The Now Podcast

Sam is a New York based artist best known for his Luci series, comprised of digital paintings paired with written psalms, released as episodic pieces of an evolving story about the rediscovery of our most ancient human values in a post-historic world. The first Chapter released in October of 2021 and since then, the project has generated seven figures in primary sales and six-figure sales at major auction houses like Christie’s. Spratt recently announced The Monument Game, an interactive competition offering “Players” the opportunity to win three coveted Skulls of Luci by co-creating new chapters of lore for the highly conceptual project.

In this episode, we cover: 

- Alpha for The Monument Game

- How Sam bounced back from rock bottom

- The vision behind Luci

To listen to the audio version of this episode, go to http://smarturl.it/nftnow

To sign up for the nft now newsletter, where we break down the NFT market into actionable insights each week, go to: https://www.nftnow.com

To follow Sam on Twitter, go here :https://twitter.com/SamSpratt

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For the nft now podcast’s 100th episode, we welcome Beeple (Mike Winkelmann), one of the most well-known figures in the NFT space. He made history in selling Everydays: the First 5000 Days for $69.3 million at Christie’s in 2021, the first time a major auction house offered a fully-digital artwork. Since then, Beeple has remained at the forefront of the web3 space by collaborating with Madonna and Time Magazine, making guest appearances on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and selling his 10KTF project to Yuga Labs, where he remains an advisor. Earlier this year, he opened his eponymous studio in South Carolina to curate and share digital artwork and expose new audiences to NFTs through immersive multimedia performances. He has also exhibited at The Gateway: A Web3 Metropolis in Miami and will show work at The Gateway: Korea in September.

In this episode, we cover:

- Featuring shitcoins in his Everydays

- The fast-growing Asian web3 market

- His exhibition at The Gateway Korea

- His vision for Beeple Studios

To listen to the audio version of this episode, go to http://smarturl.it/nftnow

To sign up for the nft now newsletter, where we break down the NFT market into actionable insights each week, go to: https://www.nftnow.com

To follow Beeple Twitter, go here: https://twitter.com/beeple

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Fxnction is an expert trader, investor, and advisor in the NFT and crypto space. Previously known by the crypto alias Shill Nye, he is best known for being early to Solana NFTs, as well as his deep dives on crypto, AI, and different NFT communities. Fnxction has garnered a significant Twitter following of more than 120,000 due to his expertise in trading and offbeat humor. He is also the host of Crypto Chaos Hour, a new weekly Twitter space on @nftnow every Wednesday at 5:30 pm ET.

In this episode, we cover: 

- How he made and lost $3.5 million trading NFTs

- Top trading tips and alpha

- What he’s watching for the next bull run

To listen to the audio version of this episode, go to http://smarturl.it/nftnow

To sign up for the nft now newsletter, where we break down the NFT market into actionable insights each week, go to: https://www.nftnow.com

To follow fxnction on Twitter, go here: https://twitter.com/fxnction

To follow fxnction on Instagram, go here: https://www.instagram.com/0x_fxnction/

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Daria Shapovalova and Natalia Modenova are the founders of DressX, a leading digital fashion retailer with an app and NFT marketplace. Over the last three years, they’ve partnered with the likes of Bershka, H&M, DUNDAS, and Agoria. Recently, the brand raised a $15 million series A round led by Greenfield with participation from Slow Ventures, Warner Music, Red DAO, The Artemis Fund, and others. The funding will be used to focus on achieving interoperability of DressX’s digital fashion assets across multiple metaverses and games, as well as to enhance the performance of its app and marketplace.

In this episode, we cover: 

- The early moments that helped establish the DressX brand

- Why big fashion and luxury brands are entering web3

- Brands that Shapovalova and Modenova consider web3 fashion successes

- What excites them most about the future of digital fashion

To listen to the audio version of this episode, go to http://smarturl.it/nftnow

To sign up for the nft now newsletter, where we break down the NFT market into actionable insights each week, go to: https://www.nftnow.com

To follow Ed on Twitter, go here: https://twitter.com/Ed_Balloon

To follow Ed on Instagram, go here: https://www.instagram.com/edballoon

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Ed Balloon is an active Web3 artist, musician, and community leader within the NFT space. In an ecosystem that is often overrun by PFPs and memes, his stunning pieces showcase his unique existence as a prolific stop-motion NFT artist. To help uplift his fellow artists, 50 percent of the proceeds from his flagship Run Ed collection secondary sales go to The Ed Balloon Generational Wealth Fund, which collects work from Black and other under-represented artists in Web3. From colllaborations with Timbaland, TIMEPieces, and Avalanche to unique a one-of-a-kind generative sound and motion endeavors of his own, Ed Balloon continues to be a beacon of prosperity and positivity within the still burgeoning blockchain-based creative economy.

In this episode, we cover: 

- How NFTs can change the creative canvas for artists

- The state of music NFTs

- How to approach cross-discipline creativity through a Web3 lens

- The challenges artists face navigating bear markets

- How Ed is Bringing Black hair culture to the blockchain

- The importance of staying grounded while operating in the digital sphere

To listen to the audio version of this episode, go to: https://pod.link/1561616636

To sign up for the nft now newsletter, where we break down the NFT market into actionable insights each week, go to: https://www.nftnow.com

To follow Ed on Twitter, go here: https://twitter.com/Ed_Balloon

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Trevor Owens is the CEO of Ninjalerts — an app for NFT trading alerts — and GP at Bitcoin Frontier Fund, where he invests in teams building new use cases for Bitcoin. Before this, Owens spent a decade coaching founders in the Lean Startup Methodology and authored The Lean Enterprise: How Corporations Can Innovate Like Startups.

A leading voice in the Bitcoin Ordinals movement, he also hosts our Not Financial Advice Twitter Space every Tuesday and Thursday at 6:30 pm ET. Whenever a new ecosystem launches, it can be a bit overwhelming – especially when it’s developing at the rapid pace of Ordinals. In this episode, we dive in with Owens to give listeners an overview of everything to know about NFTs on Bitcoin and the innovation Vitalik Buterin recently said is bringing “builder culture’ back to Bitcoin.

In this episode, we cover: 

- How Owens would describe Ordinals to his grandmother

- How to get started with Bitcoin Ordinals

- The notable Ordinals projects everyone should know

- What developments in the space we should keep an eye on

To listen to the audio version of this episode, go to http://smarturl.it/nftnow

To sign up for the nft now newsletter, where we break down the NFT market into actionable insights each week, go to: https://www.nftnow.com

Follow Trevor on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/TO

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Kenny Schachter is an artist, curator, and University of Zurich professor who has been curating contemporary art exhibits for nearly 30 years. He writes a regular column for Artnet and has an upcoming project called “Open Book,” an ever-evolving digital book on Polygon, powered by Async Art. In addition, he’s written for various international publications including New York Magazine and The Times Magazine. A prominent Web3 figure, Schachter’s other projects include Pop Principle — a NFT-powered blockchain game created in collaboration with Daata that pits traditional art fans against digital art enthusiasts — and CryptoMutts, a satirical 10,000-strong collection of randomly generated NFTs on Ethereum.

In this episode, we cover: 

• Schachter’s strong opinions on creator royalties
• What’s broken about the traditional art world
• The biggest misconceptions the art world has about NFTs

His vision behind the Open Book project

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Michael Bouhanna is the Vice-President, Contemporary Art Specialist, and Head of Digital Art and NFTs at Sotheby’s. In June 2021, he facilitated Sotheby’s first curated NFT auction, Natively Digital, resulting in a total sale of $40 million across three editions. The sale included the first-ever NFT, Quantum by Kevin and Jennifer McCoy, and pieces by Snowfro, Dmitri Cherniak, Pak, Sarah Zucker, Fvckrender, XCOPY, Mad Dog Jones, Justin Aversano, and more. That same year, Bouhanna conceived, launched, and curated Sotheby’s Metaverse — an immersive virtual gathering space for collectors and NFT enthusiasts.

Bouhanna is coming fresh off of the $11 million Grails Part II Sale, featuring works acquired by the now-defunct hedge fund, Three Arrows Capital. Split into two parts and totaling more than $17 million, the auctions included notable results and injected some much-needed optimism into the current bear market.

In this episode, we cover:

- The intersection of the traditional and digital art markets

- The backstory of the Grails Part II auction

- Lessons learned from Natively Digital: Glitch-ism

- What’s next for digital art and NFTs at Sotheby’s

To listen to the audio version of this episode, go to http://smarturl.it/nftnow

To sign up for the nft now newsletter, where we break down the NFT market into actionable insights each week, go to: https://www.nftnow.com

To follow Michael on Twitter, go here: https://twitter.com/michaelbouhanna

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Grant Yun is a breakdancer and med student who has emerged as one of the top-selling artists of the NFT space. While he insists that his entrance into the NFT space was a leap of faith, his Neo-Precisionist style has gained him numerous accolades in Web3. The high-profile sale of his piece “Cow” sparked a conversation about the utility and value of fine art NFTs. Some saw the piece as too simple to be worth 22 ETH (approximately $72,000 at the time), and others believed Yun’s creation to be one of the best cases of CC0-licensed art in the NFT space. Since his rise to prominence, he has achieved multiple six-figure sales, has seen his work auctioned at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, and has been subject to flattery by way of imitation. 

In this episode, we cover: 

- How Yun juggles med school, break dancing, and digital art

- Why he made “Cow” CC0 and how he felt about its reception

- How Yun thinks about the power of memes

- What life after med school looks like for Yun

To listen to the audio version of this episode, go to http://smarturl.it/nftnow

To sign up for the nft now newsletter, where we break down the NFT market into actionable insights each week, go to: https://www.nftnow.com

To follow Grant on Twitter, go here: https://twitter.com/GrantYun2

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Valued at over $1 billion and with an estimated annual revenue of over $53 million, Ledger is one of the world’s most well-known and popular providers of hardware wallets. In May 2023, the company experienced a significant backlash around its Ledger Recover feature — a key recovery service that provides a backup of your seedphrase and allows you to restore your private keys. Many in the Web3 community claimed that the firmware update that enables the service to exist goes against Ledger’s longstanding policy that guarantees a user’s private key will never leave the device. As a result, Ledger postponed the launch, with CEO Pascal Gauthier apologizing for the “unintentional communication mistake.” Ian Rogers, Ledger’s Chief Experience Officer, was on the frontlines of responding to this controversy and addressing user concerns. 

In this episode, we cover: 

- Lessons learned from Ledger Recover backlash

- Challenges of communicating in web3

- The ERC-4337 standard

- The future of web3 security

To listen to the audio version of this episode, go to http://smarturl.it/nftnow

To sign up for the nft now newsletter, where we break down the NFT market into actionable insights each week, go to: https://www.nftnow.com

To follow Ledger on Twitter, go here: https://twitter.com/ledger

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