BITCOIN ARTIST
“This is how I look at crypto art. It’s supposed to be like breaking the rules. It’s supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be like figuring out what we are.”
“I think I was one of the first believers in the creator economy for crypto art and music,” proclaims Rare Scrilla, a musician at heart who has more recently made a name for himself as a crypto artist. He was always a bitcoiner, traveling back in the day from city to city to speak to people and address gatherings about Bitcoin and crypto.
Towards the end of 2017, he went all degen and quit his freelancer duties. He has DJ’d, been into graphic design briefly, dropped a Bitcoin album called ‘Silk Road’ in 2014 and another called ‘Sound Money’ in 2019, literally trying to earn Bitcoin by being an artist.
Then came DJPEPE. “I had made DJPEPE, who’s probably considered the first real music NFT. There were some experiments prior, but that was the first real music NFT, the first Twitter personality as an NFT DJ was the first kind of performance art that I really got involved in.”
His doodles’ popularity grew enormously, surpassing the engagement and likes of some of his music. It encouraged him to continue with his NFT art. Then came Rare Pepes and Fake Rares.
“This is how I look at crypto art,” Rare shares. “It’s supposed to be like breaking the rules. It’s supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be like figuring out what we are. And sometimes, in my meta world, I really have a hard time deciphering what is real and what is fake.
Now he has a curated directory of Fake Rares plus a vending machine on X-Chain, a decentralized exchange where you can put in a Bitcoin, and a Pepe pops out to your address.
Rare sees how we’re using crypto, memes, and NFT art as a kind of harking back to old communication methods, like stone carvings on the internet, the new hieroglyphics.
“We’re using pictures and short letters, so as complex as web3 is, it is also simplifying things.”
Rare is a musician, artist, collector, and bitcoiner who continues to believe in its value, worth, and future.
