16 Jul 2024/69 min/Rhett Mankind
MLow X Rhett Mankind
The full story of Turbo, the meme coin Rhett Mankind launched as an AI-directed social experiment, told alongside twenty years of surviving technology shifts as a working artist.
MLow opens by asking Rhett Mankind to trace his path: a twenty year career as an art director across TV commercials, motion graphics, animation and branding, semi-retirement, a hiatus when his daughter was born, then the discovery of the crypto art hashtag. He had been in Bitcoin since 2013 but dismissed Ethereum as a shitcoin when it arrived, a call he now holds up as his lesson in the value of changing your mind. Crypto art gave him an unexpected second career, because for the first time a digital artist could find real collectors.
The center of the conversation is Turbo. Mankind describes it as a performance and social experiment: he removed his own ego by letting AI make every decision, starting from a 69 dollar budget. The first launch failed instantly when a bot bought the whole tiny liquidity pool, the AI never warned him, and he thought the artwork was dead. His audience of a couple hundred people overwhelmingly told him to find another way, so the AI proposed a crowdfund, he split the tokens equitably by hand among about fifty people, and everything after that came from the holders: the liquidity pools, the social spread, and exchange listings he never paid for. There is no treasury and no marketing wallet.
The back half moves through his most controversial work, Crypto Clown, which used the blockchain as a canvas to hold a mirror up to a space where people were sending money to random wallets. Bad timing next to a fake charity scandal turned the piece into a backlash: the first post of his explanation thread got half a million views while the rest got 10 to 20 thousand, and he estimates 96 percent of people never read far enough to understand it. From there the conversation widens into what makes meme coins and artworks succeed, why AI is technology rather than a trend, and how a career that began making logos in gouache taught him never to rest a livelihood on the current tool.
What this episode teaches
- Learn to change your mind
Mankind was in Bitcoin from 2013 and dismissed Ethereum as a shitcoin not worth his time. Seeing art and crypto converge reversed him completely, and he names the ability to change your mind as the lesson that made his second career possible.
- Remove your ego and let the work run
For Turbo he refused his art director instinct of controlling every pixel and let AI make every decision while he acted only as a conduit to the audience. Once a work launches it belongs to the world anyway; the viewers decide what it is worth.
- Fair launches create organic movement
His recipe for a meme coin that survives: no VCs, no secret team taking half the supply, no treasury or marketing wallet. Fairness produces the organic growth that shows up in charts and holder counts, and that organic movement is what exchanges and bigger voices eventually respond to.
- The initial dump is a filter
Turbo dropped roughly 70 to 80 percent and the Crypto Clown vitriol pushed it down another 10 to 20 percent. Mankind argues almost every token needs that first dump to wipe out people who came for the wrong reasons, leaving the holders and builders who actually care.
- Most people never read past the headline
The first post of his Crypto Clown explanation thread drew half a million views; every later post got 10 to 20 thousand. By his math 96 percent of viewers never read enough to understand the piece, so assume your context will not travel with your work.
- Successful art changes perspective
His test for a successful artwork is whether it makes the viewer contemplate something and reassess how they saw it before, the way Banksy turned what looked like vandalism into a lens on war and corporations.
- Never rest a career on the current tool
He watched film photography collapse a portrait photographer's business, and watched Photoshop web design vanish as a job. His rule: a job that did not exist when you were born will probably not exist forever, so keep embracing the next technology.
- Small steps beat big plans when you stall
When elaborate projects stagnate he falls back to tiny daily steps he knows he can finish, the habit he built doing everyday 3D artworks. Slow progress is still progress, and a month of it makes quitting feel impossible.
The conversation, topic by topic
From art director to crypto artist
Mankind spent twenty years as an art director across TV commercials, motion graphics, animation and branding, then semi-retired and took a hiatus when his daughter was born. In Bitcoin since 2013, he dismissed Ethereum at first, then went all in when he saw art and crypto joining, calling crypto art an unexpected second career with real collectors he never thought a digital artist could reach.
Digital artist versus crypto artist
His definitions: a digital artist needs no financial incentive and no crypto connection at all, only natively digital work, unlike physical painters in gouache or pencil. A crypto artist merges the work with cryptocurrency anywhere on a spectrum, from using the blockchain itself as canvas and medium to simply selling an animation for crypto. MLow agrees, adding that as a trained photographer he had clients but never collectors before crypto art.
Turbo as social experiment
Mankind set a 69 dollar budget and let AI make every decision to remove his own ego, positioning himself as a conduit between the AI and his audience. Deploying the contract cost a couple hundred dollars and blew the budget, and the first launch failed fatally: with only about 60 dollars of liquidity, one bot bought the entire pool immediately, something the AI never warned him about.
The crowdfund relaunch
He asked his audience of a couple hundred people whether to quit or push on, and they overwhelmingly said find another way. The AI suggested a crowdfund with zero budget, so anyone who sent ETH got tokens split equitably by how much they sent. With only about fifty participants he transferred every allocation manually, then stepped back to watch what holders would do.
Holders built everything after launch
One or two holders started a small liquidity pool, others learned how to add to it, bigger holders backed it, and volume on a single Uniswap pool reached many millions of dollars. Smaller exchanges then listed Turbo for free to earn transaction fees and bigger ones followed. Mankind stresses he paid no listing fees and kept no treasury, likening the structure to Bitcoin with no centralized team.
AI in the creative process
He now turns to AI in almost every piece, for names, descriptions, blocking out images and finding stylistic direction. He does not expect it to homogenize personal art; he sees it helping artists get where they were already going faster, and as the cure for a blank canvas. You do not have to lean on it to the end degree the way he did with Turbo.
Satire and withholding judgment
He uses satire less than he used to after hard lessons about how trading-signal audiences misread it, though he refuses to strip humor out entirely. He has also stopped judging low effort NFTs and meme coins: the market decides value, the real damage is people trying to stop others from making things, and if the work is fun and serves its maker, good for them.
Crypto Clown and the backlash
His most controversial and favorite work used the blockchain as canvas: people sent money to a clown wallet, mirroring how the space was sending funds to random addresses, with the funds used to auction the artwork and then returned so every token was free. He launched the day after a fake hospital charity scandal, and angry viewers who lost money elsewhere read him as a scammer, so he compressed a week of planned performance into a single day.
The thread nobody read
The first post of his rationale thread got half a million views while every post under it got 10 to 20 thousand, which he reads as 96 percent of people never reading the whole thread. He accepts some people will always think he stole money, calls it a small vocal minority, and says he is still proud of the project and of what it taught him about interpretation.
The dump that cleans a token
Turbo had already fallen 70 to 80 percent when the Clown backlash hit, and the vitriol became a self fulfilling prophecy that pushed it down another 10 to 20 percent before bottoming. He argues the initial dump wipes out toxic holders, leaving people who care plus builders, and notes he cannot rug the token: exchanges hold far more than he does and his own tokens sat untouched for six months to a year while people still accused him of dumping.
What makes a meme coin succeed
Two requirements: a fair launch with no VCs or celeb team taking half the supply, so organic movement can show in the charts, and a strong story or lore, a reason for being. He points to Doge, whose dog had recently passed away, as a meme with lasting DNA, and describes success as reaching people, not just market cap, with influencers only amplifying what smaller voices already found funny.
What makes art succeed
Beyond the private success of getting something out of your own work, he says great art changes perspective and forces contemplation, citing Banksy turning graffiti into commentary on war and corporations, alongside Leonardo da Vinci. That reassessment is what he strives for in his own work.
Trends, freedom and pump.fun
Surveying the cycle he sees no clear next big thing: celeb coins grew out of meme coins, which grew out of shitcoins. What he defends is the permissionless freedom for anyone to create their own currency, even expecting 99 percent to go to zero, while condemning deliberate rugs. He has watched pump.fun without ever using it and accepts the market has decided people want to gamble there.
AI disruption and career resilience
He calls AI technology rather than a trend, past the phase where adding AI to a name made anything pump. On the vitriol from traditional artists, he thinks the job fear is justified but shaming users is wrong, drawing on his own history: film photography killed a colleague's portrait business, Web 2.0 killed his Photoshop web design skills, and he once painted logos in gouache. He closes with his resilience habits: small incremental daily steps, note taking over journaling, and reading his timeline like wind direction for what to make and what to avoid.
In their words
“I learned later on the value of being able to change your mind.”
Rhett Mankind“As long as you're natively creating work digitally, you're a digital artist.”
Rhett Mankind“I was like, 96% of people never read the whole thread to even understand it.”
Rhett Mankind“Why am I so arrogant to think it's going to exist in a few years time?”
Rhett Mankind“Just keep the small, slow progress. Slow progress is still progress.”
Rhett MankindCite this conversation
Rhett Mankind in conversation with MLow, "MLow X Rhett Mankind," The MLow Show, unaired recording, 16 Jul 2024. https://show.mlow.xyz/e/2024-07-16-mlow-x-rhett-mankind.html. Quoted from a machine transcript.
Quotations come from machine transcripts. Check wording against the audio before republishing.