I’ve gotten overwhelmed up, shot at, jailed, fined, and extra not too long ago slandered/cancelled on-line for creating artwork that speaks out in opposition to the system. However I stay steadfast to my mission of artwork, fueled by my early graffiti adventures and evolving to a extra refined type of storytelling, a metaphysical surrealism narrative designed to awaken the viewer from their financial debt-slave slumber and non secular deprivation. I paint the archetype of the magician to encourage the insurgent inside and fill one’s soul with magic inspiration so they may problem the established order. Once you awaken to the malicious actuality of our financial oppression the revelation is at all times the identical – the human spirit seeks its liberation and Bitcoin is our new LSD, our new Jesus Christ, our first actual problem to the authority’s all-powerful management.
Discover and bid on a unprecedented assortment of over 75 artworks by a various group of artists on the Scarce.Metropolis public sale web page. This various exhibition options a big selection of items, together with the Ross Ulbricht Assortment and Max Mellenbruch’s $2.2 million sculpture, RARE. All artworks are at present out there for preview or bidding on-line and might be on-view at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas, Could 27–twenty ninth.
Use ticket code BITCOINART at checkout for a reduction. Moreover, don’t miss the digital artwork auctions hosted by Megalith.artwork, providing a curated collection of high digital artworks.