20 Sep 2024/53 min/Punk7635 (Artie Hands ) of Verse Works +
MLow x Punk7635 (Artie Hands 🖼️💎🙌) of Verse Works +
A recently doxxed curator at Verse explains how NBA Top Shot led him to fine art, and how he curates shows the way a producer sequences an album.
Punk7635, real name Jay, is a former lawyer turned full time curator and marketer at Verse, working London hours from Marin County with three young sons and a 5:30am alarm. He entered in December 2020 when a friend asked him about NBA Top Shot. A basketball fan with an MBA paper on digital assets already behind him, he bought a few moments, made money, funded an Ethereum wallet a month later, and arrived just as the Nifty Gateway boom was peaking. Bored Ape profits became art he loves, and he quickly filed the rest under casino.
The heart of the conversation is curation. Jay treats every show as an album: cohesive, sequenced, with moving parts arranged on purpose. For Sean Keenan's show about Casper, Wyoming, a town Sean had never visited but Jay knows from his family's fifth generation cattle ranch about 150 miles away, he played producer, pushing and pulling between Sean's unhinged inventions and real landmarks that ground the work. He cites the Brian Eno generative film as a model, and contrasts it with Frank Manzano, where his only note was to keep cooking. On air he announces his next show, basketball themed works by Pale Carril, before his own Twitter thread went out.
MLow and a co-host, addressed as Dre, push him on collecting itself. Jay's sharpest line is that it is really hard to collect in your own voice while everyone chases metas. He describes discovery as liberal follows and reverse searching who artists follow and retweet, argues the amateur collector base makes long term valuations suspect, buys heavily on Tezos and Objkt for value, and lands on the old advice: luck got him a CryptoPunk, but showing up every day with something of value is what compounds.
What this episode teaches
- Collect in your own voice
Jay says most people chase metas and waves, this artist is hot now, without thinking about what they are collecting or building. Reacting to heat produces a wallet, not a collection.
- Collectibles are a legitimate on-ramp
Digital basketball cards gave a nervous newcomer a reason to fund a wallet, and the art followed. Jay calls Top Shot the right string to pull out of his sweater to unravel.
- Curate in album units
Treat a show as a sequenced body of work, cohesive and thoughtful, not a set of listings. Jay explicitly works album by album and borrows the producer role from music, citing the Eno film as inspiration.
- Match the note to the artist
With Sean Keenan he reined the work in and grounded fantasy in real Wyoming landmarks. With Frank Manzano his only note was to keep cooking and send extras to choose from. The curator's job changes per artist.
- The personal story is the marketing
For the Pale Carril basketball show he plans to lead with why both he and the artist love basketball, not the artist's CV. If there is nothing personal, promotion feels like selling, and he hates selling what he does not believe in.
- Physical companions widen access
A small edition book of a 40 to 50 piece series lets a collector priced out of the works own the whole thing cheaply, and postcards suited the location based Wyoming show. Books also signal an artist takes the work seriously.
- Luck plus daily presence
Jay credits a cheap early CryptoPunk to luck, but the repeatable part was showing up every day, tweeting, engaging, retweeting art, and bringing some value daily. He says it comes back tenfold in a space this small.
- Distrust today's prices
With a mostly amateur collector base, Jay is skeptical that a 25 ETH floor means anything in ten years. He collects against the flow, favors Tezos and Objkt for value, and falls back on buying what you love and can afford.
The conversation, topic by topic
Doxxing and daily life
Jay recently doxxed on OG's show, taped with OG and Jules; OG lives 15 minutes from him in Marin. He works for Verse, based in London, so his day starts at 5:30am before the school run for his three boys, aged six, three and two.
From Top Shot to art
A friend's December 2020 message about NBA Top Shot hooked a basketball fan who had written an MBA paper on digital assets and banking. He made money, funded an ETH wallet a month later, saw the Nifty Gateway boom with Trevor Jones pieces selling for a million dollars, and converted Bored Ape profits into art. The rest, he says, was a casino to some degree.
A museum and Rangers childhood
His mother kept hundreds of art books on the tables, wove rugs on a big loom by the pool, and traded outings with him: he made her watch Rangers games, she took him to museums. Twenty years later, he says, it all soaked in.
Sports collecting versus art collecting
Jay sees the same speculation in both: buying rookie cards of a player you think will be big maps onto buying early pieces of an artist you want to represent. The financial incentive sits inside the art market either way.
The Casper, Wyoming show with Sean Keenan
Jay found Sean Keenan on Twitter making work about Casper, Wyoming, a town Sean had never seen but which sits about 150 miles from Jay's fifth generation family cattle ranch, where he has branded cattle every summer since age five. The show plays real landmarks against Sean's wild inventions, and MLow says the result feels both manic and strangely loving.
Curator as producer
Jay saw the Eno generative documentary right before the show and took inspiration from how a producer gets things out of, into, or through an artist. This show was his most personal because he saw a story Sean had not yet seen in himself. With Frank Manzano, by contrast, he had no notes at all.
Announcing the Pale Carril show
Jay announces his next Artie Gallery show on air, ahead of his own thread: basketball themed stills by Pale Carril, courts twisted into strange perspectives that look almost generative but alive, a series of roughly 40 to 50 works, with a physical book planned. Pale Carril had been making basketball work and waiting to approach him; Jay says he had him at hello.
Postcards from Wyoming
Jay holds up artist postcards made for the Wyoming show, QR codes on the back, some mailed from his summer vacation in Spain, and offers to send the hosts a set. The hosts, both fans of the artist postcard, are delighted.
LA to Marin
Jay lived in LA across three stints, went to USC, and expected to stay, but three kids, Venice school costs and no nearby family pushed the move to Marin, where his wife has extended family. Nightlife ended at 8:30pm, but he is 12 minutes from Muir Woods, and the Bay scene is real: he recently met Coldie and had beers with Michael Neff.
Discovery and honing the eye
Jay follows liberally when something stops his scroll, ignores follower counts, and digs into what excites him. He reverse searches who artists follow and retweet, a Twitter version of the Wikipedia three click game, and occasionally spends hours browsing what a collector like Nico Arbogast bought on Tezos. He believes the more art you see, the better you evaluate it.
Forum, gallery and casino at once
MLow's co-host notes crypto art Twitter functions as gallery, art forum, casino and shitposting den at once, with artists running alternate identities to talk smack. Jay adds the underdog glue: an us against trad art mentality and years of shared dramatic experiences that make very strong bonds.
Trad art mirrors the cycle
Prompted by reports of artists falling from six figure to four and five figure prices, Jay rejects crypto exceptionalism: the trad art cycle mirrors the crypto cycle, which mirrors the financial cycle, because humans speculate. When the printer was on during COVID, people had money and time, so it went nuts.
Advice and the amateur question
Asked how he made it, Jay gives two answers: he got lucky buying a CryptoPunk before they were expensive, and he showed up every day bringing value. MLow asks how amateur dominated collecting affects long term value; Jay answers that it just makes everything riskier and he would not trust current floors to mean anything in ten years.
Where the money goes
Jay buys a lot on Tezos and Objkt, one of tens for 10 or 15 dollars, and dislikes free or tiny fee mints: even 10 Tezos feels like something, especially for artists in Latin America. He closes on the Artnome rule, buy what you love and can afford, while MLow mourns CryptoDickbutts as the one that got away.
In their words
“Even now, it's really hard to collect in your own voice. I think most people are just chasing metas and waves.”
Punk7635“It was that play and that interaction there is where we found the right mix.”
Punk7635“I firmly believe in the more art you see, the better you get at evaluating it.”
Punk7635“We sometimes think we're special or different here, but the trad art cycle mirrors our cycle, which mirrors the financial market cycle, because it's boom and bust.”
Punk7635“I just showed up every day. I tweeted every day, I tried to engage with some people or retweet art every day, just try to bring some level of value every day.”
Punk7635Cite this conversation
Punk7635 (Artie Hands ) of Verse Works + in conversation with MLow, "MLow x Punk7635 (Artie Hands 🖼️💎🙌) of Verse Works +," The MLow Show, 20 Sep 2024. https://show.mlow.xyz/e/2024-09-20-mlow-x-punk7635-artie-hands-of-verse-works.html. Quoted from a machine transcript.
Quotations come from machine transcripts. Check wording against the audio before republishing.