21iSM BITCOIN ART COLLECTIVE
SOUND CULTURE RENAISSANCE
CURATING, CRAFTING & AMPLIFYING BITCOIN INSPIRED CREATIVITY
BLOCK 008
"My father, mother & brother are engineers, my sister’s a doctor & I’m an Artist. We’ve always talked about the topics that interest each of us. But now we have like one topic that’s interesting for everybody – Bitcoin."
Talking to Flo about her Bitcoin journey was an absolute joy and heartwarming experience. Like many a pleb, she explains that, to her, Bitcoin means freedom. However for Flo, the orange coin isn’t just a way of disrupting the corrupt global financial system and investing in a revolutionary low time preference monetary system. It also means family.
"We’ve discovered this amazing property of the universe, that we’ve constructed into a new invention called Bitcoin. That discovery is absolute digital scarcity."
There’s a good chance you have come across Ioni Appelberg’s work and contributions to the Bitcoin space even if you don’t recognise his name. Ioni is a medical doctor from Sweden who began his journey in finance through forex trading and later turned his full attention to Bitcoin. With a love for teaching, he began to make animated videos on Bitcoin and finance to empower financial growth but more than anything to aid the understanding of money.
"People ask me how I could go from Neuroscience to Bitcoin? I was always interested in doing things I thought were important, that would have some impact on or even change the world. Not everyone gets that chance."
Douglas Bakkum is a co-Founder and CEO of @ShiftCryptoHQ a Swiss company, based near Zurich, who make the BitBox02 hardware wallet. It’s secure, end-to-end encrypted, open source hardware for holding your Bitcoin and linked with their BitBoxApp has an elegant and simple UX. The team support some of the best podcasters in the space. Douglas sees Bitcoin as a ‘power to the people’ movement that financially empowers people, irrespective of their background.
"Not only is he helping expand the minds and ideas of us, the toxic maxi plebs, but he has proved a source of education and inspiration to heavy hitters from the legacy world too."
Many intellectual thinkers have come in to aid and keep the land lush and rich while banishing the shitcoin bramble. But not many have had a bigger impact on the the discussion than Robert Breedlove. From his early contributions like ‘An Open Letter To Ray Dalio re: Bitcoin’ to his Magnus Opera ‘The Number Zero And Bitcoin’ and ‘Masters And Slaves Of Money’ he has quickly become one of the most important voices in the our sphere.
"It doesn’t feel like work right now. We want to fast forward & see this future exist. We’re just trying to make something exist that we feel should exist."
Paul Itoi is channelling major creative energy into two projects that exemplify the revolution of the Lightning Network and genuinely empower digital workers and content creators – Sphinx & Stakwork. At one time his creative energy went into his Art major, oil painting or the violin but now it’s this zeitgeisty software development and time with his family.
"I made a conscious decision. I wanna leave, I don’t wanna be here. I want to do my own thing. I’m going to take a 60-70% pay-cut to go and pursue my dreams of building independently."
Zuby is a independent UK rapper who has made a career out of trusting his gut, speaking his mind and following his own path. Born in Southampton but raised in Saudi Arabia he grew up looking at the world through an international lens. The expat community experience in Saudi was one of true diversity – all different kinds of nationalities, religions, races and so on – I imagine this is why he is so incredulous at how identity politics seem to have taken over the world.
"I felt the system was broken but couldn’t put my finger on it. Then lockdown happened and I had a lot of free time on my hands and thought, I wonder what’s going on in Twitter."
For this week, the biological father of the now legendary laser eyes meme has taken over the social duties for the conference’s virtual community as the shitposting commander-in-chief. We think it’s fair to say, he’s in his element.
For Chairforce, being amongst fellow Bitcoiners and plebs in a real-life meatspace setting is where he’s at home – something you can tell not just from his words but from the efforts he makes to help grow the community that he loves.