About The Artist
Like every hodler, I’m a sucker for number go up. Whilst I don’t check the Bitcoin price on Clark Moody’s dashboard as often as I used to, I can’t resist the dopamine rush of a giant green candle. These days, a pump often coincides with the news of a large multinational billion dollar company using their cash reserves to purchase precious Sats. Hodlers rejoice as we pat ourselves on the back for our conviction, our new found wealth. Inevitably more people are seduced into joining our incredible and vibrant community and the cycle repeats.
In essence, human greed is essential for Bitcoin to grow. Satoshi knew this and engineered Bitcoin to hijack our natural vulnerability for avarice to organically allow his magnum opus to take over the world.
Lately however, it does feel like that amongst the memeable Saylor soundbites and enticing Stock-To-Flow predictions, Bitcoin’s true value is being drowned out.
Enter MVDEX. An artist who’s imagery slashes through the sanitised corporate investment portfolio bollocks and reminds us why we got into Bitcoin in the first place:
The pursuit of freedom.
"If BTC is fuck you money, then MVDEX is fuck you art."
THE UNYIELDING MISTRESS
As we sit down to chat, I can immediately tell MVDEX (pronounced Made X) is an industrious soul. Coming from an entrepreneurial family, the spirit of self sustenance and free thinking was ingrained in him from an early age. Growing up, he was passionate about art and design, but was always on the lookout to generate income from setting up new businesses and solving problems.
One of his innovative ventures, led him to create an app to help people to save money and plan for the future. Whilst building the platform he encountered a giant roadblock in the shape of the Candian banking system. Due to the red tape and bureaucracy, it was estimated that MVDEX would need to raise $20 million to get his idea off the ground. Forced to seek an alternative way to realise his vision he went in search of a way that would bypass the tired, outdated and bloated system. That alternative that he stumbled upon was Bitcoin.
"I hit a certain age that most artists die at….and I just had this kind of profound realisation that I hadn’t fucking done shit with my talents or my abilities"
BTC, the unyielding mistress that she is, sucked MVDEX in. Like many others before him, she opened his mind to a new way of thinking. Entranced, MVDEX saw that Bitcoin was more than just a solution to banking but a way of being. He had just been offered the two pills. Take the blue pill and return to the fiat system slaving away. Take the red pill and choose self sovereignty. Needless to say, MVDEX chose the latter and quit his fiat journey to begin spreading the message of Bitcoin freedom through art.
MVDEX ORIGINAL ART
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THE KEYS TO LIBERTY
"What is most important for me is for people to see my art and just be struck by it."
In a scene where some artists slap a cutesy Bitcoin B on a canvas/NFT and call it Cryptoart, MVDEX’s work is a breath of fresh air. His style is inspired by the appearance of billboards on the metro stations in Paris. When an advert on a wall is due to be changed, instead of completely removing it, workers would simply rip the paper off and wheat paste another over the top of it. This process is repeated over and over, creating a unique historical collage of every bit of information that has been on the billboard. This resulting imperfect random disorder MVDEX describes as “absolutely beautiful” and provides the aesthetic base to most of his work.
"Everything I’m working to capture and leave behind for history is the pillars of individualism, the pillars of a truly free market, laissez faire, capitalist society."
The foreground layer of his art is made up of iconography of the three key things that MVDEX believes are key to liberty. Bitcoin, guns and energy. His modus operandi is quite clear: “keys protect coins, guns protect keys”. Energy is essential to make the other two function. The combination of a distressed background and emblems of libertarianism is an incredible heady cocktail. It leaves the art feeling as grimy as an oil refinery, as dangerous as an AK47 and as unique as Bitcoin. If BTC is fuck you money, then MVDEX is fuck you art.
The back of his pieces are often as interesting as the front. Recurring features include an Open Dime containing sats as proof of authenticity and a hand written quote from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.
"I swear by my life and my love of it, I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
When questioned about the inclusion of the text, MVDEX states that her work has had a “massive impact on him” and his life philosophy. He explains to me the importance of individualism and orates passionately against the state and how “collectivism will destroy the world”.
Like his work, MVDEX is an artist whose message is consistent no matter what side you choose to look at. This isn’t some clever marketing ploy to flog a few paintings, for him, it’s a way of life.
MVDEX IMPRESSION
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BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE
It is unsurprising then, with this combination of incredible aesthetics and authenticity, that MVDEX has found many fans across the world. Most of his works sell out as soon as they are placed on his website and he can count Diplo, Major Lazer and RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan as Hodlers of his art. His most recent collaboration is designing the cover of Zuby’s highly anticipated new album ‘The Word of Zuby’. “I’m extremely excited and grateful for the opportunity to do that. [Zuby] is everything I want to achieve in terms of thinking for yourself and individualism” says MVDEX expressing his admiration of the English creator.
"I believe MVDEX is one of the most important and exciting artists in the Bitcoin space."
As our conversation comes to close I want to know what’s next for MVDEX? “Well, I’m very aware that I could die at any moment” he says matter-of-factly. “The next pure MVDEX project is just an entirely architectural project where I’m designing and doing everything except breaking ground”. His reply caught me completely by surprise, but in hindsight, for someone entrepreneurial that purveys self sovereignty, it seems like a logical next step. After all, there is going to be a slew of Bitcoiners competing for the title of coolest citadel in the next 20 years.
CONCLUSION
As Bitcoin continues to capture the hearts, minds and markets of the world in the coming years, it’s inevitable that we, the devoted Hodlers, are going to get rich. I personally can’t wait for Michael Saylor’s 100k yacht party invite to hit my door mat as much as the next Bitcoiner. But as we ascend, we need reminders of what got us here in the first place and the principles that will guide us in the brave new world. That’s why I believe MVDEX is one of the most important and exciting artists in the Bitcoin space. His art and philosophy crystallise our beliefs and provide a cultural compass for the exciting times ahead.