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- [00:00]
Coldie
Don't touch the art. Right? How many times have we said that? And it made this negative, like, spin in my head. It was like, why am I telling my kid not to experience something in the way that he wants to? This mantra drove me to look at my own practice in a way that invites people to experience art.
- [00:21]
Raoul Pal
I don't know what you're talking about, but it sounds cool as shit and I trust you. But I've just seen it grow over time. It's like, wow, this is incredible.
- [00:27]
Coldie
It truly was magic. And a lot of times in the creative process I try to get out of my own. It's almost like a movie where you just have to keep playing the scene and you don't know what's going to happen next. But if you allow yourself to detach from expectations and anything like that, that's where the real cool shit happens.
- [00:45]
Raoul Pal
Even the story of you have the piece of paper issued by the US government, you go into the bank and try and exchange it for a fungible and you're told it's non fungible. I mean, that's wild. Join me Raoul pal, as I go on a journey of discovery through the macro, crypto and exponential age landscapes. In the Journeyman, I talk to the smartest people in the world so we can all become smarter together.
- [01:15]
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- [02:13]
Raoul Pal
Coldie. Welcome to real vision, my friend.
- [02:15]
Coldie
What's up Raoul? How are you?
- [02:17]
Raoul Pal
I'm great. I'm really looking forward to this actually because, you know, in this whole series of the Journeyman, I spend time, you know, a lot of stuff on macro, crypto stuff But I, I try and bring everybody along the art journey. And, you know, I've explained to people that art is clashing, but always clashes with culture and with technology all at the same time. And you're kind of at the forefront of all of that. And I've been following your journey forever. So I just, you know, can't wait to dig into all of this.
- [02:47]
Coldie
Yeah, that's awesome. No, we've hit it off at Marfa. You know, that was super fun. We were kind of in an art camp, I call it, where we're just like kind of roughing it but having a great time.
- [02:58]
Raoul Pal
So, yeah, it's gonna be fun. So listen, start people off with your journey. How the hell did you get to where you are today?
- [03:06]
Coldie
You know, it's funny, growing up, I would never was thought of as like an artist or a creative. I was more like. I was kind of a jock kid. So I was always doing sports and staying active with that. I never really cared about drawing, but there's this weird little thread that wove through my life kind of subconsciously, and it's really wild to look back. Actually, I brought a couple little things to share and it all revolved around stereoscopic images. Okay. And we're talking about. I was born in 82, so we're talking mid-80s. Somehow these stereoscopic devices were weaved into my life. Okay, so these are the little. Yeah, so the, these are view masters, right?
- [03:57]
Raoul Pal
Yeah.
- [03:58]
Coldie
And this is actually one I made for a project, but I had these. I'd flip through this and basically these are still image VR. So I had these disks. So you had these, these disks.
- [04:15]
Raoul Pal
I remember these well.
- [04:16]
Coldie
Yeah. And I remember it was a Taiwanese street market. I don't know, I just happen to have it and I. When I put that into the viewer. I lived in Orange County, California. I was transported and I imagine I was stuck in a spot, but I was living this scene because it had depth and it was real. And I was 8 years old and it, it made this like deep seated connection in my brain after that. I don't know how we got these. It was like my grandparents. This is from like the 1910s.
- [04:55]
Raoul Pal
Wow.
- [04:56]
Coldie
This is the same technology. Two images create a stereoscopic picture. This is a wild west with a, you know, lasso guy. I had that around. Just instead of watching a movie, I'd look at 3D cards. It was very odd, but it was there. And I like, I liked it. So time goes on, you know, I don't even, I'm not even thinking about Stereoscopics. But then I go to high school and I have this amazing video production graphic design class. I was surrounded by guys who later went on to be like, early uber DP for like, I'm on a boat music video. Like, really, really high end guys. And we're just these nerdy mountain kids, right? If you looked at us, they were like, this is a ragtag group of kids. I don't know. The cosmos aligned and we were doing cool shit with each other. And then we all went off into the world. And through that, I went to get my art on, my art degree and all of these things that I had been planting seeds in my mind. I knew that I was like, I want to go after that stuff because I connected with was a weird, like, mix of science and math and art in these weird ways. And I guess, long story short, that's what kind of wove me into what I'm doing now.
- [06:26]
Raoul Pal
So where did technology, blockchain, all of these things start layering into this? Because you come out of art school, all of that stuff, great. But Colby becomes one of the best collectors in the space. One of the pioneers of the space. Somebody's representing the culture of the space and building it all on blockchain. I mean, that's quite a big leap from. Yeah, we're doing cold shit at university.
- [06:50]
Coldie
Yeah, sure. So I get my art degree and I'm. I'm living in la. And one of the biggest kind of paths that opened up for me was one of my professors at school set me up with an interview to work for LA Weekly, which is the biggest alternative paper. It's kind of like the Village Voice. And it's the same company as Village Voice in New York. Every week we had a hundred thousand readers. I was designing the covers from those right out of. Right out of school.
- [07:23]
Raoul Pal
Wow.
- [07:25]
Coldie
And jumping into the fire, right? Like, if you up on that cover and it goes to print with a typo, a hundred thousand people are gonna dog on you, right? Like, it was. It was no joke. And I. I remember it went to press on Tuesday night. I'd stay late till like 2am doing cover. Sometimes the COVID would change if there was a news story at like 11pm editor comes down and says, cool job on that one, but that's out. Here's your new cover. I need it in a half an hour. Let's go. So, you know, I got used to designing extremely quickly and efficiently. But every morning when it would hit the newsstands, I had a stand, like, near my house. I would Anxiously, like, speed walk to that stand and pull it out and make sure I didn't fuck up. Because, like, even though I looked at it a thousand times, it's like, did I spell the headline wrong? Like, I don't even know, you know? So LA Weekly opened up everything. You know, I got access to art show openings. I was doing concert reviews that they were publishing. I just got to fit in where I wanted. I was like, hey, I'm gonna go see. Actually, I want to go see Tool. They're like, oh, I can get you a photo pass or review pass for that. I was like, oh, okay. And. And the same night that I, I, I did Tool, I. I also did a review for Obama. Like, he was doing a. I. I had to leave Obama's talk halfway through. And then. And that was LA Weekly, right? So I bring that up because I was going to art shows throughout all of this, these great graffiti shows. Like, I went to the Banksy show before it got announced. I was going to see Roger Gassman, who's a great curator. Yeah, go ahead.
- [09:21]
Raoul Pal
Yeah, because Banksy did that famous exhibition early on in la, didn't he?
- [09:26]
Coldie
It was the Painted elephant.
- [09:28]
Raoul Pal
That's right.
- [09:29]
Coldie
Yeah. So my boss comes up to me randomly on a Tuesday. She's like, okay, so you're done for today. Here, here's an address. And just go and pretend like you're supposed to be there. That's all she said. I was like, maybe this is some scouting trip for a cover. I have no idea. I walk in there like, I'm the boss, right? Just people are working, shuffling around, and I walk into the Banksy exhibit as they're setting it up, and I'm like, holy. Like, I was. I was not prepared for that. So I'm playing it cool, you know, just kind of walking around, meandering. And then, like, Macaulay Culkin is next to me, like, buying art, you know, it's just some weird LA shit. And my whole mantra still to this day. I grew up, I. I never had money to buy art. I'm an artist, right? But I would go into every single show with the vision that I want to pick my two favorite pieces from this show. And if I was a collector, I would buy those, right? So every show, I would study everything. And at the end of the night, I'd kind of be like, yeah, I'd get that one an hour, right? So after, you know, dozens and hundreds of shows and exhibits and examining things, not only did I kind of train my. My mind for what I Would collect. But I was also training my artist self. Like, I always looked at the side of canvases. I always looked at the imperfections of the signature or, you know, like, what was it to be an artist in the gallery? Like, what. What did it. What does it take and not take? You know, there's. There's an interesting research study, so I would go into all these events and just literally download as much as I could. And then just, like, the stereoscopic stuff, it pops out in weird ways. So that's kind of how I, like, learn to collect, I'd say.
- [11:30]
Raoul Pal
And then where does it all fit in with blockchain? Because you were, again, very early to art on blockchain as a collector and a creator.
- [11:39]
Coldie
Yeah.
- [11:39]
Raoul Pal
So
- [11:42]
Coldie
while I was in LA weekly, I got my first stereoscopic job doing a 3D glasses campaign for a concert. And through that, I. I started making lenticulars. So I was developing my art repertoire of what I wanted to create. And then in 2017, I was watching a podcast about gold and silver and what the. What the fuck is money? Right? I. I went to art school. I literally didn't know shit about finance, so I was like, I gotta learn something. Inevitably, somebody came on talking about crypto and bitcoin, and it clicked all. I was like, oh, okay. Like, it just registered. And I quickly saw this, like, emerging. You know, it'd been around for, what, six years, but, like, it was still very early. I was like, what year are we talking? 2016? 17. Yeah. And, you know, I was like, how do I, like, help promote this new thing? And my tangible skill on this earth is art. So I typed in blockchain.
- [12:51]
Raoul Pal
Selling art at this point?
- [12:53]
Coldie
Yeah, I'd started getting into gallery shows. Yeah. So I've been getting stuff going, but, you know, art is a really arduous, long task. So I was doing it, people were responding to it, and I was creating a body of work, which is the hardest part for an artist, is to get together a group of things that are cohesive. Right? That's when you can then take it to a gallery and say, hey, here's what I do. So I typed in blockchain art. In Google 2017, we got CryptoPunks, Rare Pepe, CryptoKitties. There's not very much Dada NYC. I love them. And then there was this website called Rare Art Labs. And they allowed artists like myself to tokenize their digital artworks and put them on chain ERC20 tokens. And that was the start. I thought of it as a dating site. I was like, you know, I had this stuff that I'm making and I'm doing shows and I'm, you know, I'm doing my normal deal. Why not make a profile so that if somebody across the world happens to see the site, you're kind of thinking
- [14:11]
Raoul Pal
of like a MySpace for your art or something.
- [14:13]
Coldie
It was, it was a zero risk opportunity to share my art and there was no one buying anything. Like, there was.
- [14:21]
Raoul Pal
Was this. Was X copy around by then or.
- [14:25]
Coldie
Yeah, it's funny, we. He was also on Rare Art Labs and I was recently looking at the different token mint dates and I minted like a day before X Copy. But, like, we didn't know each other. We, like, there was no, like, hackatao was on there. Osinachi Missile, Simpson, Rare Skrilla. I, there's. There's a lot of good people. Like, I, I'd be remiss to name everybody, but none of us. There was no community. It was just some random dude over in uk, I don't know. And that's how, that's how. And then it went under. Like, there was no. No collectors really cared.
- [15:09]
Raoul Pal
Had you sold anything?
- [15:10]
Coldie
No, mostly to either like the platform owners or, like, if I hustled at like an event and found one person, you know, I. And everything was 10, 15 bucks. I. My first Vitalik portrait was on there and no one ever bought one. So I ended up burning all 25 tokens and then reminting it years later as the Lost Vitalik and then sold. So it was, it was a crazy time. There's. There was, like, I said, zero expectations. Nobody gave a. It was weird.
- [15:49]
Raoul Pal
And then you kind of started coalescing around a couple of kind of cultural ideas that you wanted to explore. One being obviously filthy fit and the idea behind money itself, and the other about technology and what's happening. Talk us through. Because I've always thought of your work as very prescient about what is really happening to culture, to society, expressed through this medium. It's always, you know, that's why I've collected your work because it's just, it's super appealing to me because it's the language I speak and how I think. I think.
- [16:26]
Coldie
Yeah. When I got into the space,
- [16:31]
Raoul Pal
I
- [16:31]
Coldie
always feel like for me, art that I can connect to in a way that's abstracted. Is there, like, is like a fun way to create? So as I'm living this blockchain life, there's different people who kind of raise their hands, they do certain things. And I chose people who I thought would be important to the movement in crypto. Right. So, Vitalik Buterin Andreas Antonopoulos. Let me show you. This is an old lenticular of Andreas Antonopoulos. You can see the stereoscopic effect.
- [17:05]
Raoul Pal
Very cool.
- [17:06]
Coldie
So in terms of crypto, I was. I was like making portraits and things that were a scrapbook item for me that I was living through. But then I also thought about in the future, you know, like we went like an Andy Warhol exhibition. You see all these faces on a.
- [17:22]
Raoul Pal
On a.
- [17:22]
Coldie
In a wall or in a gallery, and it's a time and a place. Each thing is there for a reason. Right. So with.
- [17:29]
Raoul Pal
Because it's. It's the recorded storytelling of what it meant to be alive today.
- [17:33]
Coldie
Yeah. Yep, yep. And like, you know, John McAfee, if you were around in 2017, you would definitely remember him saying he would eat his blank on national television if bitcoin was not a million dollars. Right. It was. That was well known information that John was going to do that. So I put that in my. In the portraits of him, you know, that has to be recorded. And it was funny as shit to put that in there. Right. But I'm like. He said it like, you know, I'm just the recorder here. So it became really important to me to have these time and places and like, you're talking about the latest portrait series is called Techy Apocalypse, which you have collected and thank you for supporting that. It's meant to be an educational study, right? Where you see these faces of people and you can be like, oh, my God, is that Elon Musk? Right. If I have that conversation at a gallery, I've already won, right? Because they're looking at the art and they've connected to a face. Then the next question is, why'd you do a portrait of Elon Musk? Or why is Jeff Bezos, like, why Jeff Bezos? And that's perfect, right? That's the exact reason that this is here, is to teach people about what. What is happening, you know, what they're doing to help us and like, control us. Right? So, yeah, I mean, you know what,
- [19:02]
Raoul Pal
what I loved about this series was, and you've been kind of working towards it anyway, but even the name Tech Apocalypse is both things. It's the epoch of today. That's all technology. Technology is culture, is everything right now. In fact, it's going to be everything. And yeah, sure, we'll have a counterbalance of nature and stuff, but really is the main focus of humanity, and is it good or bad? Well, that's the lips at the end of it. And then having those key characters. Because these people are probably the most important people in all of humanity because they're going to shepherd us from being apex intelligence to sub apex intelligence and will have birthed a new super creature and our entire existence is in their hands. I mean, it's wild.
- [19:50]
Coldie
Yeah, yeah. It's fascinatingly scary because we're putting trust in these people and we've already given them all the data without even knowing it.
- [20:00]
Raoul Pal
I know people say, oh yeah, restrict our data. We don't want to share it with the government. I'm like, fucking hell. Your Google knows more about you than your wife does.
- [20:10]
Coldie
Yeah, 10 years too late, buddy.
- [20:13]
Raoul Pal
You don't think the government have access to your bank account. You're really stupid.
- [20:18]
Coldie
Exactly. Yeah. So it became educational for me as well. Right. Because I'm making this series and then I'm digging more into what these people are doing and I'm like, but why
- [20:28]
Raoul Pal
did you feel like you had to comment? It's not that you did comment, but what made you as an artist think this is really important, I need to do this because, you know, as far as I can see, there's only two people who are doing commenting on this specific thing right now is you and Mike Beeple.
- [20:44]
Coldie
Yeah.
- [20:45]
Raoul Pal
You guys are both coming in from a sing, you know, a similar but different angles. But you're both trying to say the same thing. What made you really want to say it?
- [20:55]
Coldie
You know, I think it started everything is a rabbit hole. Right. So I was wanting to do this Elon portrait for a while. I've been working on it and working on it and then I, I started looking at it. I was like, well, if Elon's doing this. But what, what about Jensen Wam? Like what? Like these people. Every, like I said, everyone starts raising their hands and I like, we have a group like it's hard to explain other than I think story, my I in my own art making storytelling is, is taking a front seat. And while I want to have a conversation about Vitalik Buterin. Right. I think it's a lot deeper to have a talk about what all these people are doing. Because it's not just one guy.
- [21:42]
Raoul Pal
Right.
- [21:42]
Coldie
You couldn't tell the whole story just with Mark Zuckerberg, but Mark Zuckerberg makes a whole lot more sense. When you got Sam Altman, Jensen Wong, like it's like a superhero story, right?
- [21:54]
Raoul Pal
Yeah, it is, I think for me or super villains. And nobody's quite sure which is what
- [22:00]
Coldie
the Story is, yeah, yeah, they're the overlords, right? And I made a website called knowyouroverlord Art. And the bigger piece of this, which is kind of an evolutionary movement in my career, is I want people to touch the art. And this. This came about because I have a son, and I take them to the galleries when they're traveling or wherever. It's like, hey, we're going into a pottery shop. We're going into a studio. Don't touch the art. Right? How many times have we said that, like, to our friends and family and kids, like, don't touch it. Like, don't do it. And it made this negative, like, spin in my head. It was like, why am I telling my kid not to experience something in the way that he wants to? Like, how dare I, as a good parent, do that? And literally, in the gallery, I'm having this existential talk with myself, like, whoa, whoa, whoa. And the mantra snapped in my head is, no touch the art. I didn't tell him until after we left, but this mantra drove me to look at my own practice in a way that invites people to experience art instead of what I called sidestepping. At a gallery, where you kind of look at something for 20 seconds and you sidestep to the next thing, are you even looking at it? Like, are you even registering what you're doing, or are you just sidestepping? This forces people or invites them in to physically move the screen. I want to. Can I show you. Can I show you this thing?
- [23:34]
Raoul Pal
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [23:35]
Coldie
Okay. Because, Raul, when you collected this, this thing didn't even exist.
- [23:41]
Raoul Pal
No, I know. I just. Because I loved your work. You said, I'm doing something new. I heard about him. Like, this is so right up my street in terms of a. How clever it is, the cultural references you thought. I just thought it was brilliant. So I was like, yeah, whatever you're doing, I'm in.
- [23:57]
Coldie
Yeah. And this is the fun part, because I'm creating this series in real time, so. And I told you this going in. I'm like, I got this token and I can update it as we go, but I just gotta start making shit now.
- [24:10]
Raoul Pal
I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about, but it sounds cool as shit. And I trust you. It's hilarious because I've, like, I have no idea what you're talking about, but I've just seen it grow over time. It's like, wow, this is incredible.
- [24:21]
Coldie
Yeah. And it's fun because I was like, fuck around. And Find out, like, I have all these plans in my head and I'm gonna execute them. But if it. If I waited till I executed all those things, it'd be freaking years. I just gotta start now. Like, hop on. Like, if you wanna. If you wanna be on the train, it's leaving and let's go. Okay, let me hop over.
- [24:43]
Raoul Pal
You know, just talking. That while you're doing that is Sarez. I don't know if you know Sarez yet. He's like a generative artist from Argentina who uses emotion by putting it through a machine and then turning into stuff. He hit me up and said, oh, I'm just developing the pieces that I've done for you further now. Now you can plug in, like a brain sensor and have your own emotions onto the artwork. I'm like, and also, the other person who just hit me up today was Carbon. He's like, oh, by the way, in the background, I'm building. I'm going to change all your GIFs. I'm going to turn them into some cataloging via AI of all important news flow. Plus, I'm like, why are you doing this? I bought your piece of art a year ago because I just want to evolve it. And it's cool. And you're doing the same thing. You're like, even though I've got your art, this is not the final state of where this is going. And I love.
- [25:37]
Coldie
Yeah. So can you see this?
- [25:39]
Raoul Pal
Yeah.
- [25:40]
Coldie
Okay, so this is a. This is the Elon Musk European variant. This is going to be in Vils's gallery in June. And what I've made is a wow. Put this into a touch screen where you can move all the pieces around. And then,
- [26:03]
Raoul Pal
because the actual ones already do this, but not. You can't touch them. You can touch them with your pixel, with your mouse. I mean, they're amazing to play around with, how you can create your own art, build your own art, change it.
- [26:14]
Coldie
Yep. You can add effects to it. And, you know, this will be live at a gallery in Lisbon, and this is the first test of letting people play with the art. You can delete items and really just, like, feel something, you know, And I think that, to me, that is a great evolution for this because, well, you've
- [26:37]
Raoul Pal
also done these style portraits in physical 3D art as well, haven't you? Layered art. You know, again, you've been manifesting this idea in many ways. You started with a simpler format, then you started building the physical format, then you've started building an interactive digital format as an nft. And then you've gone even further and now created a physical digital format. So you're just exploring kind of every angle of this, which I find is fascinating.
- [27:10]
Coldie
Yeah, it's becoming this internal dialogue back and forth, and I'm kind of the middleman. The very first piece I made was a physical portrait that uses magnets. And each of the pieces is made of Dibond sheet metal, and the magnets hold it onto the backboard at different levels. The magnets are different lengths, so you can move the portrait all around and choose how much depth it has. And that was very satisfying. I could check the boxes of like, if I'm not amused or if I'm not, like, kind of scared, or, you know, if there's not this, like, you know, here. Here's a wonderful analogy. And I. And I tapped back into this. This feeling again just over the weekend. I grew up listening to a lot of music. Like, you know, I was. I was a kid of the 90s, so I was like a grunge baby. But I went deep back into the 70s, 60s. I know a lot of shit. And there's. There's a certain essence when you hear music at a very high level of orchestration and proficiency. Proficiency where it's just that it factor. Right. When you can't describe it until your body is, like, taken over by it and you feel it. Right. There's a visceral feeling. And I felt that driving in the car when I was like. I forget if it might have been elo. Just some of these orchestrations just hit me hard. And throughout my life, I would make art to music and only when the stuff I was making personally felt right, just in my own vibe, that I was hitting what I could execute at a level that I could hear sonically, if that makes sense.
- [29:10]
Raoul Pal
I see and feel art the same way as I see and feel music. So a quick break in your regular programming. If you're serious about your future, grab my free report called prepare for 2030. I think you've got five years to make as much money as possible. And this guide will help you navigate what's coming. The link is in the description. Download it now. Exactly the same thing for me, it's always the. You know, I grew up in the late, kind of this awful stage in the UK where there was race riots and there was recessions and everything was changing and everybody was angry and music was angry and we had. From punk to things like the Specials, and all of this commenting on the decline of British society. And it became the cultural flag. And then somewhere in the 80s, it switched to Wham, Club Tropicana and Duran Duran Rio. And it was like, fuck it, we can be happy again and get suntan and drink cocktail. And I've always noticed how music is incredibly good at driving culture, and I think a lot of it's disappeared now. But what I've seen is the cultural things are important now. I've found in the digital art space, it's the people, the most progressive, the most interested, connected, trying to understand what. What the hell is going on that used to be in music. It's now really in this space.
- [30:28]
Coldie
Yeah, yeah. And I. I definitely feel the same way. In one. One band, I'm actually wearing their shirt. Tame Impala. There's.
- [30:35]
Raoul Pal
They're a Kiwi band, I think, from New Zealand, I think.
- [30:38]
Coldie
Absolutely. Yeah. It's. It's when. When. Especially live music, man, when I. When you're in the. When you're in the presence of these people live and they're performing and they're doing it, oh, my God. Ultimate Nirvana. Like, I. My cup is overflowed when I can go to those. And then I go back to the studio and it probably. If I pinpointed when I went to a legendary show and then what I created over the next month, I bet you there's a strong correlation because I just walk out of there, like, the vibrations are just, like, oozing, where it's like, what can I react? Like, I need to react to what I just did. And that's what these magnets were to me, where it's like, how can I push myself to the very brink of utter chaos? But at the end of it, there's. There's. There's form and function and beauty and. And a message like, how. How can I encapsulate a thought to embody all that? And it takes a lot of time. And it was like I was more of an engineer at a certain point than an artist. Learning about how much weight can you hang from a neodymium magnet, right? Like, I learned a shit ton about magnets, but that was part of it. That was. That was the art journey, right? It wasn't. It wasn't about, like, well, I'm going to cut this eye out and place it over here. I'm sick of things being stuck in place. You know, like, as a collage artist, you know how hard it is to pick a spot that's very hard, you know, like, what scale, what size? And now with this new method, it throws it out the window. Like, I could put the eye wherever I want. You could put the eye wherever you want.
- [32:28]
Raoul Pal
The weird thing is, is the very people you're commenting about in this shock, horror, delight are the exact same people who've allowed you to make art in this way. This is like a nice little subplot within that, that you've now become a technologist because you had to. Because that's the medium that you have to use to express it in the way that you want to express it.
- [32:53]
Coldie
Yep, absolutely. Yeah. And there's little nods inside of that because, like I said, it's formula.
- [33:00]
Raoul Pal
So here's the. Sorry, but here's the art rebellion actually being controlled by the overlords.
- [33:05]
Coldie
In the end, of course. Yeah. If the Internet goes down, I mean, luckily it's stored on chain and we can look at it otherwise. But they do control freaking everything. Yeah, yeah.
- [33:19]
Raoul Pal
Because you need the GPUs from Bloody. What's his name? Jensen, to even do any of this.
- [33:26]
Coldie
It's made. Yeah, There's Jensen chips in there. There's. You know, I have a version.
- [33:31]
Raoul Pal
You talked about it on X. So there's Elon being a vital role. And you've probably used Instagram somewhere. So there's Zucker. You know, it's like, oh, wow, even your art is controlled.
- [33:42]
Coldie
Yeah. I mean, I've used chatgpt on some parts of this. I mean, literally, it's encoded with them, which is part of the story, which is. I love it. Did I go into it with that exactly in mind? Not specifically, but that's how art happens. Right. And it's still happening, as you know. And I tell you, like, hey, when there's a major update, I'm going to push updates to your token and then you're set. You're like, what? And I don't even know. But it's great. It's going to be fun.
- [34:13]
Raoul Pal
So you can honestly say you have no idea what you're doing. You're just doing it and seeing where
- [34:17]
Coldie
it goes in the flow. I can tell you I have a hit list of even. Even after now. I already have one massive update that's going to take some R and D, that might take a year. That's going to blow. Once I do it, it'll blow my fucking mind. And then that's when I can release it. But things are happening so incredibly fast that I don't want to have, like a strict roadmap, because that's not creation. I might as well have a fucking dumb, dumb job. So there's that flow that's open with the North Star of a couple things that I will get to. Because, you know, when I started this, there wasn't even Claude code. Like, there was. Like, I had chat GPT Lite when this started. So, you know, doing this whole touchscreen thing. No way. Like, that would have been way more difficult than
- [35:19]
Raoul Pal
I was speaking to Kim Assendorf about this. And also Beeple as well, is. I know where this is going. It's so obvious. It's going to hologram.
- [35:27]
Coldie
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
- [35:28]
Raoul Pal
And people don't realize because people think hologram's still some sort of science fiction thing. People don't realize ABBA has been on tour for four years in the uk. They've got their own arena.
- [35:38]
Coldie
Really?
- [35:38]
Raoul Pal
It's sold out almost every single night. And it's all hologram and you can't tell.
- [35:44]
Coldie
Boom. That's it. Yeah. And, you know, I love it because I've been kind of playing with stereoscopics, which is a hologram. It's. And it's all trending that way, you know, and in.
- [35:57]
Raoul Pal
Yeah.
- [35:57]
Coldie
Because I can just think.
- [35:58]
Raoul Pal
Therefore I can just have your piece of art here and I can move it around and it's. Oh, yeah. If it's hologram, it doesn't take up space, but it can take up all the space. It's interactive, but it doesn't get in the way. You know, there's a lot of interesting things you can do with that. But it's here already.
- [36:13]
Coldie
Yeah, no, it's absolutely here. Yeah. And that's. That's the fun thing about this is like that. That thing I built, you know, super alpha. Like, I. There's like stereoscopic screens that could just run like. It's all there. And, you know, it's like the holodeck. Once we get that and we can just play with things in space and like you said, scale it. It's. Yeah. The future is moving so incredibly fast.
- [36:41]
Raoul Pal
The flip side of this is we were at Marfa together and you kindly offered. Because we had that great party where we had a lot of people doing some really cool shit, and you kindly offered to come along and make a filthy fiat stall where you. This is the opposite end of the spectrum. We're now really physical because you're. You've got shitty notes and painting them with dirt and cocaine dust, which it wasn't. But, you know, just the whole. What's the whole idea behind Filthy Fear as well? Because I think it's also another really good project that you've Been working on it was.
- [37:15]
Coldie
First of all, doing this project was like coming home in a lot of ways. Because for the last six or seven years, I've just been pushing pixels and it's great. I love digital art, but it hits different than physical art and really like narrative based, again, educational art. I can give you a quick story. Do you want to hear the story of the film?
- [37:42]
Raoul Pal
Yeah, always.
- [37:43]
Coldie
Okay, let me, Let me grab a prop. Okay. So I live in the forest and houses burned down, you know, happens. And part of that is you have to be ready. It's called a go bag. You have to have a backpack that's got stuff. If you need to run, you. You go. So we had all that stuff. But then I was also thinking like, well, instead of like having everything in my backpack, I'd like to go bury some stuff so I'm not running around with more heavy stuff. So I buried a box that had a bunch of singles, a bunch of like single bills, like if I needed to get a hotel room or, you know, something. So I buried a stack of 200 singles. I have some silver pieces. And you know, it was kind of a. A doomsday box, right? So buried that in my parents backyard. And my parents were like, whatever, like, go, go, go do your weird thing. A couple years later, I was like, man, I wonder how that box is doing because I've never buried a box. So I went out. If it's going to last 10 years, I'd want to know now if it's still doing good. So I went and dug the box up and I opened it up and I thought I did pretty good. I had layers upon layers upon layers and duct tape and layers and layers. Did I did not do good? Like the just. You could feel the. The moisture of mildew and mold. As soon as I cracked the box, I was like, oh. So I. I pulled out this brick. It was like this thick of solid white mold that had money inside of it. And I was like, oh, this ain't good. So I went down to my local bank in my tiny town and just walked in there like any other normal customer. And I walked to the desk. I was like, hey, I'd like to get a fresh set of money for this thing. And the manager is like sprinting over to me. He's like, you have to get out of here. That's an active live biohazard. You have to get out of this building. I was like, whoa. Like, I was wishing I had cameras on at this moment. I was like, wow, this is really Juicy. Okay. And they said, the Treasury Department will send you a bag and you can put your money in there and they'll send you fresh money. And I was like, okay, cool. Just want to get my. At that point, this was not an art project. I just wanted to get my money back. Like, okay, fine. Months go by. Treasury never sent me money. It's been years. Treasury's never sent me a bag. So I'm, you know, looking at this chunk of moldy, and I was like, what?
- [40:29]
Raoul Pal
It's unbelievable because you suddenly realize it's not your money. Yeah. They can decide if it's your money or not. Even in physical form.
- [40:37]
Coldie
Yep. Absolutely. And then I realized, like, money is only valuable if someone's willing to accept it. Right. If I took this moldy bill to In N Out Burger, they're not going to take that shit. They're going to be like, nah, I'm sorry, that's not going to fly. So as I'm living through this, I'm learning about the impermanence and fragility of fiat currency. Right. How deep is that? So I was like, what do I. What do I do with this stuff? And then it just kind of clicked. It's like, I'm a collage artist and I die for good textures. And I was like, there's gotta be something cool inside of this money. So I put my biohazard mask on and got my little X acto knife and started tweaking at this brick. And US Currency has, like, fibers for a reason to keep it intact. So it's very fragile, But I was able to extract some bills. Some. Some of it's just flaking away and gone, But I was able to get some bills.
- [41:41]
Raoul Pal
And
- [41:44]
Coldie
that's. That's the essence of this filthy, fiat project. And then this. Then the art started. I'm like, oh, I'm working with nature generated art. And so it's like we live in, like, art blocks, land of, like, generative art. It's happening. We don't control it. I wasn't controlling this for the two years that it was underground. Water, dirt, everything around it was creating these pieces, right? So kind of a glare, but you can see these are. These are one of one bills, right? Every single bill tells its own story, and it has its own metadata that is unique, like the serial numbers, where they're from, how much mold content is on it. So I'm looking at these things as metadata. I'm looking at these things as one of one artworks. And it's performance art that I did not intend. And that starts checking the boxes of like, is this art? To me? Like, is this something that I want to explore? And it was, you know, all signs were like.
- [42:59]
Raoul Pal
And also, again, perfectly played into. I mean, I love the nature, creating art as the juxtaposition to the other side of what you're doing, which is, you know, using AI and technology to create art, then it's the. The whole process of which you stumble into. The core thesis of crypto is the debasement of currency, that owning fiat. I mean, the whole. How it all comes together is just like a piece of magic, right?
- [43:23]
Coldie
Yeah. And it truly was magic. And a lot of times in the creative process, I try to get out of my own way and see this as like. It's almost like a movie where you just have to keep playing the scene and you don't know what's going to happen next. But as if you allow yourself to detach from expectations and anything like that, that's where the real cool happens. And I just kept going, you know, and. And, you know, you saw these. These bills, if you noticed, they're certified by a company called pmg. And because people collect currencies, old bills and stuff like that. And I wrote PMG and I said, hey, man. Hi, I'm Artist. I'm doing this project where I buried money. You know, I saw somebody used to. They buried D.B. cooper money and, you know, company certified that, would you guys be open to certifying my filthy fiat bills? You can't. It's like, you got to shoot your shot, you know, like, what are they going to say? No, it's like, okay, fine. They barked it up the chain of the top dog. And he's like, that sounds cool. So I've. I have 50 bills that have been certified by PMG, and I'm creating this body of work that, again, is just. It's for education, you know, it's art. But I want this to be in a museum or an exhibition space where people can come in and they can see these bills and they can understand and have that conversation of, what is fiat currency and why are these bills here? And then inevitably, bitcoin fixes that. Right? There's a tie in that. I don't even have to say it. It's just like, do you trust this piece of paper? Or do you want to find something else that might be better for you?
- [45:20]
Raoul Pal
Even the story of you have the piece of paper issued by the US Government. You go into the bank and try and exchange it for a fungible because this is a fungible thing and. And you're told it's non fungible. I mean, that's wild. Really?
- [45:34]
Coldie
Yeah. Yeah. And my, My only.
- [45:35]
Raoul Pal
You couldn't have invented the story better.
- [45:38]
Coldie
No. And that's the magic of it. Because, like, I've even thought, like, do I bury more money? You know, like. Cause I got this cool thing going and I may or may not do that to keep telling the story, but the core magic of this whole thing was it was not an art project, right? Like that. And it happened to me and I happened to think about it, right? Like, all these different things lined up. And I want to honor art in that respect too. It's like it came to me, I had the foreknowledge to look at this moldy chunk of bills instead of throw it away and just move on. And I told my mom, I was like, well, I'm going to make art with it and get my 200 bucks back, you know, like, I got to get my money back somehow, so I'll make some collage art and try to recoup the 200 bucks. And now I'm doing AI shit. And like, it's. It's all these, you know, it's just all these things, like, I got to get out of the way and just allow the process to happen at the right time. Right? And I know Fiat's always dying, right? It's not like it's going to become out of vogue.
- [46:52]
Raoul Pal
No, that's right. And what. It's being replaced with technology. The whole thing, it's just really clever and how you've become this kind of observer and a sponge. Somehow it comes into you and back out through you in ways that you don't even know. Because hearing the money story, it's clear you had no idea what, what you were doing or where it was going. But it kind of just. It's there. Suddenly it's like, oh, this is super interesting.
- [47:20]
Coldie
I've. I've always. I've always had a. A sense, a perceptive sense in my life in many very weird ways. I. It's.
- [47:35]
Raoul Pal
It's like.
- [47:35]
Coldie
It's like reading billboards or like, you know, seeing things. God, yeah. Wish we had three hours. I'd tell you a thousand stories. One story that ties to a piece of art. It's called trust your intuition. And it was New Year's Eve up where I live, and we're gonna go out to the bar and do the bar thing. And I'm just like watching people waiting for my friends and you know, it was a public setting, and this group, this couple walks by to me and goes downstairs and gets a tattoo. And I'm just, like, taking all this stuff in, right? Just enjoying the moment. And then all of a sudden, I hear like. It's not like someone was hitting a street sign or something. And I was like, oh, what's that? Like, that was a loud sound. I see mothers dragging their children like a war zone. I was like, holy shit, that must have been gunshots. So all of a sudden, I'm into, like, survival mode. And all these things that I was paying attention to earlier, right? These little billboards, I call them, ended up saving my life. I crouched down behind a trash can, and this literal voice in my head, like, I'm not schizophrenic, but there's a guy in there, he's like, you gotta run downstairs right now, right? And I'm like, I listen, I was like, I gotta go downstairs right now. Because, you know, I. I was told I have to do that. So I told my roommate. I was like, dude, I'm going. We have an active shooter. I was like, I'm running downstairs right now. He's like, okay. We took the stairs from the tattoo parlor, okay? So I pay attention to weird things. It turns out I still get chills. Cops show up safe to leave. As I walk out of there, this. This girl runs out and she's like, we need a paramedic. This guy has been shot in the face. He was standing right next to me, the guy who got shot in the face, right as the money falls over. So my life is very intuitive, and I bring that up because the more I can pay attention to those weird little things, I believe that they're opportunities just the same as this money in the ground. Why did I bury money? Why was I acting super paranoid to bury a box? Don't worry about it. Do it because there's something. There's something, right? Like, just go with the flow.
- [50:00]
Raoul Pal
Let's talk a bit about your collecting as well, because how did you start? Why and who and what appealed to you?
- [50:11]
Coldie
So it was, you know, 20.
- [50:13]
Raoul Pal
Clearly, you've got intuition here as well, because you've done quite well from what you chose.
- [50:17]
Coldie
Thank you. Yeah, no, I'm, Again, all those years in la, learning about what I liked, that was. That was the core tenant to all of this is like, what is my taste? Because if you're tasting what someone else is doing, you know, you're not even tasting. So 2018 is happening. We're selling art on super rare. One of ones. And the market decides the value of art. It's not my job. I make the shit other people decide. So we're selling stuff for 50, 100 bucks. 50 or $100. If you're. If. If something popping, you might get 150 bucks. I'm just making art. It's not my job to say, hey, this should be worth more. It's not. So as I'm selling these things and I'm looking around to other people too, you know, all the people in the space, I innately know also that this stuff is worth more than a hundred dollars. Right? And I'm like, wow, these collectors are gonna really come out good. Like, thank you for collecting my art. But wow, dude, like, congratulations, kind of congratulations. You got really nice piece of art for 100 bucks. And it kind of like dawned on me that I want to participate in my friends art and I want to buy cool shit because I'm on super rare all the time. And I see this thing that's 50 bucks. I'm like, I want that. And I just sold something for 150 bucks. I made this rule where I would take 30% of my earnings and reinvest in my friends and crypto art. And again, I didn't have any money aside from what I earned selling art to reinvest. And I'm like, well, you know, I believe in my friend more than I believe in most other people. So that's what I started doing. And I. I had a savvy eye. I really loved early AI art and nobody gave a about it. It was ugly and you couldn't even tell they were images. But I just like, the tech and the art thing was like hitting for me early on. So I was buying a lot of pieces for $5. I met a guy in cryptovoxels. Metaverse.
- [52:38]
Raoul Pal
Crypto Voxels. Wow.
- [52:39]
Coldie
Crypto. I'm building my virtual gallery in a metaverse. Super nerdy. Like super nerdy. Okay. My avatar is building block by block. Another avatar walks up to me in the metaverse. Extremely nerdy shit. And he says he's a little dialogue box that says, hello, you want to check out my art? I'm like, wow, this is wild shit. I'm like, hey, dude, what's going on? You know, like, I'm having this, like, real.
- [53:08]
Raoul Pal
You didn't know who you were?
- [53:09]
Coldie
No, no. We were just two avatars in space and I'm.
- [53:16]
Raoul Pal
Your life is weird. I don't know if you know that, but it's Weird.
- [53:19]
Coldie
Yeah. Oh, yeah. And I'm loving it. I think my son was there. I'm like, dude, check this out. So we're chatting, and he's like, hey, man. Like, you know, I'm not shilling stuff. I just made this art series. Check it out. And a lot of things dawned on me right there. That exact moment is still the future of metaverse commerce, where you can sell in a metaverse, peer to peer. And I was like, whoa. I was like, dude, I'll help a homie out. They were five bucks each. Bought four of them, 20 bucks. I didn't really know what they were, but he told me they're AI and they're, like, abstracts. For years, I looked at these things in my wallet, and I was like, it's kind of like that's either the best decision of my life or I just threw 20 bucks away. Either way is fine. But for a long time, I was like, I don't know how I feel about these things. They're kind of weird. Well, they're weirdly awesome now, and they're one of the early, you know, Jedi who does the, you know, history of
- [54:27]
Raoul Pal
AI under the Gan collection.
- [54:29]
Coldie
He's got definitely in that. So it. My life and collecting has had these weird narrative circumstances, you know, like this piece up here, Pindar Van Armen.
- [54:45]
Raoul Pal
I was about to say Pindar's another person that I. I. It took me a while before I realized how important Pindar was. And he's such a sweet guy that I just. Just bought a ton of Pindar as well, because it's so important, because he tells his story all the way through.
- [54:58]
Coldie
Yeah. Yeah. So, like, with things like, do I want a portrait of myself from a robot? Absolutely. Like, yes. Right. Like, that was not on the bingo card. Right. This one here, I minted this on Mint day. This is a ringer, which I call the Baby Maker. You can have the goose or you can have the Baby Maker. I mean, come on. And synchronistically, too. Like, this was an algorithm. I didn't choose this thing, and I looked at it for years until I really put it together. I'm like, wow, that looks like something. It's abstract until a human puts a meaning to it. That's how my collection is. All of these things are super.
- [55:46]
Raoul Pal
So have you been mainly focused around AI and generative, or have you collected a lot of culture stuff as well? Kind of. For me, the market splits into those two extremes, and in the middle is finer art. Let's call it that.
- [56:00]
Coldie
I. I have a Very diverse taste. I'll say. I always put something through two quick little tests in my own mind. Okay. I look at a piece of art, and then I say, okay, so what? All right. And that could take me anywhere. If there. If there is not an answer to the so what, then I call it a 3D bouncing ball. I'm like, that's a cool. Okay. Like, I see what you're doing. Eh, not my thing. But if it starts checking off the so what is. The more and more so what's that come off? The more and more I connect with it. And that's what I want to bring in as a. As a collector.
- [56:45]
Raoul Pal
Right.
- [56:45]
Coldie
I'm not a flip. I suck at flipping things. Like, it's not. It just doesn't resonate with me. I'm no good at it. So I think one other, like, early theme that I got into was Covid. Covid art. And because it was happening at the time. You're a culture guy, right? Yeah.
- [57:10]
Raoul Pal
It's so obvious. It's so obvious to me.
- [57:12]
Coldie
Yeah. So I knew big comic art, who's an OG on Super Rare. He was living over in China at the time when it started, like, right out of the lab and they were getting messed up over there. We were just chatting. He was living all alone. He's like, dude. Like, it was like a friend who needed a vent. He's like, dude, it's scary over here. Like, there is some wild stuff, and we didn't know about it. Yeah. And I'm. I'm listening to this. Like, is this. I just thought it was their problem. He's like, no, dude. Like, this is like, I think it's gonna be a problem. Problem. I was like, okay. And he minted this piece called Masks one. And I. I collected that to first of all, help a friend. But I was also like, this is some crazy shit. I'm pretty sure that's the first tokenized Covid piece. And then from there, I just. The sub genre of COVID art. I have a pretty nice Covid art collection.
- [58:15]
Raoul Pal
When I look at this again, I know people want to get that period out of their heads because of all of the complications around it.
- [58:25]
Coldie
Yeah.
- [58:26]
Raoul Pal
Some people had good times, Some people had terrible times. You know, people gained faith in government, People lost faith in government. It was a big. But all of humanity went through a moment in time.
- [58:37]
Coldie
Yeah.
- [58:38]
Raoul Pal
One year was shared by humanity. And I think you're right. I've not heard anybody talk about COVID art, but I've thought about it a lot because you can see it in some of the artists that were expressing it. But I think people will look back like this was a specific moment in time and it was also the point of which after which everything accelerated.
- [59:01]
Coldie
Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. The whole timeline shifted after that for sure.
- [59:07]
Raoul Pal
How do you discover art? Because this is the thing that artists really struggle with. As a collector, it's the same, you know, I end up using a bit of social consensus, an occasional piece of luck, like, you know, you just randomly find somebody some piece of art, you're like, oh wow, I love that. Yeah, happens rarely, but it occasionally happens. I found that the Argentinian artist SARS just randomly just saw it and thought, okay, this is cool. And then I went down the rabbit hole and thought, oh, okay, this is wildly cool, but how do you discover stuff and how should artists get discovered?
- [59:44]
Coldie
Two wildly different questions. But I'll let it all I know
- [59:47]
Raoul Pal
because I know this both sides of the equation here because artists themselves really struggle with this.
- [59:53]
Coldie
See where you're going. And like I, I, I do have to say as I, I would call myself a creator and not as much a consumer. And for that reason I find myself like more often like segmented into what I'm working on, which is good in some ways but not good in other ways. I think a lot of ways I find art personally is through culture. I mean I more so like back when I went to like record shops and you can you flip through album covers? There's a lot of great artists that are, that they get commercial work that way and that trained also my own design sense.
- [60:42]
Raoul Pal
Have you got the Taschen coffee table book? Album cover art?
- [60:45]
Coldie
I do. Oh, that's really good. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I got, I, I need more coffee tables for all the coffee table books I have. I think that consuming art like you said, happens. I'm not actively so much like going out looking for art, but I think art bind you and it's, it's getting harder with AI just to consume so much information. But I love going to like local, I love going to like local art shows. I think, you know, you're talking about how do people get discovered and stuff like that. Yeah.
- [61:23]
Raoul Pal
Particularly in this digital space because it's so vast.
- [61:27]
Coldie
Yeah.
- [61:29]
Raoul Pal
And it's just very, I know artists get super frustrated. They blame the collectors, they call it a cabal, all of these things. But it's the same discovery problem that every startup has everybody doing anything. If you're the local plumber, somehow you still have to get known. So people book you but people really struggle with this.
- [61:48]
Coldie
Yeah, I'm what, 20?
- [61:51]
Raoul Pal
Cause the issue is when you started, there's a small group of people. So as the space grows, they kind of know you. And your social graph grows with the space.
- [62:01]
Coldie
Yeah.
- [62:02]
Raoul Pal
Now it's like this, the social graph you start, it's hard to connect all the way back down.
- [62:08]
Coldie
Oh, for sure. Yeah. And it's a fractal, right? Like I'm 20, 25 years in making art. Right. It took me 15 years to get a gallery, a first gallery piece into a show, right. But then two years after that, I found crypto art. And then that grew, you know, like, it takes art is a forever journey. Like, if you're, if you're an artist, you're gonna do something and then you're gonna like, grow, but then you still have to start over at that spot that you grew into, right? So it's not like, oh, I've. I made it, made it. You know, I'm set. It's never. And I love that part of it is like, you know, as soon as you think you've made it, that's a really scary territory to be in, first of all, because it pollutes creativity, first of all. You know, it's like all the bands like Pearl Jam made some banging albums early on, but their new music fucking sucks because they're rich and they don't matter. Right.
- [63:12]
Raoul Pal
But also because you then just think, well, people want a specific thing from me, so I'm just gonna produce a specific thing.
- [63:18]
Coldie
Yes. Yeah. And with the portraits, I knew that that could be a path. Like, I talked to plenty of people, they're like, dude, you're so lucky. You can just make portraits forever. And that scared me. I was like, portraits forever. Like, I love making portraits, but that is not. I don't want to be defined as like, well, if you're not doing a portrait, like, like, so you as an artist, I think you also have to be very nimble and not become like a one trick pony.
- [63:52]
Raoul Pal
But the other side of the issue. And I'm advising a few young artists, just trying to help them in their journey. If you don't have a consistency, then you never get recognized either because there's no familiarity. So it's like a real balance of when do you say, okay, I can move on versus let me explore this enough so everyone understands it. And you said the same thing. You know, you had to create a style and a cohesive body of work, and the cohesive stuff is hard and,
- [64:22]
Coldie
and the beautiful thing and like when. When I get vaporized, hopefully, and knock on wood. In many, many years, when you line up my body of work, there's. There's little veins that go off, but there is a through point to every single piece that I make. And I think that as an artist, it's always super important to take two steps back and look at what you're doing and hold that core tenant. Like, for me, stereoscopics in 3D.
- [64:52]
Raoul Pal
The whole thing has to tell a story. If not, what's the point?
- [64:56]
Coldie
Yeah, yeah. If not, you're just throwing darts, right? And that's cool. If that's what you want to do, throw those darts. I need a semblance of why and how and what. It helps me form more concrete ideas in my head. And I think that for anybody who's creating anything, you have to have those pillars that you hold on to very tightly that can. Can ground you, but you also have to take chances. And you have to, like. Like I was saying, like, literally scare yourself. Like, another story. Okay, let me. So this was my third piece of art. This piece has a four, Has a. Has a semblance to it. It's stereoscopic. It has this really tough process called a ink gel transfer, and it's burned canvas. Okay. The second piece, I made, the piece before this, I made my first one, and it worked seamlessly. Like, literally, my angels were saying, you are going to make a piece of art because it should not have come out. Like, it was far too difficult to be doing my first piece of art, but it worked. And I was feeling like I made it right. We were just talking about. I made it in my own mind. I was like, I just made a piece of art. I did it. Let's make another one. 40 hours into my next piece of art, I'm doing the process again. I'm feeling it. I'm like, dude, I just made one. I'm making another one. 40 hours in. This process is very, very delicate. I pressed too hard on the gel. 20 hours of work flaked away, and you cannot put it back on. I'm upset. I take the canvas, and I'll never forget it. I threw it. I put it into my. Into the trash can in my parents basement. And I'm looking at it like, I fail. I freaking failed. I just put 40 hours in. Lost 20. I gotta start over. When I looked at that canvas, I was like, is it over? You know, like, I'm also like a problem solver. I'm like, I don't want to waste 40 hours what do I do? And I don't know. Again. Voice in the head. The little guy. Thank you again. Me to blowtorch that canvas. You to burn away. You burn away the problem. The problem. Burn it away. It's like, all right, so I found a little blowtorch. Burn the shit out of that. It's sold in my. In my local art town, in the gallery. They. They sent me a check for $420.
- [67:49]
Raoul Pal
No way.
- [67:49]
Coldie
And I was like, whoa. Like, from trash to a collector's treasure that they paid money for. And Raul, this. This is it. Like this. I've. I've learned over the years that I have to listen and be attentive. Because if I'm not, I'm going to miss something that's being, like, set up. If that makes sense.
- [68:14]
Raoul Pal
Yeah, the universe is giving you signals somewhere.
- [68:18]
Coldie
And I think, honestly, everybody, I think those symbols are everywhere.
- [68:23]
Raoul Pal
And I think I can disagree.
- [68:25]
Coldie
And I think more times that you can see a billboard. Maybe you're having a shitty run in life or a great run. Pay attention to weird little things because there's little clues. There's like a little puzzle. We're living in a puzzle.
- [68:42]
Raoul Pal
And then maybe somewhere in the simulation, somebody's putting markers out for people to notice. Yeah.
- [68:46]
Coldie
And maybe that's the matrix of this simulation. Right? I don't know. I don't know. But randomly, this shit's happened to me.
- [68:57]
Raoul Pal
So what's next for you? You're going to exhibit some of the stuff, the 3D so people can touch it.
- [69:05]
Coldie
Yep. So I got invited to show. Truly, who's a wonderful curator, part of the punks community, is doing a show during NFC Lisbon, and it's at Vils's gallery. Do you know who Vils is? He's a street artist who does, like, explosion art.
- [69:24]
Raoul Pal
No, I'm not sure.
- [69:25]
Coldie
I'll send you his stuff. He's it. He's great. Checks all the boxes. I'm going to be at his gallery and I'll be doing this touch the art exhibit again. Scared to shit, but super excited. This is it. I'm going to watch a performance of art that I made that I don't know how it's going to turn out. Let's go. And that night, there's a customizable option where people can move it all around and make their own thing. Print a button, and we can have little mini prints that people can take home, and I'll sign them. So if you're in Lisbon in. In June, beginning of June, come check it out, dude. I. I'm seeing it for the first time with you. So let's have fun. That's the.
- [70:21]
Raoul Pal
That's that. And then back to wherever it leads to next.
- [70:26]
Coldie
Yeah, yeah. More of filthy Fiat, just waiting for me. You know, it's aging like a fine wine. Just debasement is happening. Right. Like, I just look at these bills. I'm like, I don't even know what they're gonna look like in 10 years. And that's wonderful.
- [70:41]
Raoul Pal
I love it. Listen, my friend, fabulous conversation. Really enjoyed it. You've got a million stories. I think we could. We could have. Should have done drinks with Raoul and cold in. We would have had a lot of fun.
- [70:53]
Coldie
Yeah, yeah, we'll do anytime you want. I got a thousand stories. We haven't even talked about you, so we need to catch up more.
- [70:59]
Raoul Pal
Exactly. All right, my friend. Good to see you.
- [71:01]
Coldie
Well, you too. Take care.
- [71:02]
Raoul Pal
You obviously enjoyed the episode because you're here with me at the end. But listen, don't forget to go to realvision.com join and grab a free membership. It's an incredible community packed with alpha great investment ideas and the research that you need to help you unfuck your future. So get started now. Go to realvision.com join.