- Do you think that NFTs
have changed your life?
- Here's the Fortune Magazine that I did.
Apparently, this is the People's Magazine of Taiwan.
That's me and Steve Aoki.
There's the Uniswap animation.
It was actually mind-blowing
that anybody would want to own this digital piece.
But then the more you think about it,
the more it makes sense.
Like, why would somebody wanna own
a physical art piece?
Because they like looking at it.
It's the same thing for a digital one, right?
- NFTs are completely changing the game
in how you and I consume art.
That idea to some could feel very dystopian,
but it's a fundamental revolution
that we are about to witness.
- Blockchain will revolutionize the world for good.
We want to be part of that change.
- For my first NFT,
I really poured my heart into making
what I thought was kind of like
a trippy, mesmerizing animation—
and it ended up selling for over half a million dollars.
I think I've been extremely lucky,
but it is a long game that we're playing,
and this technology's gonna be around for a while.
- Marker, take one.
- I always get this question—
you know, "I can right click and save,
you know, that NFT.
Why do I need to pay $7.6 million to buy it?"
Look, I could take a photo of the Mona Lisa
and say, "This is mine,"
but nobody's gonna believe it
because there's something known
as 'provenance,' or proof of ownership.
So an NFT, a non-fungible token, is a unique copy.
And it's a contract
to say that you own this digital piece of art.
And that is very powerful for many, many regards.
To compare and understand this,
let's talk about cryptocurrencies first.
Those are fungible tokens,
meaning you and I can exchange them
as many times as we want.
However, an NFT, you know for sure
that this is an authentic piece of art
because you can easily prove it
by looking at the blockchain.
- 'The Christie's auction for digital artist Beeple,
the final bid-'
- '$69 million.'
- 'Oh my gosh.'
- Artists pre-NFTs, you know, really existed on a model
where they were making 30 cents on the dollar.
There's typically a 50% commission
that's taken from their gallery,
and then artists are responsible
for their own health insurance, their studio costs.
NFTs really changed the framework
of allowing them to not only access capital
in a much more efficient way,
but also realize the upside as their works
go into the market.
- As a creator, you decide what the art piece is.
You decide where it's minted.
You decide how it's sold.
You also get royalties from not just the first sale,
but forever sales.
NFTs have made it a very level playing field
for many people to jump in with both feet
and experiment.
Pplpleasr is one example,
and now is a very well-renowned NFT creator.
- I enjoy everything that's creative,
and I just really love the process of seeing something
you know, go from nothing to coming to life.
Before this, I worked on several movies.
Film already really inspires me,
but visual effects even more so because
you're creating something out of nothing
on the computer by just pressing some buttons—
and I think that's pretty cool.
In 2020 during the pandemic,
as a means to make some money on the side,
I started looking more into crypto again,
and then I discovered decentralized finance.
I realized that there were no creative efforts
in marketing material at the time.
And then so I saw an opportunity
to insert my own skill set into the space,
and so more and more people started paying attention
to my work.
Twenty animations later, Uniswap hit me up.
So around that time too,
was when the Asian hate crimes
was really bad in America.
I got in touch with this group of volunteers
called Stand with Asians.
My NFT raised over half a million dollars,
and then so we were able to distribute grants of $25,000
to 24 different nonprofit organizations.
If there's anything that I can do through philanthropy,
through my creations,
that also makes me feel a lot more rewarded.
Here's the infamous x*y=k animation.
You can see the iconic bidding history here.
What was the most touching was the fact
that a lot of my friends had come together to support me.
The fact that they named it 'PleasrDAO,'
was very touching.
- PleasrDAO started specifically
to acquire one piece of art of pplpleasr’s.
I knew it was gonna sell for more money than I had.
And so, I just sent out a tweet
that was like, "Hey, does anyone wanna like
create a quick DAO, and put our money together,
and bid on this together?"
Jamis responded to that tweet as well as some other people;
that's how it got started that day.
- The Decentralized Autonomous Organization
is just a novel concept.
You have a lot of people working together
who are in agreement, but also have a vote.
Ultimately, the definitive concept of a DAO
is anyone can participate.
The membership that we look for
is people that want to do something good in the world.
That's always kind of been a core tenant.
It's very obvious what our membership is constituted
of when you're buying Edward Snowden's piece,
Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia piece,
Nadya from Pussy Riot, Tor, Ross Ulbricht,
and motherf***ing Wu-Tang.
It's as seamless as writing one line of code
to change individuals' lives now.
Why not take the opportunity to help?
- The technology itself is really revolutionary,
and I am somebody who literally experienced
how NFTs are changing the game for creatives.
I auction off a piece,
then I take that same money,
and I go back and I buy NFTs from other people.
And then it creates this chain reaction
of everybody being rewarded
by participating in the space.
I think we'll start to see a lot more use of NFTs
beyond just art.
Gaming, concert tickets,
transportation tickets,
driver's licenses should be NFTs
so that we never have to go through the pain
of going to DMVs again, you know?
And for myself as an artist,
I don't really know where it's going,
but what I care about, fundamentally, is that
what I'm doing has a positive impact on society,
and that it is artistically meaningful
and entertaining people at the same time,
so that whatever I create
is always making people feel something.