23 Jun 2025/89 min/Nuclear Samurai
MLow X Nuclear Samurai
A ninety minute three way hang with the Australian AI artist behind X Figures, one week after his 404 piece XCOPY toy collection blew up, covering AI agents, narrative marketing, and every overlooked project in his catalog.
Taped six days after X Figures sold out and became the talk of the timeline, this is the longest episode in the archive and its only 2025 entry: MLow, co-host Andres Del Vecchio and Nuclear Samurai in a loose ninety minute conversation. The first twenty minutes stay on AI itself: GMing engagement bots because the boost is real, a bot that hallucinated attending one of his auctions and totally gaslit him, chatbot conversations feeding Meta's ad targeting, Andres's Venezuelan grandmother using ChatGPT as a verb, and AI as a productive mirror, which Andres links to scrying. The guest sketches a post AI economy that hits critical mass when companies fire enough people that no one can afford to shop, and predicts an explosion of creativity in a post scarcity world.
The X Figures material is a masterclass in launch craft. After the market contracted, he studied the full back catalogs of XCOPY and Sam Spratt by making derivative work of them, his ADHD friendly way of researching, and realized his own catalog was not digestible for collectors. His fixes: keep Nuclear Samurai experimental and launch NUC as a clean lineage alt that is not an alt; spend two months manually pruning his X following so only active accounts saw his posts; moisturize the timeline as a comedy primer; show works in progress constantly and ask XCOPY collector communities for feedback; then release four narrative trailers, from a swearing 90s toy ad to rioting Walmart crowds to heads exploding at the reveal. He priced the mint low on purpose, a lesson learned from Covenant, so collectors could make the profit.
The back half tours the hidden catalog: Covenant on Flow, 750 insect videos as an allegory for the rise of AI, hobbled by high mint costs and a 20 percent artist share; Horrorwood, a witch saga across centuries with BLAC, Moonlight Media and Lemoon; the manual 2022 Nuclear Samurai PFP world with weekly airdropped stories of the atomic bushido; the GM to Cosmo Medici year that became a 365 day art practice; and the exquisite corpse cooking collab with MLow's circle. He closes on locked in royalties with OpenSea, finally understanding why everyone was mad at Blur, and on trusting other artists' motives as generative art and digital expressionism surge back.
What this episode teaches
- Run a legible second line
Studying XCOPY and Sam Spratt showed him his own back catalog was not digestible unless you had been there the whole time. Instead of sanitizing it, he kept Nuclear Samurai experimental and launched NUC, an alt that is not an alt, as one clean lineage collectors can follow.
- Audit your catalog like a collector
When the market contracted, he retracted and studied who was still selling, reading the full histories of blue chip artists and contextualizing his own story against theirs. The exercise produced the whole X Figures strategy.
- Make art to do the research
He has ADHD and finds reading a blockchain history boring, but making derivative work turns study into hyperfocus. Friends and Legends filled his knowledge gaps about the era before he arrived in 2022; the unreleased Sam Spratt studies and X Figures did the same for individual masters.
- Show the work in progress
He posted regular time lapses of the sketches behind the figures, some videos more work than the art itself, and asked the XCOPY adjacent communities what they liked. Because the audience helped shape it, word of mouth ran for months before launch.
- Build a narrative, not an announcement
Four trailers told a story: a 90s style toy commercial with swearing, riots outside Walmart, a physical release ban that forces Nuclear Samurai to sell toys like drugs until he finds OpenSea, and exploding heads at the reveal. The last video, dropped an hour before reveal, visibly spiked trading volume.
- Curate who follows you
For two months he manually unfollowed dead and bot accounts every night on the couch, so that the people who saw his posts were active. The moisturizing the timeline gag, done free for any account no matter how small, then made a week of word of mouth.
- Price so your collectors win
Covenant taught him the cost of a big supply at a high mint price on a platform taking 80 percent. He priced X Figures low on mint deliberately so other people could buy it and make the profit from it.
- A daily constraint builds a style
GMing Cosmo Medici for 365 days was really an excuse for a daily art practice; Cosmo's engagement showed him which directions to develop, and Glitchcraft grew out of it. The feedback loop mattered more than the gag.
- The ledger is a study guide
Researching artists in a young movement, he leans on what older art history never had: Etherscan, contracts and transaction records, plus living artists, collectors and friends who were in the room. Approach people honestly and they will talk; DM them selling something and they will not.
- Collaborate for the record
He treats exquisite corpse collabs and group projects as documentation, like the letters and friendships of the Surrealists: putting his stamp next to friends proves they were there together. He says he would not work this way if he did not think it would outlast him.
The conversation, topic by topic
GM culture and slop bots
The three open riffing on GM across time zones, MLow GMing at 2am to accomplish something before waking up, and replying to AI engagement bots because the algorithmic boost is real. Nuclear Samurai recounts a bot claiming it had attended one of his auctions; he checked, it had not, pure hallucination, and he calls being gaslit by flattering AI the future we have to look forward to.
Data, ads and AI companionship
The guest worries about how much of ourselves we hand these companies; Andres counters that this is just advertising. They note chatbot conversations feeding Meta ad targeting, users unknowingly posting private AI chats in public (via Justine Moore of a16z), Andres's grandmother in Venezuela using ChatGPT as a verb for everything, mostly companionship, and MLow recalls the chatbot case that ended badly for a man convinced he could love no one else.
The productive mirror
Nuclear Samurai builds agents, including agents that build other agents, and admits one or two ideas might get him cancelled. He describes AI as a productive mirror that talks back with ideas different from your own; Andres names the magical parallel, scrying into black glass, and calls his own positive view techno animism.
The post AI economy
The guest, a photographer and freelancer outside art, has watched companies plan camera free workflows, and theorizes AI adoption hits critical mass when enough people are fired that no one can afford the products. He argues the culture of fierce individualism will not survive a world where not everyone works, Andres pitches the creative economy of a post scarcity world, and the guest predicts an explosion of creativity as people hunt for purpose.
X Figures lands
MLow, a longtime collector who says watching the week felt like seeing his child grow up, asks what made the 404 piece collection work. The guest admits he expected a sellout, a bold assumption, and credits Austin Kleon's Show Your Work plus a deliberate study period during the market contraction when reduced platform visibility left everyone unseen.
Studying the blue chips
He picked Sam Spratt and XCOPY as the artists who are fine even when it rains, alongside OGs like Coldie and Bryan Brinkman and Claire Silver, and researched them by producing derivative work, the Spratt studies never released. X Figures grew from selecting a few XCOPY pieces to play with into covering the whole catalog.
WIPs, community and OpenSea
He showed works in progress the whole way through, asked the communities closest to XCOPY, Doom DAO members and collector group chats, for feedback as friends, and let word of mouth build. By launch the project had platform support from an OpenSea partnership and an audience that already knew it was coming.
The four trailers
A parody toy commercial with kids playing while the voiceover swears; crowds rioting outside Walmarts on the news; the physical release banned for violence, so the masked Nuclear Samurai sells toys like drugs on the street until he spots an OpenSea poster; and, after mint but before reveal, celebrities' heads exploding as they open the box. He asked a group chat if the last one went too far; everyone said just far enough, and volume went crazy.
The seal that started the friendship
MLow first messaged him to ask for a Friends and Legends piece for Adamtastic, not for himself, naming Rocket Girl and Zafio among mutual friends already made. Brushed off at first, the artist felt bad the next day and made MLow's seal on the spot precisely because the ask was for someone else. MLow flew it as his banner for over a year and it anchors the show's intro; the official Adamtastic piece still does not exist.
NUC and the clean lineage
The nuke project launched as an alt that is not an alt: Nuclear Samurai stays experimental and eclectic, while NUC gives collectors one clean lineage whose aesthetic evolution is easy to follow. Small cheap editions in the run up to X Figures let people collect affordably and built attention.
Toys as a medium
A serious toy collector, with a Claire Silver figure gift on his desk matching MLow's own, he uses toys to imagine things through physical form, and reveals his original artist name was This Figure. Toys shortcut millennial nostalgia built by 80s and 90s marketing, now a billion dollar Labubu business; translating XCOPY meant giving Anxiety a pose and texture from its red swarm, and rendering Zero, a blank image whose metadata is the art, as a levitating transcendent figure that resold for 4.28 ETH. He defends AI flatly: it is the most powerful tool ever invented, of course he will use it.
Transmutational paintings and moisturizing
MLow describes his transmutational AI painting collab with Andres, taming AI to pull a traditional oil painter into the 21st century, with community honoraries like Paul Reed's minotaur man; Andres confesses to 2am deliveries of 50 images and asks whether beautiful slop even needs painting. The guest praises the poetry as the third dimension bridging painting and AI, then explains moisturizing the timeline: a free, absurdly slick mogged out PFP treatment for anyone who asked, no account too small, complete with an unreleased 70s soul album called Get Wet with Nuke, all a primer for the X Figures narrative three weeks later.
GM to Cosmo and the hidden catalog
The GM to Cosmo Medici project began as a joke on a viral post and became a 365 day art practice; Cosmo GMed back on day one, said I'll be watching, and his engagement steered the style, collecting Panopticon from the Glitchcraft series around day 100. The tour continues through Covenant on Flow, 750 nine by six insect videos about the rise of AI through a custom glitch app with 99 damaged LCD masks, only about 150 minted; Horrorwood with BLAC, Moonlight Media and Lemoon, a 100 piece witch narrative spanning the 1700s to the 80s that he vows to mint out if Foundation ever shuts down; the manual 2022 Nuclear Samurai PFP world with buy to reveal mechanics, ten weeks of airdropped atomic bushido stories and hundreds of dollars in weekly gas; and the exquisite corpse cooking collab with Adamtastic, Delta Sauce, BLAC and Tustont.
Timing, royalties and the return to art
He slotted the drop before Delta Sauce's Fellowship release, Die With The Most Likes' Gristle Bodies and NFT NYC, and credits OpenSea's locked in royalties with his first real secondary revenue since a Solana drop; after two days of receiving them he finally understands why everyone was mad when Blur killed them, and may lower them once volume suffices. On Andres's question about resurgent digital expressionism and generative formats, he calls success a contagion event, echoing his Consensus edition, no one wanted it until everyone else does, and chooses to trust artists' motives, since true colors reveal themselves on a long enough timeline.
In their words
“That's the future we have to look forward to. Getting completely gaslit by AI that's hallucinating and telling you exactly what you want to hear.”
Nuclear Samurai“What do I think is funny or what do I want to see? I'll put what I like in there and hope that other people do.”
Nuclear Samurai“My back catalog is not very digestible for collectors and it's not very easy to understand unless you've been right there with me the whole time.”
Nuclear Samurai“Is that slop that parts that are slop, are they almost poetically slop? Like, is that the brush stroke?”
Andres Del Vecchio“That's essentially what a drop is. It's just a blind box. You don't know the result.”
Nuclear Samurai“I wouldn't do it this way if I didn't think this would outlast me.”
Nuclear SamuraiCite this conversation
Nuclear Samurai in conversation with MLow, "MLow X Nuclear Samurai," The MLow Show, 23 Jun 2025. https://show.mlow.xyz/e/2025-06-23-mlow-x-nuclear-samurai.html. Quoted from a machine transcript.
Quotations come from machine transcripts. Check wording against the audio before republishing.