S10 E11: Rare Scrilla on DJPEPE, Music NFTs & Why Counterparty Is King

0:48Vlad CosteaWelcome to Season 10, Episode 11 of the Bitcoin Takeover Podcast. I am Vlad, and my guest today has the ability to stay awake for days, has strong hands, can spin vinyl or Serato, uses turntable as instrument, is worthless during daytime, email signature has 750 links to mixes, takes no requests, and has 100% chances to steal your girl. His name is JScrilla. You have heard him before; I think he's the 12th guest to be featured for the second time on the podcast. And the last time he was on the show, he mentioned something about Counterparty and releasing his record, which is called Sound Money, also as a Counterparty NFT.

1:40At the time, he was way ahead of, you know, the adoption curve, and nobody really knew what NFTs were or cared too much about them. But right now, if you want to buy a DJPEPE card on Counterparty, that's like $9,000, which is insane. He was giving them away for free not so long ago. So hello, Mr. Scrilla. What's going on?

2:05Rare ScrillaGlad to be here, Vlad. So yeah, I'm on daddy duty at the same time, all of a sudden. We should be all right. Yeah, so I've been going more by, not more by, but I've gone by Rare Scrilla pretty much since we last linked up. I kind of went over more to like the Web3 name, where everything's about being rare.

2:28Vlad CosteaYeah, so I first knew you as DJ Scrilla, but more people today know you as DJPEPE.

2:37Rare ScrillaNo, no, no. See, that's, I like to clear that up. So, and I appreciate the intro. So DJPEPE is, I manage DJPEPE. DJPEPE is a memetic creation in the blockchain and block 4,000, or 432,100, what is it? Block 434,102, I believe, of the Bitcoin blockchain.

3:01Vlad CosteaThat's actually right, 434102.

3:06Rare ScrillaYeah, so I just manage the DJ, and yeah, that's it. So some people would say, like, DJPEPE is like Drunk JScrilla or something, but who knows what that really means. I like to make sure that I'm not DJPEPE. I literally manage DJPEPE.

3:25Vlad CosteaYes, and it's not a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation either.

3:29Rare ScrillaNo, I know, because it's a meme, and you know, a human cannot live in a blockchain.

3:37Vlad CosteaWell, can't he? Like, there's all of this metaverse discussion.

3:42Rare ScrillaYeah, but you know, DJPEPE lives in the mempool. He pretty much just holds down that block and, like, DJs, you know, for everybody in the transit, in the mempool. So he's been getting a lot of, like, the parties have been popping lately, because it takes like 13 hours, like, you know, blocking right now, to put in like seven sats per byte, which is pretty normal for a Counterparty transaction.

4:09Vlad CosteaYes, and at the same time, the more blocks get added, the more secure the situation of DJPEPE becomes. Like, it's as if every block is an extra bodyguard for him.

4:21Rare ScrillaAbsolutely. And you know, actually, I found an article I wrote a couple years ago about how DJPEPE could also be looked at as like a use case for, like, parallel universes as well. Because DJPEPE, obviously, you know, everybody knows DJPEPE on the Bitcoin blockchain, but then there's been, you know, probably 90 forks at least of that since DJPEPE came out. So if you spun up an XCP node on any of those other crappier Bitcoin blockchains, you might have, like, some kind of... Like, my son doesn't like when I talk about other Bitcoin chains.

5:01Vlad CosteaWell, you taught him well. That's a Bitcoin maximalist in the making right there.

5:08Rare ScrillaBut it's kind of interesting, I guess. In the article I was explaining how, like, you know, you could have, like, you have DJPEPE on all the other chains, but, like, it just wouldn't be as alpha. It'd be like a beta version of DJPEPE.

5:22Vlad CosteaObviously. Just like in the Marvel universe, you have Peter Parker, who is in that multiverse, and there's only one Peter Parker who gets Mary Jane and has all of that story arc that we know. In all of the other parallel universes, he's either a loser or the kind of loser who gets it all from birth and doesn't have to work for it. So the perfect one is the original.

5:48Rare ScrillaFacts. Not yet, I agree.

5:53Vlad CosteaI'm also looking right now at other NFTs on Counterparty that are named after DJPEPE.

6:03There's BUYINGDJPEPE, which was made a month ago. There's DANKDJPEPE, which was made 11 days ago. There's FAKEDJPEPE, which was made three months ago. It's like everyone wants to get a piece of DJPEPE. It's kind of funny.

6:22Rare ScrillaYeah, FAKEDJPEPE is actually... So the story of DJPEPE is, I created that, you know, almost five and a half years ago, probably, whatever, five years, October 2016. And DJ Qbert is the subject matter of that. You know, he's my favorite DJ, like scratch DJ and stuff. He's like one of the greatest turntablists, kind of like showed the world what turntables could be, him and the whole Skratch Piklz. And so I made DJPEPE. I took his image, his likeness, and frogged him out. So DJPEPE is kind of like Qbert, right? And Qbert, I saw, got into the NFT space last summer. Qbert got down into the NFT space last summer. You know, I reached out to a mutual friend. I was like, you know, does he know about DJPEPE? And he's like, oh yeah, he's a fan, blah, blah. I was like, oh man, I need to get him a DJPEPE. And you know, DJPEPE was like selling for like around, like, I don't know, probably like 20 or 30 grand at the time. So I think he was like, just like, wow, okay, that's crazy. I sent him a DJPEPE, and you know, we talked, and we've been... I mean, we've worked on a bunch of stuff since. And you know, he's released, like, cards on XCP now. Like, Qbert's, like, full, like, turntable community has, like, come over to, like, Fake Rares and stuff. And we released FAKEDJPEPE, which is like kind of like this, and we released it, like, on the five-year anniversary of DJPEPE. So it was kind of like, you know, like a full-circle thing. Like, Qbert came and, like, it shows the story. And Qbert actually wrote all the text for DJPEPE, or for the FAKEDJPEPE. So I thought that was pretty cool.

8:07Vlad CosteaOh yeah. So this one: "100% stole your girl." So this was a certainty, which already happened. "Allows you to scratch in space, access to galaxy internet, makes nipples glow, levitates your panties," or levitates, levitates your panties, "can see through clothes, power to make anyone pee, and has the ultimate diamond hands." Yeah.

8:37Rare ScrillaSo you know, Qbert, Qbert's a character, man. So, like, he got to, like, really, I think, flex his humor and stuff on that one. And he's made two Fake Rares ever since. One just got airdropped to DJPEPE and FAKEDJPEPE holders, and the other one, I think he's releasing, like, in the next, like, week or so.

9:01Vlad CosteaOh man, these cards are expensive. Like, even the FAKEDJPEPE is $2,300 right now. It's insane.

9:10Rare ScrillaYeah, it's pretty nuts. You know, we've given away quite a few of them as well, but there's people out there that, you know, can sell them, all that. Vlad, one second, man. I gotta handle this real quick.

9:27Vlad CosteaYes, sir. No problem. The kid is going here. I'll put an ad here.

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13:17Rare ScrillaAll right, man. Sorry, it's a little hectic.

13:20Vlad CosteaI think your kid wants a DJPEPE card.

13:24Rare ScrillaHe has one. He has a wallet secured with a DJPEPE, a FAKEDJPEPE, and a few of my other cards.

13:32Vlad CosteaOh, that's very nice of you. But it sounded as if he was jealous that he could not know what we're talking about and get access to his cards.

13:42Rare ScrillaWell, he sees me with headphones on and talking to this phallic-looking thing, so he's probably wondering what the hell is going on.

13:52Vlad CosteaIt should be strange from the eyes of an alien or a kid.

13:58Rare ScrillaFor sure. Yeah, you saw the DJPEPE, the FAKEDJPEPE; they have a bunch of sub-assets. Like, even the DJPEPE.SOUNDMONEY 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. Like, those were all NFTs. I sold the first 21 editions of the Sound Money vinyl, and I, like, NFT'd them. I drew a picture on the vinyl and, like, kind of like cemented that as, like, the one-of-one, and, like, took a picture of it, made an NFT, and then put it through the DJPEPE, like, kind of like the brand, or the provenance, of DJPEPE, and put it out there. And the NFT holds the picture of the vinyl with the picture. Like, you know, I made it with marker and stuff, so it bleeds, like, a certain way and all that, so that you're not gonna replicate it. So, like, there's no way, unless you're, like, just stupid savvy, to, like, I think, duplicate that.

14:53And obviously, you know, I don't know if that's... I'm not saying I'm, like, the Mozart or the, you know, anything, but, like, that's just a use case of, like, NFTs and stuff. And, you know, people appreciated it, I think, a lot. They were willing to pay quite a bit, and it showed a good use case for selling. Back to, like, the Sound Money album: after I talked to you, over the next 18 months, I put the album... You know, like I said, it's a niche album, hip-hop about Bitcoin. Literally, dude, there's, like, you know, maybe 200 people in the world that, like, even care about it like that. Because most Bitcoiners aren't, like, hip-hoppers, I don't think. But they are there. And not only is it hip-hop, but it's, like, underground, like, kind of like DJ Shadow-esque, kind of like turntables, and it's definitely its own thing.

15:48And so by doing it with the NFTs and doing it with Bitcoin, and kind of getting in the community, it enabled me to, like, do a project that I was passionate about and earn off of it. And kind of like, you know, really, like, just put... I put the project out just over 18 months ago. I've never moved it. Anytime I... You know, I guess what I'm trying to say is, like, to have legs for 18 months for an independent album like that, and, like, you know, show how you can, like, earn off it with NFTs and proof-of-purchase album, or proof-of-purchase NFTs, like one-of-one audio-reactive NFTs.

16:29The vinyl NFTs, just the... I did seven-inch vinyl without NFTs. I did a whole, like, art piece with, like, Scarce.City, where I made, like, a framed gold record thing. I put sub-assets. I did a lot. Like, I did it with, you know, SuperRare. I did it with XCP. I think I might have done it with another chain too. But it's just, like, the power that it has, like, to just kind of, like, keep... I don't know, I don't really know what I'm saying, I guess, but it definitely had a life that it wouldn't have had without, like, Bitcoin NFTs and the community.

17:09So I'm truly grateful for that. And it kind of, like, opened my eyes to a lot of things. Like, even, like, you know, I dropped really, like... Dude, this, like, 2021 was, like, literally my biggest, like, year of music of all time. But most people wouldn't even, like, see that, because I was heavy in the NFTs and Bitcoin stuff. But, you know, I had projects out with, like, you know, over, like, 15 million streams and stuff like that, at least. And those projects, both, like, the Pyrex Picasso album by Benny the Butcher, you know, I did the artwork and produced half that album.

17:47And, you know, it had legs for, like, a month and a half, maybe a month. And then I did an album with Rome Streetz and Ankhlejohn, who are really big in the underground as well. And, you know, again, it had, like, legs for, like, three weeks to a month. And even with that one, I put out an NFT, a proof-of-purchase NFT. But it's kind of interesting.

18:11Vlad CosteaI think there's a lot to unpack here. So first of all, you mentioned sub-assets, which is something that you can do on Counterparty. How do they work? Because I feel like this is the kind of rabbit hole that I haven't yet explored.

18:26Rare ScrillaSo, if you, yeah, this is very, this is very good, actually. So asset ownership is like a thing on XCP that you don't find on Ethereum, that I know of. So it's almost like, you know, you saw the ENS airdrop or whatever. ENS domains are going crazy on ETH. You see the NFTs going crazy. And what this is, XCP: when you create a token, you create the token, the ownership of it. But then you also create how many of these tokens you want to do. So you can do anywhere from zero to, I think, like, 999,999 billion or something like that.

19:11So if you, you know, if I sell out... Let's look at the HOMERPEPE. The HOMERPEPE is a one-of-one. And somebody's paid good money for that HOMERPEPE. It's probably, like, a priceless Pepe at this point. But somebody else owns the ownership of HOMERPEPE. In 2019, they distributed a sub-asset, HOMERPEPE.Sock. So if you were at the auction in 2019, at the Rare Pepe auction, you could actually bid on those socks, and they sold for stupid cheap. I think I got mine for, like... I mean, they're expensive for socks.

19:48I paid, like, 50 bucks, but those socks are kind of priceless now. Like, I mean, you look at the Uni... I don't know if you know about the Uniswap socks or whatever it was, but, you know, they were selling those, like, SOCKS token, and they're going for, like, a ton of money. Like, I mean, at least, like, five figures, for sure. But, you know, they were all saying, oh, this is the first, like, I don't know, sock or some shit. But, like, the HOMERPEPE did that. And the HOMERPEPE, you know, has two lives.

20:16It's one by the asset ownership and one by the collector, or holder, of it. So I'm very big on asset ownership. And I'm actually talking to a lot of people right now, just kind of explaining what asset ownership is to me, and maybe they get something out of it. But I really believe, like, the Rare Pepe provenance of the tokens from, like, 2016 and '17, you can create brands out of that, which I've been doing with DJPEPE, for sure. I started PEPEONE, which is... So I have the four hip-hop elements. There's four elements of hip-hop.

20:51And I have MC, and DJ, and graffiti, and b-boy. And, you know, the DJ one's covered. And now the PEPEONE is the graffiti one. And I've been dropping sub-assets. I have a friend helping me manage that asset now, who's big in the graffiti world. And he's reached out and gotten CES ONE, who's, like, I mean, one of the top five names of graffiti culture of all time. He's, like, the Wild Style ambassador of New York and stuff. And he dropped a Pepe free to any PEPEONE holder, like a black book drawing, which, you know, comes from, like, the provenance of PEPEONE, like the first graffiti blockchain card.

21:31And here's CES ONE giving all the people that have held the card: "Here's a joint." So that's what we're doing. We're dropping, like, graffiti Pepes through that one now. They're free. And then the idea is, with the Fake Rares, there's some graffiti artists that are doing, like, these, like, storylines, kind of based on PEPEONE, where they're going out and painting the world with Pepes. And shout out to Vandal on that. And so CES ONE and AROE ONE and some of these other guys have gone and painted the mural, the Pepe mural.

22:06And the idea is, like, people take pictures next to it. You know, it'd be a thing. And then it gets wiped, because all graffiti gets wiped at some point. But still, you have it on the blockchain. And ideally, the next step is we're going to put it in, like, a metaverse, where that will always live on. You know what I mean? So I think, like, graffiti... And I'm sorry to get a little off track, but I think graffiti is like, it's a really cool use case for, like, you know, NFTs and, like, preserving those things.

22:37Vlad CosteaYes. And something else that you mentioned that can happen is to turn your music into an NFT. And most people think of NFTs as JPEGs or GIFs, and they also confuse the token with the art itself. And they don't understand that, you know, the token is the art. thetokenistheart.com, which is a domain that was being promoted by Shawn Leary and Joe Looney. So how does that work? How can you turn your music into an NFT?

23:08Rare ScrillaSo by using Counterparty, we're, there's a couple things. Like, the good thing about, like, Fake Rares coming out is that XCP has gotten a lot more traction lately, of, like, new people using it. And they're experimenting with it. So we've had people that have made brand-new ways of, like, uploading content to Xchain. One of which is, you can attach an MP3, in, like, an unusual way I've never seen, that somebody helped make. You can look at some of the early assets in Series 1, or, like, Series 2 and Series 3, that have this. What I'm talking about is, like, an MP3 attached to an image.

23:51But lately, Arweave, Arweave, whatever it's called, it's, like, kind of like a blockchain IPFS thing. I don't know exactly what it is. People kind of describe it to me as, like, an IPFS thing, a decentralized storage thing. So we've been uploading it there and then using that in Xchain. And you're actually, you know... The Rare Pepes had a size limit of, like, at first one and a half megs, and then, I think, like, three megs, and then it went up to, like, 10 megs.

24:19With Fake Rares, I mean, people are putting up, like, you know, unlimited file sizes, gigabytes. They're putting up websites, they're putting up, you know, iframe stuff, like stuff that hasn't happened before on Xchain. And, you know, it's pretty interesting to see. And I forget where I was going with that, what your question was about.

24:40Vlad CosteaYeah, so it was a bit more on the technical side: how do you actually put the MP3s or audio files in an NFT?

24:50Rare ScrillaSo, so for XCP, what we're doing is we're using Arweave, which you can claim, like, you know, a small amount on some... Some website, it's like a faucet, not an airdrop, it's a faucet, you get it. And then you're able to upload images to Xchain, like movies and audio-reactive, or you can just upload a song. And the reason, it just stores it there, and then you can put it into, you know, the fields, the property fields in Xchain. And that's kind of what's happened.

25:25Like, people are using the property fields in a different way. They're putting in descriptions, they're putting, like, cool things in these, like, Xchain areas. And J-Dog, who's like a maintainer, he's, like, helped out a lot by, like, you know, helping people get familiar with Xchain, like, kind of building the stuff out. So, I mean, the simple answer is you use Arweave. You know, you can use Imgur as well. Like, and then, like I said, there's a... in the Fake Rare chat, I don't know the website offhand, but you can get somebody... I think his name, I can't remember, it might be Fabri, but he has a website where you just go and do an enhanced asset, like a JSON file, and you just upload your MP3, upload the image, and it'll spit you back out a JSON.

26:14And then you can see it on Xchain; it comes with the MP3 and the image. Now, for, you know, Ethereum, or some of these other ones, it's actually a lot simpler. Literally, they're, like, hosting... You know, sometimes they're either hosting the file, or they're uploading it to IPFS from their site. So if I upload it to SuperRare, it's uploading it to IPFS. And, you know, you can upload, you know, media, as long as it's under, like, 60 megabytes or something like that. And then with OpenSea, I don't know where they store. They're kind of, like, a, you know, centralized entity. They might store it in their server or something.

26:52But they're, you know, they're not really even minting it to the blockchain until you buy it. So OpenSea is a little different. I don't know, did I answer your question? I mean, it's not, it's just not... You can just upload it. I mean, any site that takes, like, file sizes, you just have to upload the file. Like, I don't think it's too hard to upload music.

27:18Vlad CosteaOh, no, so that's not the difficulty. It's just that when you issue a token on Counterparty, you have to direct it to a certain URL, to an address. And I know how to point it to Imgur, for example. That's what I have been doing. I don't know which services are actually recognized by, you know, these block explorers.

27:43Rare ScrillaYeah. All I know is Imgur and Arweave and YouTube definitely are. I'm sure there's other ones that are, but you can upload a YouTube video to Xchain as well, you know. You know, I think, like, the more places you upload it, the better it is. They just want to have the file stored somewhere. So, you know, you upload it to YouTube, you know, YouTube takes it down, it's gone. It's kind of better to find, like, you know, these, like, decentralized ways of hosting it. You know, it's kind of like a torrent thing.

28:18Vlad CosteaYeah, so I'm looking at Arweave right now. And I was thinking, on Counterparty, if it gets taken down... So for example, let's say that you upload something very offensive on Imgur or on YouTube, and it gets reported and they take it down. The token on Counterparty is still going to exist. And you can still change the description of it, so that you can point it to some other place that may store your file, so that the holders are not getting screwed in any way. So there's always this option, and it's not like if the JPEG or the GIF or the MP3 or the video on YouTube gets removed, then the NFT is gone.

29:03It's gonna be on the Bitcoin blockchain, getting secured forever. It's just that you have to find a way for its representation to continue to exist.

29:15Rare ScrillaYeah, it's interesting. Most people get into NFTs as they come in through Ethereum. And so when I show them XCP and Bitcoin stuff, their minds just get fried, because they don't understand, like, the asset ownership, the changing the description, like, all this different stuff that, I mean, really, you can do, the multi-sends, for, like, barely anything, like transaction costs. Like, everything is just, it's just crazy, the amount of things you can do with a smart contract that is pretty dumb, that has existed for, you know, almost eight years, with barely being maintained.

29:49So, like, they get confused, because there's just so much more that you can do. And I get it. But it's like, I kind of learned here first, and then went to Ethereum and minted over there afterward. And you definitely, like... Right now I'm dealing with... I started doing a crypto music everyday thing, and I started minting on a contract on Rarible that I made. And all the first four days, I minted one every day. It's, like, an audio-reactive, you know, art piece. And they all went up fine on Rarible.

30:25But when you go to look at it on OpenSea, only three of them show up. And I'm like, why did this one get flagged or something? I didn't even get a notice. Like, why is it just not showing? It's on the Ethereum chain. It's on every other site. Why is it not showing on OpenSea? And these are problems you don't have with Bitcoin. You don't have to worry about that. And a lot of the art that people... You know, a lot of the... I guess not a lot of the art, but a lot of the art that, like, crypto artists are, like, kind of, like, making, like IP art and stuff like that...

30:57You know, like, someone like Robness. He put the Bitcoin logo, which is a CC0, you know, Creative Commons use. He put it up on SuperRare back in the day. He put up the Ethereum logo too. And he tried to sell it, and they banned him, kicked him off. And the logo still lived on, like, on OpenSea and some other stuff, but not on SuperRare. So, like, I mean, I like SuperRare, but they made a bad decision back then. And they basically, like, killed the idea of, like, this decentralization shit, which obviously it wasn't. But just, like, even like that, where it wasn't offensive or anything like that.

31:35Like, let the market decide. Like, what's the problem with putting in a Bitcoin logo? Because, like, it's like art. What is art? Like, that is art. It's like, it makes you think, like, am I going to buy this Bitcoin logo that somebody else made, that's Creative Commons, but Robness, who's, like, a famous crypto artist now, like, made? So it's, like, his signature, and his thought was, like, oh, I'm going to put this up and kind of test the waters. And that's, like, the story of what you're buying there.

32:00But with all that said, it's like, you can't... With Bitcoin, it's, like, DMCA-proof, pretty much. You know, like, there's nobody that I know of, there's no marketplaces that are, like, taking stuff down. So now, you know, as far as the changing description thing, like, it's a really... I mean, there's so many use cases you can do with changing the description that people haven't touched, that I think is going to be crazy down the line. You can really make dynamic NFTs with that. You can tell a story in a different way with the changing the description and all that stuff.

32:36And, like you said, like, if there's some kind of problem with it, you can just change the description of it. With that said, if you do stuff with, like, a project, like Rare Pepe, the original 2016 to '18 version, you can't change it, because all the images are locked into Xchain. And it's, like, the layer, the final layer, however they have it. And they've made it so when you put it in a Rare Pepe, it's locked. When you put it in the Fake... I think Bitcorns and all the other ones, I think, like, it gets locked, like, you know, to a certain degree it gets locked.

33:12Even, like, Fake Rares: like, the same thing that they're doing with the Rare Pepes, they're starting to do with the Fake Rares. Like, you know, at a certain point, unless you've gotten in touch with J-Dog, which you'd have to know him, you wouldn't be able to change it. It's like, you know, if you work with a project, you might not be able to change the image unless you have, like, some, you know, talk beforehand, or some ground to work on. But if you just do, like, a, you know, a flat asset, or a flat sub-asset, like, forever you can control that, and you can always, like, make it work.

33:43Like, you could put out a song flat, and just the token is, like, you know, the song is called "Good Life." And you just put out, like, the very beginning, like, maybe, like, the music notes is the first part of it. You know, you buy this, you're going to have a journey through my song. And then you kind of, like, with every sub-asset, you update the song, and, like, they get the next version, where it's like the rough, and they get, like, maybe a few different versions of it before you mix it.

34:14And then the mastered copy. Like, this can constantly kind of change. And, like, you know, there's different things you can probably do with that that I don't think people have explored. Even, like, the memo field stuff: like, people are working with the Rare Pepes to actually try to figure out how they all are one-of-ones, and first in, first out, and see how you can actually, by using the memo field, see where the first one went. And, like, did Vlad own that one? Did Snoop Dogg own that one?

34:46Like, you're going to... It seems like they're developing some stuff where you're going to be able to actually, like, trace all that, which is pretty cool too. So it actually turns a fungible token into a non-fungible token, even with a 300 edition.

35:02Vlad CosteaYeah, that's interesting. And at the same time, I just got the idea that if you're into music and you want to release tokens for your tracks, you might as well separate each track, each instrument, individually. And for example, have a token for the drums, one for the bass, one for the guitars, one for the vocals. And you can sell them or release them separately, and anyone who takes them needs to have the entire collection to put it together and mix the tracks, so that they get the idea of the song.

35:36And the idea of the song is going to be different to them according to how they pan it, or how they add some effects to it, or how they choose to put one instrument on top of the other. Make it louder, make it softer. Just do their own mix. Even though it sounds as if you're just being, like, a lazy music producer, and you just want your listener, or you expect your listener, to be the one who does the hard work.

36:06Rare ScrillaWell, some of this thing, like, it's like a different dynamic, because you're, like, interacting more with your fans, with these NFTs, basically. At least, that's the idea. So, you know, fans, supporters, whatever you want. Like, "fans" is kind of weird to me, but you're just, yeah... Like, it's kind of like you're... Yeah, definitely. Like, if, like, you know, if Madlib, one of my favorite producers, released stems of his songs and, like, "yo, put it together," like, I would jump on that. And, like, I think a lot of people have that story, probably. Like, if such-and-such did this, of course I would try to want to recreate or remix it.

36:47And then you could put out a token. With that idea, you could put out a token, like another 100-edition token. And then you need that token to make your song that you created. And you can have a website out with everybody's different tokens. And then you can have, like, a system where it's, like, split, you know, like, where the remixer gets some and you get some. There's all types of stuff you can do. The problem is XCP has no funding, no development fund. We're working on some stuff. And I'm not, I'm not an XCP person... Like, I'm not a foundation person or anything. I don't even know if that exists.

37:22It's just, like, scattered people just trying to make XCP happen. It's not like an Ethereum Foundation, or ConsenSys, or Tezos Foundation, Solana, Whale Association, Catalina Bay, and all this weird shit. Like, it sucks that we don't have anything. But at the same time, it's, like, super organic. And it's like punk rock. It's like we just build shit that we want. It's moved slower. But I feel like it's like Bitcoin. It's, like, the tortoise in the race.

37:48Vlad CosteaNot only that, but it's gonna exist forever. I have doubts about Ethereum existing in 10 years from now. It's likely it's gonna get replaced by something else.

38:01Rare ScrillaYeah, it's so important to release on Bitcoin, I think, like, because you can still, like... With the Emblem Vaults and all this other stuff that's coming out, you can still bridge to other things and get liquidity if you want. Like, at the end of the day, if you start on Bitcoin, there's a lot of good things that can come from there. Now, with that said, like, I like doing, like, the Async Art stuff, which is kind of what you touched on, like the building of the tracks. And the Async Art has, like, smart contract stuff where you can, like, you know, spit out, like, a million different songs with different tracks.

38:35It's like a smart contract. You can't do that yet where we're at on XCP. But you could do that. It just has to be built out. That's what I'm saying. You can do some stuff, you can't do some stuff, but I think all the ideas would work. I mean, XCP is a smart contract, so there's some stuff you just can't change. But you also got to look at other stuff on Bitcoin, like RGB and, you know, some of the other stuff that's going on. And, you know, I've talked to some of them, and there's some cool stuff that they're doing too, that maybe XCP can't do.

39:03Vlad CosteaWe should talk about it. But before we get to the RGB stuff, which is on top of Lightning, is more scalable, faster, and may come with some extra smart contract features, I got to tell you that when I first got into Counterparty... So when I interviewed you in 2020, and I think it was in the summer, maybe July or something, you told me about Counterparty. I knew about the Omni Layer vaguely. I knew that's where Tether gets handled. And I knew that it's maintained by Bitfinex or the Tether company, because, as far as I can understand, they are separate entities.

39:45But anyway, I did not know anything about Counterparty at the time. Like, to me, it was very elusive. Like, okay, Counterparty sounds like something from a different era, which precedes my adherence to the Bitcoin space. And it wasn't until 2021 when I actually became curious. Like, okay, let's see what this is. I've heard about it before. I see people using it. People started using it because the fees on other chains were ridiculously high, and on Bitcoin they were lower. And not only that, you had the original art that... You know, I feel like today we are witnessing, like, a race to the origins.

40:30And people are even trying to go back to Namecoin assets and claim them. And the oldest are actually the ones that can claim to be the most valuable. And it's like everyone's trying to claim their oldest piece of art and present it as the one that started everything. Because obviously, I don't see too much value in stuff like CryptoPunks. You can disagree with me. But it's just like Ethereum. It's soulless. It's void of any kind of human touch. It's computer-generated. It makes no sense whatsoever. With something like Spells of Genesis or Rare Pepe or the others that came before them, there's actually some human input into them.

41:16There is a human touch that you can observe, and there's, like, a trademark of each artist. So I feel like Bitcoin is a lot more human when it comes to creation, to art. Whereas Ethereum counts too much on something that's procedurally generated, as if you were playing The Sims. I'm not sure if you ever played The Sims. It's a video game where you basically manage families. And there's this character creation kind of situation; it's also present in RPGs. And you can just randomize it so that it generates a different kind of character each time.

41:58And you take a snapshot of each one of them, and you can say that that's art. But that's very debatable. I think it can be art if it's made by someone famous. But there is no human input into that.

42:13Rare ScrillaYeah. I have some thoughts on that, I guess. So, you know, I didn't claim CryptoPunks when they came out. I did buy one for, like, 100 bucks or something, like, shortly after. I was doing the Art on the Blockchain podcast, so I was very in tune with what was going on. Like, we even had Matt Hall from Larva Labs on in 2017. The funny thing is that when we talked to Matt from Larva Labs, you know, CryptoPunks had been out for, you know, at least some months. We weren't talking about CryptoPunks.

42:49I don't know, I have to go back to the episode. I don't remember even talking about it. Maybe we brought it up briefly. But we were all talking about Choon Music, which was, like, the platform he helped build for, like, this, like, monetization streaming network, blah, blah, blah, to, like, stream and earn, whatever. So it was not like... I guess it got big because, like, the hype, you know, like, the people that collected it. You know, there's, you know, you can kind of look at... I don't know, man.

43:20I don't want to, I don't... So I don't dog the CryptoPunks, because they have, like, a... They have a history that is pretty, like... Their story is pretty, pretty good, I think. It is on Ethereum, but it is the first, like, you know, generated, like, thing that came out, which obviously you're saying, like, it's not the best thing. And I agree, like, that type of shit, art, for the most part, is trash. But, like, that particular instance, like, I can see why they would be valuable, because, you know, they also did help, like, be a catalyst for, like, the whole, like, NFT space.

43:58But there's also, like, a long history of, like, money laundering in CryptoPunks. So you can... I'm not a blockchain detective. I think some people kind of understand that. So there's a little, like, raciness with it, with the CryptoPunks. Stuff that came out of that, like... I think code is art, so code can be art. And so, like, some of the coded, like, generative stuff, especially some of it that, you know, has a human element to it, like, some of it you can adjust parameters and do other stuff.

44:33I think, like, that stuff's kind of cool. I think it's super easy, and it's low effort for the most part, except for certain ones. Like, if you look at Matt Kane: he did a Gazers project, which is based on the moon, that changes. I mean, it's, like, the most brilliant blockchain project I've seen, I think. I'm not going to lie. It's, like, awesome art. It's beautiful. And it's dynamic. And it, like, goes from, like, history all the way back to, you know, wherever. And then it goes all the way.

45:01Like, it's going to live on. Like, as long as Ethereum... And I don't even think it has to be married to Ethereum. As long as his contract lives on forever, where we, you know, it ends up, it's going to be something. So I think, like, that type of stuff, where you're using the blockchain and, like, the code, and, like, making, like, art that's, like, distinctive, and, like, there is some human element in it as well, of course, I think that stuff's awesome. But, like, a hundred percent, like, anything that came after the CryptoPunks, like, from, like, the Apes to the Meebits, to the shitty Penguins, to the Toad suckers, to wherever the fuck, I don't get it.

45:40But I do get it, in the instance that it's just... It's just creation of communities trying to pump their bags. And it's like a pyramid scheme at the end of the day. Like, they're just, you know, "I bought this early, come in here and let me sell it to you for 350 ETH, and let's go make a derivative and change the shit up, and then get into something else." Like, it's straight, like, influencer project-driven bullshit. But with Bitcoin, it's, like you said, it's more proof-of-work.

46:09It's like, the way I think our artists are right now, they're, like, more, like, in tune with Bitcoin, more rebellious, more, like, edgier. You know, Ethereum has a lot of unicorns and shit like that. And Bitcoin, you know, is more, like, lizards and dragons and shit. I don't know. But with that said, if Bitcoin does, you know, stay on forever, like it will, and, you know, it is the turtle in this race, and art is going to get more and more put on the blockchain somehow, where there's layer two, three, four, or five...

46:44You're going to see that type of stuff happen on Bitcoin. Like, it's just inevitable. It's like, it doesn't matter. It's just easy to do on Ethereum, but you can't really do it easily on Bitcoin. That's all. I think that's the difference. And, like, you know, Ethereum has the whales over there collecting the art. It's just, you know, it's different, dude. Like, Bitcoin people, we had to fight. Not, like, physically fight, but, like, we had to argue in chat rooms and get roasted on Reddit and on Twitter for us making, quote-unquote, spamming the blockchain with, you know, Pepes for the first couple of years we were doing it.

47:24Now I think people are starting to come around a little bit more, but there's still, you know, there's a lot of still, like, "oh, I can right-click, save this," blah, blah, blah. It's like, no, dude, you can't save a Bitcoin. Shut up, shut up. The token and the Bitcoin are the same thing. Like, don't... I don't understand how a Bitcoiner can make the argument. Like, I get it. They don't want to, like, suck value out of something. They want Bitcoin to be the only thing valuable, but that's just not going to happen.

47:50It's not the case. Honestly, it's, like, a world that only they're going to live in. People are going to create value from anything forever.

48:01Vlad CosteaI've read an article written by Chris DeRose yesterday, because I'm going to have him on the show next week. And back in 2014, he was, like, a marketing person for the Counterparty project. Very early on. This was before Bitcoin Uncensored. He was very much involved in this, and there was so much hopium involved. Like, it's kind of silly right now when you read it, but at the same time, it makes sense. Like, what he says makes sense, because it's on Bitcoin. It's the most robust chain. It's the one that's going to exist for the longest time.

48:36But he made a speech at a conference, which he transcribed and published on Bitcoin Magazine. And basically he was comparing Counterparty with the early days of the New York Stock Exchange, which, before becoming the New York Stock Exchange, was just a cafe on the East Coast where people would meet at night and discuss business and do all sorts of illegal stuff, before it, you know, became regulated and stuff. So it's interesting that these ideas have been around for almost eight years, and people have been talking about it.

49:14It just hasn't happened for, I suppose, two reasons. The first one being this orthodoxy that Bitcoin should only be for value transfers concerning the BTC token and nothing else. And I can see why.

49:30Rare ScrillaFee market.

49:33Vlad CosteaYeah, so that's going to be a problem, because right now there isn't, you know, there isn't much competition for block space. And it's rather inexpensive to do whatever, send transactions. And we need to sustain this chain somehow, because in a couple of halvings, it's not going to be as profitable. And this is the biggest bet that we're going to face.

49:59It would be quite ironic if we ended up trading frog JPEGs to secure the Bitcoin network. But if that's what it's going to be, I'd rather have that than compromise anything about the security model of Bitcoin, or add inflation, or whatever they're talking about nowadays. Because I've actually heard some scary talks from developers who are concerned that they're not going to be able to do it. Yeah, so that's not desirable at all.

50:31Rare ScrillaBut we're, but, but some would argue we're adding inflation to the blockchain, with Bitcoin blockchain, we're putting frogs on there.

50:38Vlad CosteaWell, so no, that's not inflation to the BTC token. It's just an asset.

50:44Rare ScrillaSure, sure. Right. But just inflation of assets.

50:47Vlad CosteaYeah, but they're not really competing. Like, nobody creates a Rare Pepe as a token for the purpose of competing with Bitcoin. It's something else entirely.

50:58Rare ScrillaThat's not all the way true. I mean, you could look at, like, Pepe Cash, and, like, whatever the Spells of Genesis currency was, and stuff. I mean, they had currencies on Bitcoin that you traded Bitcoin to get these currencies.

51:10Vlad CosteaYeah, but didn't they have, like, a very limited purpose? They would only be used for this one tokenization purpose?

51:18Rare ScrillaOh, yeah. I mean, for... But yeah, Pepe Cash, dude, was a $100 million market cap, top 100 CoinMarketCap. Like, it was huge in 2017-'18. So people were giving up their Bitcoin for the Pepe Cash, and then they were, you know, paying Pepe Cash for things, like, whether it be... People had T-shirts, watches, you know. Mostly it was traded for cards and to get into a directory. But it's not, certainly, an argument that it could happen. I'm not, like, Pepe Cash... I agree with you, dude. You're not making a new Bitcoin.

51:59But at the end of the day, there were people, and there are people right now, trading Bitcoin for JPEGs on the Bitcoin network. So, I mean, isn't that inflation?

52:16Vlad CosteaNo, it's competition, if you can call it competition. But as long as you still have the same issuance model and the same inflation schedule for the Bitcoin BTC token, we're all good. If we have to inflate the supply to be able to pay the miners and subsidize them for their security, I think that destroys the value proposition of Bitcoin.

52:40Rare ScrillaYeah. And I agree. And I'm not making an argument that there's more Bitcoin, but I'm saying you can create more value assets on Bitcoin, which, you know, at the end of the day, adds more money to the system. And I mean, I guess inflation is not the right word. Sorry, that's out of my scope, really.

53:06Vlad CosteaNo, because if you create too many of them, and the market gets oversaturated with them, there's only 21 million Bitcoins to actually buy them. So their value is going to get... So you're going to have inflation of assets, which means that they're going to get devalued against BTC, if that makes sense. But I don't hear people complaining that there are too many tokens on Ethereum. Like, they are happy that they are collecting some fees from them, and they're able to secure their network, to provide better incentives. On Bitcoin...

53:47I mean, I understand the point that this is only supposed to be a money network and you're only supposed to send money transactions. But at the same time, I like the idea that you said, that depends on who you're talking to. So there are some very orthodox developers who are going to only follow this original purpose of what the network is supposed to be.

54:13Rare ScrillaBut the first transaction has, you know, arguably an NFT in it.

54:17Vlad CosteaYeah, because it says "Chancellor on the brink of second bailout for banks." So, yeah.

54:24Rare ScrillaAnd then the first Bitcoin art is by Satoshi, with the BC logo. And you have, like, Luke Dashjr doing, like, you know, the prayer spam to people. There's all types of, like, performance art and art stuff that's been going on on blockchain, Bitcoin, since before any of us knew what it was.

54:42Vlad CosteaYou know your stuff. You're right. But where I was getting with this is that I think it would be a lot more beneficial if we ended up in a situation in which my buddy, who is a lawyer and has become the attorney for Crypto.com a couple of days ago... His name is Justin Wales.

55:01Rare ScrillaYes. Yeah, I like his "Bitcoin is freedom of speech."

55:05Vlad CosteaYes. So if we get Bitcoin to be protected by, or under, the First Amendment of the US Constitution, then there's very little that they can do in terms of regulations.

55:17Rare ScrillaYeah, I mean, I, dude, I've heard Justin talk about that before. And, like, he's 100% right. He's, like, a good person to be speaking. Well-spoken, dude.

55:28Vlad CosteaHe's very smart. I read his paper from 2018 or something. He published something at the University of Miami Law Review. And I thought it was very smart, what he described. And he had some very concise and precise arguments, like cases where Bitcoin was not used for monetary purposes, but for expression purposes, for the sake of expressing one's free speech, in a way that's immutable. And that's going to exist forever on the blockchain. And I suppose 100 years from now, when Bitcoin is going to outlive all of us, there's going to be university students just digging up to see what we left on the public blockchain, which is kind of insane.

56:18It's going to be like looking at cave paintings from cavemen or something.

56:24Rare ScrillaThat's exactly, dude. That's what it is. Like, we're starting, like, the new chapter of some era of something, you know, something greater than all of us, that'll outlive all of us, I think. And, like, that's what we're doing. We're putting hieroglyphics on the blockchain, essentially, that we don't even know what this could have looked like in several hundred thousand, or several hundred, or several thousand years.

56:51Vlad CosteaYeah. And you started the conversation about second and third layers, where we can trade NFTs with RGB. I remember when that was first announced, in, I think it was 2019. And I did an interview with Giacomo Zucco, who is, like, the leading advocate for this to happen. And I was kind of blown away. Like, wait, wasn't Giacomo that guy who basically defined what Bitcoin maximalism is supposed to be, and said that anything that is not Bitcoin is a scam? And anything that's not on Bitcoin is a scam.

57:29And everything that tries to be Bitcoin is a scam, and so on. Like, he had a set of rules that he outlined.

57:37Rare ScrillaBut then I can't tell, I can't tell if he's, like, kidding or not, though, bro. I've seen him talk. But I think the maximalist talk is crazy, you know.

57:49Vlad CosteaSo the next year, he got on the same stage, and he basically apologized for his previous behavior. He took off his jacket, and underneath it, he was wearing this unicorn T-shirt, like Vitalik. And he basically said, you know, shitcoins are really great, because they keep regulators busy. And, you know, shitcoiners are going to be the first to go to jail, so we should be nice to them. Because when we also get there, they're going to be the ones who know, you know, where the good food is, or whatever.

58:28Rare ScrillaYeah, I mean, honestly, I'm the type of person that I would not wish anybody to go to jail. I don't give a fuck. Like, so, yeah, I think I can't get with that. But I do, like, agree partially with that. And, you know, I'm also a Bitcoin maximalist. Like, I believe Bitcoin is a chain that will live forever. It's the best, it's the greatest. But that doesn't mean that, you know... Here we are in life. Like, we're doing a lot of different stuff. You can experiment over here, where the rabbit is, and, you know, be safe with the turtle.

59:03You know, like, there's many sides of this coin. Like, not everybody's like that. Some people are just, like, OCD, or very set in their ways. And I know some people are more, like, loose. Like, I think I'm way more loose. Like, I'm willing to... Like, I have very high morals, but within those morals, I'm willing to, like, play around. Like, it's fine. Like, I think I'd be stupid not to put, like... So, going back to that, like, so, dude, in 2017, '18 especially, like, I mean, the big... We were talking about this earlier: the Bitcoin maximalists were really, like, digging at XCP.

59:40And, like, wasn't it Greg Maxwell and stuff, like, you know, posting on Reddit, like, how dumb we are and retarded? I'm not quoting that, but that's essentially what it said. And, you know, it's like, you just scared... that you chased us all out here. Like, Ethereum basically saw what we did. Fred Wilson, like, got to get, you know, told all his cronies, like, "yo, man, these guys are making art, and they love trading cards, like baseball cards. Like, this shit is cool. Like, let's fucking get some money together."

1:00:08And then we're going to change from ICO to, like, art. Like, it's just, you know, I don't... I'm not into any of that. But that's what they did. And it made it so they created a ton of marketplaces over there. So then XCP kind of, like, disappeared for a second, as everybody went over to ETH, and fees went crazy, and then block wars and all that shit. So, you know, like, 2018, '19, and some of '20, like, you know, a lot of stuff, like, Bitcoin art that I was doing, I was putting on Ethereum.

1:00:38And with that said, I mean, the way I looked at it, I was putting Bitcoin propaganda on the Ethereum chain. Like, that's what the fuck... That's what you're supposed to do. Like, put it in their faces, like, Bitcoin is, like, everything, like, there's... You know, everything else is underneath it. Now, over the years, I've gotten less, like, Bitcoin maxi. Like, I mean, I used to make Ethereum hate cards. Like, some of the Ethereum, like, Pepes that, you know, from 2016 I made, were, like, just making fun of Ethereum and shit. Like, I was definitely on that team.

1:01:11But I came, you know, to my senses. And it's like, you know, crypto art was embraced by Ethereum. Like, so, as cringe as, like, Ethereum can be, and all that stuff, it's like, I've been in crypto art since 2014. Like, that shit is, like, heart and soul for me, bro. Like, I'm into, like... You know, and I know some people will be like, I wanna put Bitcoin logos on art, and it's called Bitcoin art and shit, and it's like, fuck, shut the fuck up. But, you know, that's, that's where I'm at with... That's my niche.

1:01:45And, like, if you take it away on Bitcoin, I'm gonna go put it somewhere else. Like... And, you know, luckily, like, I think, like, people have come to their senses a little bit more, and I see all the big... Dude, I was in the Coin Dojo with DeRose and Junseth and everybody. I mean, I've seen all these guys, you know, even with the Pepes back then. Like, I mean, I had a bet with, like... I don't think he'd care if I said it, but I had a bet with, like, John Carvalho, like, about DJPEPE.

1:02:11And he's, like... People used to make fun of me for DJPEPE. Like, why would I do that? "I just have the quarter-inch plug, and I could steal your music," and shit. And I'm like, that's not what the NFT is, my guy. Like, that's not what it is. Like, people are starting to learn that. And, like, I don't know, man, I've kind of seen it for a while. I'm not gonna lie. Like, I'll wear that hat. Like, I've been an advocate for this for a while.

1:02:35And I've seen it. And I'm a collector, man. Like, I collected baseball cards since I was five years old. I used to go to the baseball card conventions at, like, seven or eight years old. My grandfather let me loose, and that's what I did. I collected. I got more vinyl records than, you know, 99.9% of people. Like, I got tens of thousands of them collected. When you come in and start collecting Bitcoin, you know, you get into other things, and digital art and crypto art came up, and you start making and collecting that. Like, it's like the Web3, like, collectible game, and, like, you know, you can start putting this shit...

1:03:14It's like your online identity. And it really is, man. Like, I think people are really starting to come around to that.

1:03:22Vlad CosteaYeah, you've made me look at what Greg Maxwell said about Counterparty and colored coins and everything else. He clearly does not like it.

1:03:37Rare ScrillaI mean, I think... I don't follow Peter McCormack or anything, but I think, from what I've heard too, like, he's starting to come around here. He was a hater as well. And it's funny, because I think those guys are building on Omni now. And it's like, everything is already on XCP. Like, why don't you just come into the community and help build? It's like, ah, I think these... I don't know, man. Maybe they... I'm just speculating. It's like, maybe they don't want to come because it's like, how much shit they talked about XCP. I don't know. I don't know.

1:04:07Vlad CosteaWait, so what about McCormack?

1:04:10Rare ScrillaI thought that he was, like, pro-NFT now. I don't know. I blocked him a couple, few years ago. So I just... I thought that I saw that he was working with something. I think, I thought I saw him and Darkpill talking about NFTs, and, like, in agreeance. Which is funny, because Darkpill was, like, my biggest hater when I started Fake Rares. And, like, Darkpill... Darkpill, without him even, you know, trying, he's the one that got me into Rare Pepes, him and Theo.

1:04:47It's like, that's... Like, I'll only talk positive about Darkpill. Darkpill, I love you.

1:04:53Vlad CosteaOh, yeah, I don't think he would be listening to this. But I did try to send him some of my cards. He was very upset about the existence of Fake Rares. He thought they were some sort of inflation to the existing collection of Rare Pepes, and just a way for you to make more money. If he was here, I suppose this is what he would say.

1:05:22But I'm a big fan of his memes.

1:05:25Rare ScrillaYeah, I am too. I like Darkpill, bro. Like, I think he just likes to hate on everything. And he chose me and Robness and some other people to hate on this summer. And I wear it as a badge of honor, because he's clearly wrong. So, like, I don't mind it at all.

1:05:44Vlad CosteaYeah, maybe he is upset. So from what I heard, he lost access to his Counterparty wallets and no longer can access his stuff. So he hasn't made any kind of money from this mania. So he might be very upset about it.

1:06:02Rare ScrillaI don't know, bro. I know some people that sent him very expensive cards that he made, that are part of the Fake Rare community. Like, they literally just gave him, like, five-figure cards, before Fake Rares even. And, like, he still just shitted all over those people, blocked them. It's just really weird. Like I said, though, I like him. He's a character. I'm a fan of characters. So go Dan Darkpill.

1:06:34Vlad CosteaIt's very hard to hate him. And I think that his memes were instrumental in 2017, during the scaling wars.

1:06:43Rare ScrillaYeah, dude. If it wasn't for him and Theo, and, like, Robness posting in the Twitter, in the Poloniex troll box, like, I wouldn't even have known about Pepe. Like, that's where it all started. It's funny that he... I'm bringing it up, but, you know, he's mentioned the Poloniex troll box. Like, that's where we all used to, like, hang out. And, like, it was just... I don't understand, like, the negative connotation of that. Like, honestly, like, the Poloniex troll box was, like, my... It was like a university, in 10 years... Like, 10 years of university of blockchain, like a year on the Poloniex troll box, like a year and a half, however long it lasted for me.

1:07:22Probably the greatest education I've ever had.

1:07:24Vlad CosteaI heard about this a lot, like troll boxes and forums. And there was Dragon's Den, there was Trilema. There were lots of places where you could learn about how Bitcoin works, just from people shitposting.

1:07:37Rare ScrillaCoin Dojo too. DeRose and Junseth, and Bitcoin Uncensored, of course. Like, that whole community.

1:07:47Vlad CosteaYeah, it's kind of insane that back in the day, you would learn from these troll boxes. And nowadays, there's more Bitcoin education than you can actually digest. You have people like Michael Saylor, who create their own Bitcoin courses, and most likely they have a better reach than most of us, which I don't like, really. Like, I feel like all of these rich people and famous people who get into Bitcoin and start educating, quote-unquote, are only projecting their own agenda. And what I don't like about them is that they're trying to limit our perception of what Bitcoin is.

1:08:33And they're going to be like, yes, this is digital gold. This is a store of value. And I'm always like, no, it's not. It's whatever I want it to be. It's sovereign money. It's fuck-you money. I can do whatever the hell I want. It's mine. You're not going to come here and define it for me and limit the ways in which I can use it.

1:08:54Rare ScrillaI don't think they do it on purpose, maybe, but it's just, that's all they know, until they learn more, too. But, you know, with the Saylor thing, I don't follow it as much, but I've heard, you know, people are worried about, like, he's too big in the space, too.

1:09:12Vlad CosteaI mean, politically, I think that he was... So people have turned their heads the other way lots of times, just because he had been pumping our bags. So they call him the Giga Chad or something. And we're like, yeah, this is our guy. He's going to bring all the companies. This is the way to institutional adoption. As we speak right now, I think Bitcoin is below $40,000. Let me check. It crashed like crazy in the last 24 hours.

1:09:46Rare ScrillaOkay.

1:09:49Vlad CosteaI'm actually happy that we get these people who are very high on hopium and institutional adoption and whatever balance sheet of their companies... I'm happy that they get to witness a bear market. And if this happens, I feel like they deserve it. This is trial by fire. This is how you learn. It's very easy for you to post motivational quotes and show off your conviction to others when everything is very nice and your bags are getting pumped and everyone's getting rich. But at the same time, when your portfolio is bleeding and you're losing money, that's the litmus test.

1:10:37If you pass that one, I suppose you can get your badge. That's your real Bitcoiner.

1:10:43Rare ScrillaI agree. That's funny. It's the same thing that's happened in the NFT space. I was on Clubhouse quite a bit in November, December of 2020, and January of, you know, even a year ago. I was on there a lot when NFTs first started hitting, talking about it a lot, kind of, like, talking about the history of it a lot. And I mean, just even as a caveat, I got kicked off some stages for mentioning Bitcoin NFTs. That's how crazy people are. They didn't believe it. But it's the same thing.

1:11:22It's like these influencers who are now just leading people down these PFP, shitty, whatever they are, pump-and-dump profile picture joints: they have not seen a bear market. Like I said it the other day, I tweeted it out, and I saw a couple of people subtweeting me, like, some haters. But it's true. If you... Do not trust, or take it with a grain of salt with anybody that's telling you anything about this space, that has not survived a bear market, because things change. Like you said, everything changes. And people leave, and you don't know if you're listening to a leaver or a stayer.

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1:15:50Vlad CosteaYup, I very much agree with this. I feel like the best friends that I've made, you know, they were around during the bear market. And there is something really special about that kind of connection that you have with people who are going to be around no matter what. They're not usual cowards, or the hype men who only come around during the good times, and they disappear for three years, and then they're back with their latest course. It's kind of insane. This cycle, it's very hilarious that the top indicator was actually Melania Trump announcing that she released her NFT on Solana.

1:16:35I'm not sure if you saw that, but it happened.

1:16:38Rare ScrillaI did, yeah.

1:16:39Vlad CosteaFor a dollar or something? I don't even care. Like, we even had Melania Trump post on the 3rd of January a message to announce the 13th anniversary of the Bitcoin blockchain since it got launched. So it's insane. I don't feel like it's the most important topic, but it's still...

1:17:01Rare ScrillaYeah, I don't have anything to say except for, like, you know, Solana, bro.

1:17:11Vlad CosteaIt's crazy. What's your take on all of these gaming companies that announced that they're going to do NFTs? Like, it's obviously a pretty good idea, as opposed to having a central server that stores all of the in-game assets and skins and whatever people buy, because as soon as these companies shut down their servers, everything is gone. So you'd rather keep them on something that's neutral and decentralized, "decentralized," quote-unquote, because I'm pretty sure it's not going to be Bitcoin, unless we somehow make RGB become very popular.

1:17:50But it's still a good use case. And even if you start, like, a community server... For example, let's say that Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is going to be gone in 10 years, and people have invested a lot of money in skins. Well, they can just take that from the NFT and put it on a different, private server, and it's going to be there. And they're going to be able to enjoy this for as long as the decentralized network actually exists and has at least one node, which is nice.

1:18:24I think it's a better model as opposed to having it centralized. But can you see any of your work, or anything of what you do, getting integrated into video games?

1:18:36Rare ScrillaYeah, I mean, for sure. Like, that's... For XCP especially, like, the beauty of XCP is, you know, it's all in one smart contract. So you can make a game and take any asset that you wish and say, I'm going to make this be something in this game. So that's kind of an interesting dynamic of it. It's also kind of a scary dynamic, because, like, you can make a video game, make the Vlad coin, like, I don't know, something, like, bad in a game, you know, make it, like, the sexual predator of some video game.

1:19:14Like, whoa. I mean, it's like, that's a little scary. But the Solana, actually, coming back to that: they're the ones that are building a lot, a lot of the video... A lot of these blockchain games are using Solana. And I'm not, I'm not even hip enough to know. I know everybody says Solana is centralized, so that's kind of the narrative I have on it. So I don't know if it's... I feel like it's a step up, for sure, from, like, Steam, because, like, different people making stuff.

1:19:47You know, you'll be able to cross, interoperate between the games within Solana. But at the end of the day, I feel like Solana, kind of, the hub is still, like, the Steam engine. So, like, if you had something on there that, you know, got removed for some reason, then I don't know how you fight that, which, that brings us back to Bitcoin. But making something on Bitcoin, issuing it, and then, you know, vaulting it or wrapping it or doing some kind of, like, you know, cross-chain thing, which I think is going to develop more over time, then it kind of becomes more interesting, if you can then get into, like, say, that centralized network, because it still kind of lives, you know... Wouldn't be able to be in that network, you still have the asset.

1:20:37I don't know. It's kind of interesting. I don't know. I don't follow the NFT gaming side as much as I used to. I think there's a use case for it. But blockchain and Bitcoin, like that, you know... I spent 13 hours waiting for a transaction yesterday. You're not going to wait that long in a video game.

1:21:02Vlad CosteaWell, yeah, but the point is not to wait for the video game to load or something. It's just to get your assets. So you're not actually gaming on the blockchain. Yes. To keep your... I don't know, if you're playing Diablo, for example, and you have a special sword that you keep as an NFT, you just want to transfer it to your character and basically link it to your NFT, if that makes sense. And it doesn't even have to be a transaction. Like, you can even sign a message from your wallet so that you can prove that it's yours.

1:21:40It doesn't have to be a transaction.

1:21:42Rare ScrillaThat's cool. Yeah, that's cool.

1:21:44Vlad CosteaYou just need to own it. So you have to make the transaction when you buy it for yourself, or when you transfer it to your wallet. But afterwards, you can just link your wallet to your video game. And that's how you claim your asset, and you're going to be able to use it.

1:22:02Rare ScrillaYeah, I've never been a big gamer, so I don't think it touches me. I'm definitely more into the music and art side of stuff with the NFTs.

1:22:11Vlad CosteaYeah. So I play video games mostly for narrative purposes. To me, it's like reading a book. I go through the stories, and it stimulates my imagination. I stay away from these multiplayer experiences, which are actually going to have NFTs, and I try to play stories that help me just learn something new. But I can see, you know, my cousin, who is 12, I can see him using NFTs to store his CS:GO skins. So that can be a very interesting use case. But with centralization, which you mentioned for Solana, the core issue at stake is: can it be turned off?

1:22:56That's where everything stops making sense, because you can turn off a server, and you can turn off Solana. They did it themselves. And at some point, it becomes kind of pointless. Why not start a company which provides a hosting service and is going to be more scalable, as opposed to something which only pretends that it is part of this movement and might be decentralized, but it's actually not? Anyway, the hype is here, and there's demand for this. So, you know, in free markets, we're going to have this kind of situation.

1:23:34What I think would be interesting to see is if we get RGB to actually become easy to use, because that's something that really matters. With Counterparty, I feel like... So my first experience was that it feels like a ghost town. You don't really know which wallet to use. I tried Counterwallet. I tried to create my first faucet with it, and the lowest amount that I could set was one Bitcoin, because back in the day when it was created, and the last time it was maintained, one Bitcoin was not as valuable or as expensive as it is today.

1:24:12Where I was getting with this is that Counterparty is counterintuitive to use. But at the same time, it's very simple; like, the principles on which it operates are very basic. Whereas, on the other hand, you have something like OpenSea, which uses Ethereum but does very complex stuff in the background, like it wraps your ETH and unwraps it when you withdraw. That's pretty technical, but you don't have to think about it, because it's being done in the background. So if we kind of manage to get the kind of development that we need to make this easy to use, it's gonna blow away all the competition.

1:24:56If it's on the Bitcoin base layer with Counterparty, it's the most secure way to create any kind of asset. So it makes a lot of sense to do it on Counterparty. And as soon as people figure out that it's gonna exist forever and it's gonna outlive them, they're gonna put more value on everything that's on Counterparty. Whereas something that's on top of Bitcoin, on top of Lightning, like RGB... Well, that one is actually scalable and is secured by an actually decentralized network, so there is also value in that one.

1:25:34And it's all a matter of user experience and how easy it is to do. At the same time, another concern that I have is that maybe NFTs are not gonna be as big during the next cycle. Because I remember stuff like Cardano and Tezos launched, and they were like, yeah, we can do ICOs better than Ethereum. But at the same time, ICOs never made a comeback. So it was a bit backwards to chase a trend that never actually happened again. In the case of art, I don't think it's a fad.

1:26:12It's gonna be there, but it might not be as big. So the incentive for developers to spend time working on this, and the return on investment, might be lower.

1:26:22Rare ScrillaYeah, it's interesting. I could see that. I think I respect that point, for sure. And it's definitely a possibility. But NFTs have been here. And the idea of provenance, chain of custody, and all this stuff, and putting it on the blockchain, has been here since way even before Counterparty. Look at the Namecoin stuff. Even though that wasn't really an NFT, it's more like a domain, but the ideas were all the same. They were trying to secure something using the blockchain that they thought was going to be forever. So I think we're always going to have a use case for provenance.

1:27:05And people go, oh, you can just use a spreadsheet and all that stuff. But, I mean, minting it on Bitcoin forever, you know... I don't think people are realizing, like, in 200 years, like, the spreadsheet, or your Telegram, or your Twitter, or whatever, where you dated something, is not going to be here, probably. But Bitcoin, if anything is going to be here, it will probably be Bitcoin. So I think that's the very smallest use case: it works for that.

1:27:37And then I think the culture of Bitcoin and crypto, and just using... You know, you get involved with this stuff where it's hard money. It's Bitcoin, sure. But then it's more than that. It's the culture of evangelizing it a little bit. You know, talking about how, like, you know, kind of like the freedom of it, the uncomfortability of it. You want to, like, kind of, like, spread that message. It's like a new paradigm, kind of. So with money, art, peer-to-peer, and kind of all different... You know, not just financial, but art and web, and everything's kind of going that, like, kind of, like, next level up of, I don't know, peer-to-peer and all that stuff.

1:28:23So I feel like we might be on the cusp of that. And if that's the case, then I think NFTs aren't going anywhere. Like, I'm betting... You know, myself, not financial advice, but I'm betting NFTs aren't going anywhere. Certain NFTs are certainly not going anywhere, I think. And then, but at the same time, 99.9999% of NFTs are going to be shit. But that's only because there's, you know, there's gonna be a zillion of them soon.

1:28:53Vlad CosteaYeah, it's, you know, this situation with EtherRock, or whatever, which I'm not sure if it's a mockery or something, or just a way to show that we are in a bubble and everything is kind of overvalued. But there's definitely stuff that's going to remain valuable for its historic relevance, or for the simple fact that it's on the most robust network and people want to own a share, or for the simple reason that people want to support the artists who created it. So that's always a possibility.

1:29:31Rare ScrillaYeah, exactly. I mean, that's a huge use case. And this is, like, Bitcoiners supporting Bitcoin artists, especially. You know, I think Brad Mills or somebody will talk about that. I think... I know, like, for instance, I know Brad bought a piece of mine. He hates Ethereum and NFTs over there, but he simply bought a piece of mine because he wanted me to keep creating content on Bitcoin. You know what I mean? It's like, that's cool. That's a cool thing.

1:30:06Vlad CosteaAnd that's very nice of him.

1:30:09Rare ScrillaYeah. And it's like, I don't ask, you know, I'm not asking for that, but that's what I'm saying, I guess. It's like... And I've done it too. I've helped artists, like, that are creating content. Like, yeah, keep going, man, you're new here. Throw you some XCP or throw you some Pepes, and see what this is. And I don't... I'm gonna tell you, I don't make any promises, for sure, man. I just have fun with it. I don't know where it's all going. You know, I'm definitely about the hard money and Bitcoin.

1:30:40But, you know, I'm also, you know, I'm a human that, like, got a little DJ and gambler in me too. It's like, the crypto space is built for people like that.

1:30:52Vlad CosteaAnd speaking of art and stuff like that, that's new: I know that you own number 21. So the 21st issue of the first edition of the Bitcoin Takeover magazine. And you also designed the cover of Citadel 21, Volume 13. So you're also involved in this magazine space, somewhat.

1:31:15Rare ScrillaYeah, I do a lot of, like... To be clear, it's not just NFT art. Like, I do a lot of hard art too. So if you don't even want to support me, and you don't want to buy NFTs, hit me up, and buy a print or an original.

1:31:33Vlad CosteaOh, what's your fee?

1:31:35Rare ScrillaIt depends. Does it come with an NFT? You know what's funny, man? It's hard. It's actually gotten really hard to do side work, because in this market right now, because, you know, I can create whatever I want to create, you know, and put it out and develop my story however I want, and, you know, make more money than I would for a client doing a picture, you know what I mean, which is something I might not have as much fun doing. So I always find it funny.

1:32:15And I actually, you know, it's satisfying, kind of, when I see, like, an artist, they put in their bio, like, "closed for inquiries," whatever, whatever that... There's a term: "commissions closed." Because, like, that's the greatest. I think that's a very liberating thing for an artist, and they can make money off their art in their own way. Because you start off, like, coming into this world, a lot of us anyway, like... I worked for a graphic design company in my first two weeks out of school, immediately knew I hated it, and quit.

1:32:55You know, I did art in school and all that stuff. And I actually... I just stopped doing art. I hated it. That shit turned me off so much, graphic design, that I started doing... You know, I went full-time music really around that time. And then I didn't, during, like, that, like, 10 or 15 years of full-time music, pretty much, I didn't do any art. And it wasn't until, like, six, seven years ago that I started doing art again, when I was teaching my son how to draw, and I was actually working at a TV station.

1:33:25I quit, you know, I folded the label in 2012 and a bunch of other stuff. So I had a job; I was behind an audio board. And I found a lot of spare time in between news network stuff to just... You know, I was stuck with a pen and a paper and nothing else in there, like a small TV. You know, it was, like, foreign, like a foreign network. So, like, I drew, like, I actually re-found my, like, drawing. And then at the same time, I was teaching my son how to draw.

1:33:58And I don't know where I was going with that, but that's kind of, like, where the spark came from. And, like, you know, I love music, and I'm passionate about it. I think I've done a lot, a lot of good things in music. But I've always been, like, you know, a super underground guy as well, that never, like, made millions of dollars, or hundreds of thousands of dollars, off music. But the first, like, thing I drew and I put out on Instagram, it got shared by, like, all the music people that I would want to share my music, you know what I mean?

1:34:37They shared my art. And I was like, what the fuck? Maybe I'm onto something. And I started, you know, I started getting a little more confident with it.

1:34:48Yeah, so I don't know, I don't know where I was going with that. But that's, that's kind of how I kind of went from, like, art to music to art. Now it's kind of like a combination. I feel like my art now is, like, art and music and animation, kind of combined together, for the most part. That's kind of what I'm known for.

1:35:09Vlad CosteaI really like what you did for Citadel 21. I'm kind of jealous that I didn't contact you first.

1:35:18Rare ScrillaOh, yeah, that's right. We were gonna do a cover one.

1:35:21Vlad CosteaOh, you want to do a cover?

1:35:23Rare ScrillaI'll do a cover for you, bro. Like, dude, this is the thing, bro: for, like, Bitcoin stuff, like, I'm all for it, bro. Like, the Citadel, I didn't... Like, it was a free drawing, because I know I can sell the NFT of it. You know what I mean? It's the same thing. If I do a magazine cover for you, my idea would be: I would get a cover from you, an autograph, and I give the NFT and the original drawing. You know, or maybe not the original drawing, but the one-of-one NFT and the cover autograph.

1:35:51And that's how I would make my money. So that's what I'm saying. It's, like, a different economy now, where if I'm passionate about something, I can just do it. And I can figure out a way for me to eat off that art on my own accord. And that's not always the case. But these are things that we can play with, you know what I mean?

1:36:08Vlad CosteaYeah, so my issue with this is that I was planning to release the magazine on Christmas Day. So I had this cover, which is a Pepe with laser eyes, and he is in a Santa Claus suit. But now that I delayed it by a couple of weeks, I'm having second thoughts about it. Like, do I want to use this? Christmas is over. People are not going to appreciate this as much. So I need to either come up with a different concept... I was also thinking that maybe I can do a Spells of Genesis card and let that be the cover.

1:36:43But if you want to do it, and you want to do an NFT and sell it, I don't mind it. I just want something nice for the magazine.

1:36:52Rare ScrillaYeah, let's talk. We'll figure it out. Like, I know right now the plate is pretty chopped up for the next four weeks. But if it's not this cover, maybe the next cover. I'll sketch something up for you.

1:37:05Vlad CosteaI would love it. I like your style. And I think, you know, this would be, like, part of a greater cultural movement.

1:37:15Rare ScrillaAll for it.

1:37:16Vlad CosteaYeah, this kind of, you know, convergence of audiences. I'm pretty sure that most of the people who got my first magazine are not really into Pepes. And I wrote an extensive article which explains how Counterparty works and how to issue...

1:37:35Rare ScrillaThat's a great article, too.

1:37:37Vlad CosteaYeah, thanks. So that's going to be in the magazine. I'm going to put it there. Since I delayed it, I decided, you know, I should put more content, if it's going to get released later. My graphic designer, who's doing the pages, is working two jobs full-time and only has time to focus on the magazine during weekends. And since it's going to take longer, I decided to also give him a hard time and add more content. But this is, like, a bonus to everyone who is patient.

1:38:10Rare ScrillaI might have a drawing already done, actually, for you, for that cover. I'm thinking about it. I haven't used it. It might work for it.

1:38:23Vlad CosteaShow it to me. I hope it's not too similar with the other ones, so people think I ripped them off. But at the same time, do you know Bitko?

1:38:34Rare ScrillaYeah, yeah. I know who they are.

1:38:37Vlad CosteaNo, not B-I-T-C-O. It's B-I-T-K-O.

1:38:42Rare ScrillaYeah, it's an artist, right? Artist collective or something?

1:38:45Vlad CosteaYes. The guy who draws, basically, a bunny... No, it's... Sorry, it's like a character.

1:38:54Rare ScrillaI'm familiar a little bit. I've definitely seen it, where it's like... I feel like it's like, I see, like, an orange... Like, I don't know, I feel like I see an orange thing that they do.

1:39:04Vlad CosteaYes, that one. So it's been in so many places. It's on stickers, for example, or BTCPay Server.

1:39:12Rare ScrillaIs it, like, a Bitcoin with teeth and shit, too?

1:39:16Vlad CosteaYeah, yeah.

1:39:17Rare ScrillaYeah, yeah. Definitely familiar.

1:39:19Vlad CosteaSo I also spoke with him for the first magazine, but I could not... You know, he was busy, and I don't think I could afford to pay him, because he gets paid a lot for his work, and many people go to him. Because what I like about his work is that there's this consistency, and basically he puts his character in a different context, according to the business that chooses to brand itself with that character.

1:39:48So I like the concept that you basically become part of that story. Okay, so you have two questions from the audience. One is from Kenneth Carson, and he wants to know: if Pepe was a duck, would the artistic potential have resonated the same with him?

1:40:07Rare ScrillaIf Pepe was a duck, what?

1:40:10Vlad CosteaWould it have the same artistic potential?

1:40:15Rare ScrillaNo. Pepe is the internet meme. It's the culture of the internet. Literally, Pepe has so much memetic power, I mean, going all the way back to, like, ancient times. You can get into that if you have a bit longer. I think the frog is very... Dude, Pepe to me is going to be, like, a thing in, like, art history classes in the future. This is, like, a thing that happened during this era, where, like, to be a digital artist in the know, you almost had to have, like, a Pepe at some point. At least have some drawings of Pepe. As silly as that sounds, we're in a crazy, clownish time of history.

1:41:01And, like, Pepe is, like, that thing that can just represent everything. It's like... It's like the court jester god.

1:41:15Vlad CosteaOkay, and you also have a question from Lord Pepe, at DEXT_Lord, and he wants to know if PEPETHETROLL, which is a card, is a representation of you in real life.

1:41:29Rare ScrillaPEPETHETROLL?

1:41:31Vlad CosteaYeah, you need to look it up. I know I didn't tell them what to do, but I'm sure there's some kind of truth in them. So PEPETHETROLL is a card which depicts a Pepe that's very fat.

1:41:45Rare ScrillaOh, yeah, you see, Pepe the Troll, right? I drew that. Yeah. Is that me?

1:41:53Vlad CosteaSo the question is if that's you in real life.

1:41:57Rare ScrillaOf course that's not me. I don't... I'm not a troll. Or am I?

1:42:06Vlad CosteaAnd you're not that fat, as far as I know.

1:42:10Rare ScrillaI'm not, I'm not fat. I don't watch news, but you'll never see me watching the political debate.

1:42:20Vlad CosteaBut you know, there's pizza, and there's also records in the background.

1:42:25Rare ScrillaNo, I kind of, like... So anytime I do drawings like that, like, I just kind of... There's definitely some personal things that always show up, like Easter eggs.

1:42:38I'm very big... Like, I don't know, like, I don't explain my art too much. But, you know, most of my art, I try to pack, like, a whole lot of, like, narrative in there, if you really dig into it. And, like, you know, some of it even carries over one piece to the next. You might find the same themes, or something changes based on something else.

1:43:02Yeah, I don't know. I feel like I've found my style over the last several years. I enjoy being, like, real, like, detail-heavy and dirty and raw, still kind of edgy. You know, it's not really technical. I'm not, like, a technical artist. It's more, like, soul. I try to put a lot of soul into my art.

1:43:29Vlad CosteaIt has a very distinct style. Like, you can tell if a Pepe was drawn by you. Anyway, I'll let you take care of the kid. I don't want...

1:43:37Rare ScrillaSorry, man. We got sick, and my kid doesn't go to class right now. But, yeah, it's good talking to you, Vlad, as always. I'll catch up with you soon.

1:43:48Vlad CosteaLikewise. Talk to you later.

1:43:50Rare ScrillaAll right, bro. Peace.

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