Autor Cointelegraph By Greg Oakford

Coldie is a real one. Best described as a mixed media artist, the Californian resident is a true OG of the NFT scene, with his work dating back to 2018, including the iconic themed “Decentral Eyes,” “Sellout” and, more recently, a collaboration with Snoop Dogg. 

His distinct 3D stereoscopic work jumps off the screen, and, similar to the likes of Josie Bellini and Trevor Jones, Coldie leans into crypto culture — the good, the bad and everything else in between. 

“Decentral Eyes — Vitalik Buterin — Variant 02” by Coldie (SuperRare)

“Art is history. It’s visual history. As I got deeper into the crypto culture on my journey, I was trying to be somewhat of a historian of the time, creating pieces that were contextual to what was going on, whether it was Vitalik [Buterin] or John McAfee. Or later on, [Edward] Snowden and [Warren] Buffett. To me, it was like a time capsule I was trying to create in real-time.” 

“When I look back to 2018, I remember Andreas Antonopoulos doing speaking tours and McAfee talking about eating his junk. That was amusing to me, so it made it easy to make art about. It was a lot of fun.” 

Coldie says it didn’t take long to understand the basic fundamentals of NFTs and blockchain technology. Then he discovered you could put art on it.

“Then the whole unlock of royalties and provenance. Those two things alone are revolutionary. I didn’t know if it was going to hit or not, but I felt it was going to give digital artists a chance, and if collectors could understand it, too, then there was a viable chance that it could take off,” says Coldie. 

Paying homage to other early motion experimenters, Josie Bellini and Trevor Jones, Coldie also emphasized the impact of Beeple’s NFTs. 

“Since Beeple came in, there’s been so much stuff popping up. That was a major inflection point where there was a lot more motion graphics than the early days where it was more like animated GIFs. Today, there’s more long-form storytelling. I guess it’s just an evolving space.” 

“Proof of Work — Variant 1” by Coldie (SuperRare)

Personal style

Coldie pioneered 3D stereoscopic work, and the iconic “Coldie” signature is instantly recognizable. 

“I consider myself a mixed media artist, but it’s collage art. I’m always searching for the illusion of depth in my art. I’ll be layering things but then taking it from the flat plane and then spacing it out so you can get a depth.”

“A lot of my early stuff I did, I did things with 3D glasses, but when I came into the NFT world, most people didn’t have 3D glasses at their computer. So, I kind of evolved my art into 3D animated motion to show people the movement without them having to put the glasses on.” 

When NFTs first took off, it was Beeple’s digital art, CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club PFPs that dominated the headlines and top sales — but one individual bucked the trend in a unique way, garnering attention with generative audiovisual art using just a C compiler. 

That individual was 0xDEAFBEEF, an artist and engineer based in Toronto, Canada who’s spent over 20 years experimenting with art, technology, music, generative art, computer animation, blacksmithing and sound recording. 

Using low-level computer code and a minimal toolset to craft raw information into audiovisual artworks has proven more popular than you might expect. A collection of six of 0xDEAFBEEF’s sold for $6.8 million in August 2021, and two weeks ago, “Series 1: Angular – Token 134” fetched $241,300 at Sotheby’s. It was auctioned during part 1 of “Grails,” a collection of highly desirable NFTs originally owned by the now-insolvent 3AC (Three Arrows Capital).

Trained on classic piano as a kid and somewhat of a mad scientist when it came to audio equipment, discovering a programmable blockchain in Ethereum was a revelation.

With a total artwork value of $24 million Trevor Jones is one of the Top 10 most successful crypto artists worldwide. Trevor Jones’ journey to crypto art stardom started the same way as many crypto noobs: His portfolio went way up, he failed to take profits, and the price came crashing down wiping out the paper gains.

A traditional painter, Jones always wanted to explore the intersection of art and technology, and he experimented with QR code oil paintings in 2012 and dived into AR art in 2013. 

But it was his 2017 investment in Bitcoin that sparked deep curiosity in what this new world of crypto and blockchain was about. After getting rekt in 2018’s crypto winter, Jones turned his attention from crypto trader to crypto painter. He says:

“I caught that bull run and made a lot of money and then lost a lot of money in 2018. It all went up and all came crashing down.

“I really fell down the rabbit hole and got completely excited about the space and the people. I was following whoever I could on Twitter, the likes of Vitalik Buterin and John McAfee and characters like that. Very quickly, I started having thoughts that this is something I would like to explore with my art.” 

“The Eccentric – John McAfee” by Trevor Jones at Crypto Disruption Exhibition. (trevorjonesart.com)

Crypto art was almost non-existent as a genre in 2018 within traditional art circles, so Jones took it upon himself to hire a commercial gallery to stage a crypto-themed exhibition where he showcased some of his first original crypto art at the Crypto Disruption Exhibition.

“The 12 paintings I did were all inspired by the crypto space, and from the new perspective I was coming in from, I didn’t know a lot about it at the time. I focused on some of the characters, such as Satoshi Nakamoto, ideas and themes like the bull and the bear, hodling and riding the wave. It was kind of me figuring out how to visualize this space through these paintings,” he said. 

“I sold almost everything from the exhibition to anonymous collectors around the world where they paid me in Bitcoin and Ethereum. It really blew my mind because normally when you go through an art gallery to sell work, you don’t get to meet the collectors for the most part, it’s all done behind closed doors. You’d hopefully receive money two to three months down the line when the gallery pays you out.” 

“To get paid immediately was just so eye-opening. A few of the paintings were actually sold before the exhibition even opened. I was just posting some images on Twitter and somebody would reply saying they liked it and how much is it? I’d tell them a number, and they’d just send me some Bitcoin, and the sale was done. It was just the most surreal thing.”