29 Sep 2023/50 min/Lawyered
MLow X Lawyered
Lawyer and collector Jonathan Kleiman on arriving at art through transactional freedom, the ethics of colluding on artists, and why NFT royalties are almost impossible to enforce in court.
Jonathan Kleiman, who collects as Lawyered, opens with the outline of his path: a solo practice lawyer of almost 14 years, a dad with two daughters, and a technology hobbyist since getting the internet at 11 and living on IRC by 13. Bitcoin came late and, like the internet, as a hobby, drawn by transactional freedom and the change it could make. He always liked art but never saw himself as a collector, partly because his father is something of a hoarder. After cycles of chasing pumps he decided to stop trading and buy assets he could look back on in 20 years as a diary of his early history in crypto. Art fit: you invest in people, not projects that go to zero, and you never have to check a floor price.
The middle is a collector's ethics seminar disguised as a chat. Kleiman argues you cannot ethically collude on tokens (either you dump on strangers or you dump on strangers together), but in art a group of friends can agree an artist is great, buy up the work, and end up wholesomely bidding against each other. He tells the Neo Tokyo story as a cautionary tale: a free mint he could have sold for half a million dollars at the top, held partly because it had briefly been his profile picture, and his conclusion is that you should never marry an NFT. He also refuses to micromanage artists, having tweeted that anyone he has collected should feel free to sell whatever they want. MLow steers into royalties and the law, and Kleiman is blunt: courts care about the parties' intent while code does not, terms of service probably let marketplaces do whatever they want, and forcing a secondary buyer to pay a royalty they never agreed to will be a very hard sell. His deeper point is that artists mourning royalties are missing the real trade, exposure that is orders of magnitude beyond the traditional gallery world.
The two share a screen and tour his OpenSea wallet, from ten dollar signed baseball card packs to SuperRare one of ones, before closing on why any of it matters. Kleiman's case for crypto is monetary: it lets people park their economic energy while governments debase currencies, and the freedom to transact is what grows back first when systems collapse. Art rides on top of that, and its special property is that digital ownership no longer excludes viewers. Where a Monet gets locked in a castle, an NFT lets the whole world see the work while the owner keeps provenance, which he and MLow agree is the revolutionary part.
What this episode teaches
- Collect a diary, not a portfolio
Kleiman stopped trading tokens to buy assets he could look back on in 20 years as a record of his early history in crypto. Art removed the need to watch floor prices at all, which is exactly what he wanted from it.
- Invest in people, not projects
Projects go to zero; the people who stick around do not. His filter is a few minutes of real conversation to tell whether someone identifies as an artist building a career or is just desperate for a sale, because buying is a bet the artist will still be working in ten years.
- Art is the one asset you can ethically pump together
Colluding on a coin means dumping on someone, which is why securities laws exist. Friends agreeing an artist is great and then bidding against each other on one of ones is fun, wholesome, and not zero sum, because the art itself carries the value.
- Never marry an NFT
He held a Neo Tokyo free mint past a roughly half million dollar top partly because it had been his profile picture and it yielded over a thousand dollars a day. The lesson he took from the cycle is to keep identity out of assets so you can quietly sell when you need to.
- Do not micromanage the artists you collect
He hears artists whose collectors tell them not to sell below a price or not to make more work. His position: if you bet on an entrepreneur you do not dictate their moves, so he tweeted that anyone he has collected should sell whatever they want.
- Royalties are promises, not property
A court looks at what the buyer actually agreed to, not what the artist intended in code. Since a secondary buyer on a royalty free marketplace never promised anything, enforcing a royalty against them will be a very hard sell; enforcement has to live in the contract or the front end the buyer clicked through.
- The exposure trade beats the royalty loss
Kleiman argues a traditional artist sells in silence while a crypto artist's every sale lands on people's radar. Leaving the space over royalties that never existed in the traditional world is, in his words, either disingenuous or a sign you never wanted eyes on the work.
- Digital ownership stops excluding people
Traditional collecting locks a Monet away and asks why you would pay if anyone can look. Digital collecting keeps ownership and provenance while letting everyone see the work, which both men treat as a different first principle rather than a flaw.
The conversation, topic by topic
Who Lawyered is
A lawyer in solo practice for almost 14 years, a dad of two daughters, Canadian, and a technology hobbyist since age 11. He came to Bitcoin late, as a hobby and a means to transactional freedom, and has been through a couple of crypto cycles.
From trading to collecting
Buying at the end of a bull market taught him that pricing off what people just paid is meaningless. He pivoted to picking pieces he liked, noting that crypto art has epochs: a 2020 XCOPY is not priced like a later one, so a falling floor does not tell the whole story.
The ethics of collusion
Kleiman lays out why shilling coins is unethical (you are betting against the person taking your advice) while groups of friends buying up an artist they believe in is legitimate, since they end up bidding against each other on work with real value.
PFPs and identity
MLow doubts 10k identity collections; Kleiman imagines two to three billion people eventually wanting PFPs and says a bear market may be the time to sweep collections that keep community. MLow mentions his Sappy Seals and the algorithm penalty for changing a verified Twitter PFP, which once cut his reach from about four percent to one percent for months.
Dynamic PFP ideas and the Doppelganger contract
MLow describes wanting a dynamic NFT holding an array of images with the URI switched on Etherscan rather than on Twitter, and points to Patrick Amadon's Doppelganger contract with Transient Labs, which lets one token display a chosen image from an array.
The Neo Tokyo lesson
Kleiman's own PFP is a Midjourney teddy bear in a suit, chosen so he would never refuse to sell it. He held a Neo Tokyo free mint that peaked around half a million dollars, partly because it yielded over a thousand dollars a day, and turned the miss into his rule against marrying an NFT.
Blur, liquidity, and airdrop farming
Asked about Blur, he says it made no difference to one of ones but created artificial, unsustainable PFP volume from a small number of wallets passing tokens back and forth. He did well on the first airdrop, then lost interest once everyone began farming a token with no utility.
Royalties and the law
MLow calls OpenSea the Walmart of NFTs and asks whether code enforcing a 10 percent royalty is legally binding. Kleiman explains courts weigh intent and actual agreements: marketplace terms of service likely permit anything, and a secondary buyer who never promised a royalty probably cannot be made to pay one.
What a crypto lawyer actually does
Mostly the same as anywhere: setting up companies as shields and writing contracts that set shared rules, parked in a jurisdiction where they could be enforced. He ignores the scam victim calls that come from googling crypto lawyer, since there is usually no one to sue and the money is on chain.
The wallet tour
Screen shared, they walk his OpenSea page: signed and numbered ten dollar baseball card mystery packs from Efdot's MLB collaboration, editions he attributes to artists the machine transcript garbles, a NeonGlitch86 open edition of the Griff District piece made with Eclectic Method (who made the MLow Show theme), a 6529 Memes styled 21st Century Heist edition, and a SuperRare one of one called See Through the Veil by an artist he says gets accused of using AI but draws everything on an iPad.
Editions versus one of ones
His honest answer is that it depends entirely on wallet size, cycling between one of ones at 20 or 30 thousand dollars and editions when he is down to a hundred, with airdrops like Blur's funding the next round of buying.
Crypto as economic energy
His closing case: crypto lets people store what they have earned while governments debase currencies, restoring both the ability to save for family and the freedom to transact, which he calls the blades of grass that grew from the ashes of the Soviet Union.
Citizen of the internet
He feels stronger connection to internet friends who share his interests than to neighbors he would not miss, and predicts crypto, fungible or not, will be the heart of that online future.
Permanence and the copy tokens
They close on Ethereum outliving the JPEGs it points to, MLow trying to buy only JPEGs that will exist in a thousand years, and XCOPY's untradeable copy tokens sitting in wallets of OG collectors like Coldie and Artnome, which Kleiman compares to an XCOPY tattoo: you cannot sell it, and that is what makes it badass.
In their words
“I've always liked art, but it's never been something that I was able to see myself as a collector.”
Lawyered“That's why you learn lessons in cycles. And I think one of those lessons, don't marry an NFT.”
Lawyered“Even OpenSea, which was once some sort of art trading platform, is now also turned into the Walmart of NFTs.”
MLow“When we say code is law, we're like, f*** the police, all the money's in my wallet now, not yours.”
Lawyered“If you haven't lost money to a scammer or some sort of misclick or rug pull, then you haven't yet, you will, or you're not in crypto.”
Lawyered“What's more baller than getting an XCOPY tattoo made by XCOPY? You can't sell it, but that's pretty badass.”
LawyeredCite this conversation
Lawyered in conversation with MLow, "MLow X Lawyered," The MLow Show, unaired recording, 29 Sep 2023. https://show.mlow.xyz/e/2023-09-29-mlow-x-lawyered.html. Quoted from a machine transcript.
Quotations come from machine transcripts. Check wording against the audio before republishing.