EP73 The evolutionary path with Dim Zayan

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Let's go!

Now, what's the Bitcoin? Bitcoin's like rat poison. Yeah. Oh. The greatest scam in history. Let's get it. Bitcoin will go to fucking zero.

[ Laughs ]

All right, you ungovernable misfits. I'm your host, Max. Everybody knows that Bitcoin is useless, worthless, and doomed to fail. But what if everyone's wrong? What if it's the system that is doomed to fail?

Join me as I speak to some of the brightest people in the space and deliver to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole. Welcome back, everyone. Today's guest is Dim Zian. He is an absolute legend in the space.

His work on the voice paper, Bultardia, and all of his other artwork is absolutely amazing. I'm a big, big fan, so I was excited to have him on. We featured him in 21ism a few blocks ago, so definitely go and check that out.

And also, the voice paper is featured in this block, so 21ism.com for that. As I say, really, really enjoyed this one. Dim is an absolute gentleman, and if you haven't already checked out his artwork, go to dimzian.com.

Thanks again to Coin Floor UK for sponsoring the show. And if you're in the UK, and you've been listening to the show for some time now, and you still haven't bought yourself any Bitcoin, go and check them out, use the link in the show notes, and you'll get a slight discount on your dollar-cost averaging.

Yes, I always pre-choose no KYC services. There's Bisk, there's Huddle Huddle, there's others out there. But no, everyone's going to do that. And if you're not going to do that, then at least use someone who has good security, who cares about users, and has been in the space for a long time.

They really are the best option, if you are in the UK. Enjoy. Hey, Dim, how are you doing? Max, hi, how are you? I'm good, can you hear me okay? Yeah, no, yeah, so everything's fine. I don't have a video, but I assume it's no video, right?

Yeah, I can see you, but I do hide here. I'm privacy-focused, so I do hide. I can, no worries. You can imagine the scene, I have a glass of red wine, there's a candle going, it's a lovely intimate feel.

Just imagine that. Oh, well, if you don't mind, then I will turn off the camera on my end, so we can just change it. Yes. All right, cool, great. Yeah, well, thank you very much for joining me.

I've been looking forward to this one. I've been admiring your artwork and Bultardia, and obviously we featured you for 21ism a couple of blocks ago as well, and everything you've done with the voice paper, and it's been prolific, mate.

It's been incredible the stuff that you've been pumping out there, really, really high quality, and yeah, I'm very excited to have you on. Talk some Bitcoin, talk some art, and talk freedom.

So, welcome to Bit by Bit, and thanks for joining me. Max, thank you, and thank you for this introduction. You know, I only realized recently that you were also part of the 21ism team, and yes, you guys have been doing an amazing set of work.

I mean, you're featuring fantastic people from across the board in the Bitcoin community, and I was really excited to be part of it. And thanks to really credits to Batter as well, who was the man who introduced me to 21ism, and has been a fantastic help also on all this project.

He worked on the voice paper as well. Batter as an incredible ear and can put music to pretty much anything, so that was great to have him on the team for the voice paper. Yeah, he's an incredible talent, and I've really enjoyed working with him.

He also very, very kindly did my show music for me. He just, you know, I'd interviewed him a while ago, and he was like, "Look, mate, I'm sitting in my garden. It's a lovely day. Your show needs some music. I'm going to do it for you."

And I absolutely love what he created for me, and we've just always kept in touch. He's a solid bloke, and that's one of the things within Bitcoin, within this community. You get to meet so many incredible people with all these different talents, and people are very willing to help each other.

You know, you mentioned he was helping in the voice paper stuff. I mean, that was, if anything shows just how amazing this community is, and how people are happy to help each other and support each other, that really, that really says it. Just everyone coming together to, first of all, say, "Fuck you" to a complete our soul,

and also to celebrate something so amazing that is Bitcoin. Yes, and, you know, I knew that the community was strong. That's what one of the goals of the voice paper, however, I was really stunned by how much response we got and how quickly it happened.

Everyone was willing to not only participate, but give a hand in making it happen behind the scene. And it was really touching, because, you know, when I launched the project, I was not at all expecting that level, and it only to your point proved that the Bitcoiners are amazing.

And the fact that there is so much unity happening in the background, with all kinds of projects happening that we don't necessarily hear of. You have, of course, the ones that are on the open, but you also have a lot of things happening in the background.

I am part of a few incredible projects that happen in telegram groups around the Lightning Network, around other Bitcoin projects, and every time everybody wants to just give their time and make sure that the ball is rolling and that something is happening,

and all of this out of goodwill and an absolute need to see Bitcoin and Bitcoiners succeed. And this is simply amazing to feel being part of a community like this. And I don't know about you, Max, but before Bitcoin, I never felt something similar.

I completely agree. Yeah, I've worked in a few different industries and nothing. I can't even say it's like, oh, it's different. It's otherworldly. It's so different that I can't think that anyone who's not involved in this community can understand.

You can't express it. Yeah, it's very, very exciting to be around. It gives a lot of energy off. I found that in previous work and with the things I was doing before, I was much more tired, much more down, much more saw the world in it as a darker place.

And now I have a lot of energy because I see this as like a shining light and hope and excitement. So every morning now I wake up, as long as I haven't had too much wine the night before, I jump out of bed and I'm excited to tackle the day, which is at the end of the day, there's nothing better.

You can't have a better way of living than living with excitement and curiosity and all of these things that are brought to us by Bitcoin. So I feel very, very privileged to be in the industry and going back to the voice paper, I was blown away, first of all, to be asked, to be involved, and then to be recording and have my video

in with these amazing people, you know, Zabo and Adam Back and these people who are just, I couldn't imagine a few years ago to be in a project with people like that. And I was very, very proud, like I sat and watched it a couple of times and I just thought, wow, you know, we're part of history and you've brought all this together.

And I think it will stand the test of time and people will look back at this project and say, what a time to be alive and that these people, some of the people who have changed the world for the better, I hope.

And I'm happy that you're pointing out that, you know, it's the voice paper was a mix of people that are ogees and people that are a little less well-known and people that were absolutely not known at all.

And that was really the goal is to feature the community as a whole. The community is not just about the few familiar faces that everybody knows, but it's also about the unknown club. And I was really, it was really important to me to be able to feature that.

And not only that, but we also have the next generation that is being represented. It was a two contribution from a select boy, which is the son of a select, which was another contributor.

And also Lauren, right? And Lauren, the dog Daniel Prince. And I was really happy, you know, at some point, so I say, hey, you know, if we don't have enough room, we can do one tech together.

And I said, well, I much rather have them have their own piece, have their own share, because every single snippet was a chance for each contributor to really express themselves. The way they wanted to show their love for Bitcoin, for the white paper, or whatever they wanted to do, basically, how they wanted to express it.

And have them do their own piece was really, I think, an important part. And you see it in the way, you know, a select boy does it. He's very animated, and he shows it the way he wants to show it.

So on and on, I think these little giving people their freedom to do whatever they want within their line and made the project even more interesting, you know? The original idea was to have something a little bit more controlled with a little bit more curation in the way things look, et cetera.

But as we went along and we started seeing, you know, how talking with people and see how they were planning to contribute, we really realized that one technically it would have been challenging when you're dealing with contributions sent to you from all over the world, and two, that it was much better

to do a project where people do it the way they want when it's a project in the end that is about freedom. So it felt like it was right, right? It was the binding piece. And because at the end of the day Bitcoin, you know, we were talking about the fact that nowhere before we had experienced something similar,

and it's strange when we're talking about, at the end of the day, something that that background is finance and technology, it doesn't supposedly, it's not supposed to have that level of emotional connection, right?

And then you still have it. And the main reason, I believe, is because of the symbol that it represents much more than the capabilities it unleashes. And the symbol is the symbol of independence, of freedom, of self-sourainty,

and all of these, I think, are the funnel of expression for so many other feelings that people were having before Bitcoin. And I really hope that this gets translated or this was translated in the voice paper.

Yeah, well, like you say, finance and technology. You don't always think, oh, finance technology, art and emotion. It's just not things that are generally seen very closely together. But as you rightly say, this is about much more than that.

The reason a lot of the people who are in this voice paper and a lot of people are starting to join is because they want that freedom, they desire it, and society is so far from that at the moment.

It's this one thing that we can all agree on and all have hoped and see some light at the end of the tunnel. And that does make people emotional. It does make people creative. And that's what we found with 21ism.

We see so much creativity in the space. And to showcase that when I first got approached by self-banked and badters in the back of my head, I was thinking, I wonder whether we're going to be able to get enough people in each category who are brilliant that we can really showcase and be proud of.

And I had in the back of my head, I'm not sure because I was very much more focused on the finance, the technology side. And as we got rolling, I was like, actually, no, this is almost too easy.

We have so much talent. We have so much creativity. We have so much passion in the space. I've not seen it anywhere else. Like, it's just mind-blowing that every day I see something that just knocks me off my feet.

And that's an exciting place to be. As you said, having the younger generation, having Lauren, and also Nick Can't Mine, who we featured recently, these younger guys who are coming in, it makes me very optimistic about the future, to see how well they grasp this, and how much they desire this freedom.

They're going to teach us so many things. I mean, we are here. We are barely scratching the surface. And we're going to do our best to adapt our thinking, our old thinking into the new one.

But they are going to be born with it. They just, you know, pretty soon. And this generation, Lauren, and Solax, but the first part of their life, they were exposed to the old models. But the generation after, that's all they're going to know.

It's incredible to feel like we are turning a major page. And in so many ways, I am extremely excited about it. Not just because of Bitcoin, but because I feel like there were

a lot of rut in the way society was evolving in the last years. And of course, a lot is driven by the economy. But there are other things. I think everything evolves as a whole. And it's never just one factor that creates a situation.

And but sometimes you only need one of those dominoes to make the entire domino path just this fall. And Bitcoin is definitely that first domino. So when you think about how much revolution Bitcoin brings

to the table, you can only wonder what it creates at other levels and how the hyper-iconized world will become, what will change in a drastic manner. And we already see in conversation around how it will move populations because of where mining will happen.

Probably the mining source will become the point where the energy is being created. So you will start seeing shifts in population from an anthropological standpoint. This is amazing to see how much change Bitcoin will bring.

And you can only imagine and fantasize about so many things that will change in the future. But it's so exciting, man. It's really such a fascinating topic-- to see, to envision what the hyper-iconized world would look 10 years from now, 20 years from now.

And I'm trying to bring some of those elements into my work and my painting, often in an abstract way, of course, because it's always through the means of-- through emotions, mostly, but whatever you think about as an artist and being

drenched into this whole beaconization and all these talks and all these speeches that you are feeling on, you are essentially a vessel. And you try to put it back on your work, on paper, on the canvas, or whatever you use.

And it's incredible to see how one is affected by your environment. So whatever I was doing in terms of work as an artist before Bitcoin is different than after Bitcoin. And it will keep changing as Bitcoin evolve, right?

And so there are no stones left in turn when you are thinking about the revolutionary movement that Bitcoin is. Is that what brought you in? Were you already questioning things? Were you already at a stage where you were thinking that there were some issues in society and you were seeking out or searching

for an alternative or a different way of doing things? Or was it that you were happy in your life and going through life as people do, and then you found this and then you went, ah, hold on.

Now I see some problems. Which way round was it for you? Oh, you know, when you're an artist, you're somewhat a little tortured. So there was something-- There was something that was always fun, you know, not really working.

And it's always-- I think, you know, I mean, it's always about a quest for expressing something in a different way than you would with words or just with, you know, language. Or you try to find basically a different language, even if you know how to say it, but to try to touch other people.

But at the end of the day, artist's communication, right? And there was definitely a need to express some kind of frustration with the current models of society. And I believe everyone to a certain degree feels the same, right?

But when I got first into Bitcoin, I didn't necessarily make the connection right away on-- or at least I was not expecting the magnitude of the impact it would have.

And well, it didn't take that long to have my entire life going through a tsunami. And Bitcoin is just, you know, it's the great destroyer. It's the great destroyer of the world. It takes you and it just slams you on the ground.

And it's going to go through everything that you had taken for granted in your life. And it's going to smash it in a good way. But, you know, sometimes it's a little shock. So it can be a little bit dramatic.

But at the end of the day, it brought me so much-- well, first of all, I was not always making art. I was-- you know, for the longest time, I was doing a lot of more like a controlled art.

It was more design. I went into the early internet days. I was fascinating by internet because it was the Wild West and there was from an artistic standpoint, there was so much potential that I had to go in there.

And so far, for quite some times, I was actually making games in Flash. I was making websites as well when, you know, in the days of action script. I don't know if that speaks to your audience.

But I was an early language for developing games and fun websites. And then quickly, you know, like everything, it became very mainstream. And people wanted more and more to apply recipes.

And what seemed like an adventure was not an adventure anymore. It was becoming my job. It was becoming dull in many ways in the sense that there was no need for everyone or no thirst for the exploration or the unknown.

It was more about, well, we want a product and we want it done in a certain way because that's what the analytics says. And, you know, you end up doing applying the same recipe over and over again.

And there was the dawn of templates. There was the dawn of everything has to feel the same. The user experience has to be always in a way that everything's understandable. There's no more place for mystery.

And I felt like it was time for me to go back to my original love, which was art, you know? And I loved that word and right at that time, there was really at the time I started hearing about Bitcoin and being interested in it.

And I first did it as an investment. And for a few years, I didn't touch it. Unfortunately for me, I discovered a little later, you know, the magical world of investing, of trading, of cryptos, et cetera, and you know the rest.

I mean, you've heard that story so many times. We all do it. We all do it, yeah. So I'm not going to go into details for that because, you know, it's not really that interesting. But yeah, go ahead.

No, I was going to say, we know that story. But I think the reason that every single person does that at that time is like, I kind of see, for most people, you know, I interview and speak to enough people that I see a pattern.

There's this journey and you have to gather these clues and this information and it takes time. And you can almost see there's like marker points along a timeline. And at the time where people start trading and shit coining and fucking around with all that sort of stuff is before the time where they realize

that this is the most important thing on the planet. Once you get to that point where you realize, fuck, this is a chance for real revolution. This is a chance for real freedom. This is an asset where I have true ownership.

This is something where everything else, your property, your car, your bank accounts, whatever, it can be taken from you if things go bad in your country. Whereas with this, if it's stored correctly, it can't.

And until you get to that realization, of course you're going to fuck around. Of course you're going to shit coin and you see something else that's shiny and exciting and you don't fully understand it and you go for it.

And we all do it. But where it really gets exciting is once you do realize these things. And I think that's where the passion and the emotion and this kind of sense of unity within the community comes from is that you feel like you're in this together and that you know that there is a common enemy and you know that there is a real chance

for a better world. And that's where I think, I speak for most Bitcoiners, these sats are never leaving me. You know they're precious beyond what anyone can imagine and until you understand and you go through that learning experience.

- Absolutely and you know I would add to this that it's almost like it's a rite of passage. And you go through this to purify yourself from the greed and lust that you feel going through all of this.

You know you have this sudden elderado of possibilities on one end of course because suddenly it's you know there is always the financial component that comes into play of course. But there is also the excitement of wanting to try so many new things.

And you know because suddenly the door has been unlocked you want to go explore everywhere. And you don't know yet about all the traps and pitfalls and you're getting to this jungle and you're completely inexperienced and you are going to go to these traps and pitfalls.

And you don't know which animal is a predator and you don't know which snake is going to be venomous. And this whole thing, the best way to learn it is to experience it, is to go through it.

So you might always read books about it or theorize but until the moment you actually go yourself through this you won't know exactly what it is about. And even though I hope that I would have done things differently then, I hope that wouldn't have been as foolish in so many ways, I don't regret anything.

I don't regret going through this because it's part of the journey. It's what brought me where I am today. And if I hadn't done it, I would probably not be as much involved or passionate to your point about Bitcoin.

- Can you remember that time, along this timeline, you get to the realization that we're talking about and you become passionate, you become, I would say obsessive for me, I don't want to put words in your mouth but I would say that for a lot of us, this is an obsession.

Can you remember that point where it switched and you decided, I just want to create, I want to share this message? Because that's what I see from your work. Like I've spent today, especially really trawling through on your Instagram and looking at some of your paintings and looking at the work that you're doing

and obviously everything that you've done, the voice paper and the house of Waz and all of this stuff to me just screams, you want to promote freedom and you want people to understand that there is an opportunity for freedom and there is an opportunity for change.

So what made you decide, this is what I want to do rather than just keep your mouth shut, stack as many sets as you can and stay on the outside. What has drawn you in to share this with people?

- You know, I wish I would be able to express that in words but if I did, I would be probably doing what I'm doing. (laughing) But what I can say is that it was definitely something more visceral than logical.

I didn't act out of reason, necessarily. I really had this need, almost like, you know, the need to be, I had the need to do that. And it took some time to, because even if you have the need, you always have those barriers and the self-censorship and it took some time.

But even when I was not doing some stupid things with my Bitcoin, even when I was just investing, I very quickly tried, not necessarily to incorporate it in my art, 'cause I didn't make that connection yet that Bitcoin was so much of the symbol.

I saw already this potential, but it didn't get that magnitude. But even then, I was already trying to use Bitcoin to exit the system. And I made my first transaction in Bitcoin. I made it selling a piece of art, an artwork to a friend.

Actually, that was also Bitcoin curious. And that was incredible feeling, you know, that was,

that was just like, man, we're doing something completely out of this world, you know. There was really something, that's where probably I had my first feeling of, hey, this is feeling so free and independent, because it was just done, you know, the peer-to-peer way, my friend wanted to buy a piece of art.

I was not going through a gallery, I was not trying to use a fancy system. I was just going to see him, he sent me some Bitcoin and I gave him the piece and that was it. And I have that to certainly fantastic.

Not only because I had sold a piece, you know, it was, I was really restarting my carrier, so that was really exciting. It was a new type of project, it was an LED sculpture, so it was pretty new for me to do something like that.

It was done with the friend and it was done through a completely different brand new medium of exchange. And wow, that was, that was incredible. And on top of it I made more Bitcoin. (both laughing) - Yeah, that whole idea of completely bypassing a system that you don't agree with is really beautiful because you're not fighting it,

you're not raging against the machine, you're just saying, nah, fuck you, you do what you want, you carry on with this system I don't agree with, I'm just going to produce something that I love to produce, someone's going to buy it because they love it and they're going to pay me in a completely separate system that you can't touch.

And that's really beautiful, that's such a nice way to do things and I see that whole space growing, I see that a lot of artists should over time be drawn in here. I think there's a lot of bullshit and a lot of thud in the media that is putting a lot of people off.

I work as an artist and a lot of friends of mine work as artists and most of them are put off by this argument of, oh, it's not sustainable, it's not green, it's going to destroy the planet bullshit.

Most of them are put off by that now, but they will eventually come round. And when they do, this seems like it's the perfect fit for artists where you, like you're saying, you have this like peer-to-peer transactions, you can connect collectors directly to artists and you can do it in a way that if you're working as an artist,

you want to be free in the way you're thinking and a lot of artists, they are thinking outside the box, they don't necessarily fit in society, so well, and it's almost like a means of escape, it's like trying to express the way they're feeling that they can't quite necessarily even understand themselves and when they work this thing out,

I feel like it's like meant to be, it's like the perfect environment for artists to really thrive. How do you see that developing? Do you sort of have a similar thought or do you think that there's these barriers that are going to take many more years to break down?

- Well, I mean, one thing about the way artists express, yes, it's exactly what you said, but in addition to this, there is also, it's not just about trying to express something that you don't necessarily understand, it's also about showing a different facet to people.

You know, if you are exploring something, if you're seeing the world in a way that is not necessarily the way everybody shares, it's almost your duty to go and tell everyone, "Hey, do you see that this is happening also like this?"

And it's to make people react or wander in a different direction that they may have not thought about before, and that's probably what I would define the mission of an artist. And to make it to a, sorry, I got sidetracked. (laughs) - That's all right.

- So what was the question again, sorry? - It was, do you see this as a space where more and more artists will realize that this is a place to sort of escape the grasps of the way that the art world works and to create more of a peer-to-peer, collector-to-artists environment and cut out a lot of the bullshit in between

and really connect people? - Yes, sorry about that. So, absolutely. I mean, you already see this with NFTs. I don't know if we should talk about this now. It's another rabbit hole that I'm willing to explore, but maybe we can save that for later.

But definitely there is the need, I think, for a level of independence in the art world that has been more and more controlled by a top-down pyramid of the galleries, the certain houses that basically make the market.

And there is this need for something a little bit more, of course, decentralized, of course, broader and that allow more voices to express themselves. But at the end of the day, I do think that there will be some kind of going back to that model as well.

It's almost like to take it very crudely, you're looking at a chart and if it falls too deep, if there is too much of a deep, it will bounce back maybe very quickly in the opposite direction and then try to consolidate a little bit.

Well, I think it's the same with the shock that the art world will go through. There is this craziness with the NFTs, of course, and with how there is this need for exiting that system and it will create access in many ways.

And then it will go back the other way where people will realize, wait a minute, maybe we need a little bit more structure, maybe we need to get through a gallery or a system that will allow to curate more and there will be an access in that direction.

And eventually, I think we will find a happy medium where artists can be independent, artists can be doing it their own way, but they will also be able, if they want to be within a certain structure or a certain group or a collective that will allow for them to express this,

express what they need to express without the overhead. 'Cause I mean, I look at it, I'm an independent. And I worked on my work as an artist, I work on independent projects, I work on both the other comic book.

And because I'm independent, I have to do so many things that actually take me out of my art, I have to work on the website, I have to work on the sales, I have to work on discovering new things, seeing if NFTs make sense, seeing if that technology makes sense, try to find new technology for different projects.

And all of this takes a lot of my time out of my work. Well, my dog takes most of my time out of my work, but the rest of the time becomes very limited. And I have to be even more careful as to what I decide to work on.

And I wish it was not as much, you know? So the need for the structures for artists is not necessarily a bad thing, if it's done in a smart way, and if it's limited to serving and not controlling.

And we're going back to everything pretty much. We're talking about governance, we're talking about companies, we're talking about systems. Everything falls under the same laws that we're trying to find, which is less control, more of an open system that is used to assist instead of a government.

- Yeah, I think there's definitely a middle ground, like you say, I completely agree. To do anything by yourself, you have to do so many other things. You know, it takes you out of the studio, it takes you out of the environment that you maybe want to be in because you can't just create, you have to also sell, and then to sell,

you have to do the website, and you have to do the marketing. And you know, all these things that maybe you'd actually prefer to just be creating. And so there is definitely value in people who can show your work, there's definitely value in the marketing of it.

But I think what's important is that there's not a few people deciding what is and what is not quality and taking backhanders or however it really works. To tell someone what has value, it would be nice if there was a way that work can be showcased and presented in the best way possible.

And there's a way for collectors to find that art and appreciate it, and if they do appreciate it, there's a percentage that goes to the people who showcase it well. And maybe we can use technologies like lightning and these kind of things as the payment rails for that.

But there is definitely value there. You know, you're talking about the NFT stuff and I know it gets bashed to hell at the moment. It's not something that particularly interests me, but the physical art interests me.

And I definitely think that there is a lot more that can be done, and I think there's a lot of artists that can benefit from the system. And it's developing at such a rapid rate, just to keep on top of it and to see where this thing is going is almost a full-time job.

I almost see 21ism, what we're trying to do and showcase these artists. Maybe that's something that evolves and maybe that's something that we can help artists find these collectors without taking the piss and do things in a way that is more realistic, more fair and actually there to support artists, not to take advantage of them,

which is what I kind of see a lot of what's happened in the past and is still going on. A lot of it is taking advantage of people who are creators and they're fantastic at creating, but they're not so good at the marketing and they're not so good at the finance side and they get taken advantage of or just don't get seen.

And that's a real shame. So I really hope that more people can get their work seen 'cause there's so many talented people on this planet who are in the shadows and that's a real shame. - Yeah, I mean, you know, it's, I gotta say something though, you know, my only thing about digital art

is that it gets a bad rap because of the NFT discussion of the NFT crisis, but if you put it aside, I think, you know, digital art I found extremely exciting. It's a medium like any other medium and you have fantastic things, creatively speaking, that are being done digitally.

It opens a whole set of doors when it comes to being able to use movement and animation. And there is, I mean, it has, it's really has an enormous potential and I'm extremely excited about the digital approach.

The thing is that because of all the discussions that are happening around, you know, what creates scarcity, what makes a piece unique, why can you just not copy and paste it, et cetera. These are all separate discussions.

These are all separate problems that are not necessarily inherent to visual digital art because the same thing can apply, well, I mean, you know, to a certain extent to music, to videos before actually talking about just visuals.

And there was not as much concern about actually paying artists for their songs, paying artists for their work in videos. There was concern about, you know, having labels that were actually taking all the money or the Apple Store taking all the money because, and then giving just little pieces of rights to the artist.

But the fact that you would pay for something digital to a content creator was not a problem until DNFD showed up. - I agree with you. - Yeah. - I do agree with you. I think that the world is going more and more digital.

And some of these ideas, they do conflict. So people will say, there's no value in any digital art. And I think that's wrong. And I think that when we're looking at this kind of citadel theory and we're looking at more freedom of movement maybe and we're looking at the fact that people can be almost like digital nomads,

then I think that digital art has a place there. If you're gonna have less and less possessions, I've found that since being involved in Bitcoin a lot of the time is just to stack Sats, but I've sold all my shit.

I had loads of stuff. Like I have no stuff anymore. Just go around my house and just sell everything. I'm like, do I love this beyond belief? Like, can I live without this thing? Yeah, I can live without that, sell it.

And I only keep what I absolutely love. And I'd like to get to a stage where I could pretty much travel with a laptop and a couple of things that I can't live without. And maybe that's a case if we can get past all this COVID nonsense and all the lockdowns and all that shit and we do get to a Bitcoin standard

and people can travel and move. I can see why digital art has a reason and has a value. I think the thing is that there's a lot of bullshit around the platforms it's on and a lot of hype, but you were talking about this sort of equilibrium and maybe something swings too far one way and then it finds a middle ground.

There will be a middle ground for this stuff. I'm sure I just don't think we're there yet. Oh, no, no, I mean, well, just the parenthesis man, you're way ahead of the game. I've always been admiring the less is more minimally established.

I'm just not very good at it. (laughs) What I'm doing, I'm doing some work. You know, this guitar collection, I was for a long time passionate about electric guitars and this is collected.

It's a terrible thing to collect by the way. It's just very, it does much space. It collects stems maybe, but not guitars. (laughs) But I'm trying to get rid of this finally and it feels great to just move away from all the clutter and the stuff and realize that if you are ready to be a digital nomad or a citizen of the future,

you need to be able to travel regardless of what's going on right now, of course, and travel light and being able not to be having this load on your back of stuff. It's one step towards liberation, towards freedom.

So I completely admire your philosophy and not only that, but the fact that you've actually acted upon it. I mean, there are some things I can't, but it does feel freeing. I think that your possessions end up owning you more than you own them.

I collect my UTXOs now. That's what I collect. But in the same way with you, like my favorite thing in this world is my dog. And so he has to come with me and other than him and my cold card and things like that, I pretty much live without everything else, but it is hard.

It is a difficult thing to do. And there are some things that I don't think will ever be the same digitized artwork. You know, for me, like I love having paintings on my wall. I love to have sculptures.

I love to have things that are tactile. They smell a certain way, they feel a certain way, and they make me feel a certain way. Maybe at some point, this digitized stuff can do the same, but right now for me, it just, I don't know.

Maybe it's an age thing. Maybe the younger generations will appreciate it more, but it's just not quite there for me, yeah. - Totally, man. You're absolutely right. And so much resonating to what you just said.

I mean, for actually for the longest time, I've been working, experimenting with how both of the world can connect, how you can have the digital, but still have the tactile, the smell, engage all your senses, not just two of them.

And you're absolutely right. I don't see them as a replacement for now. I see them as two different ways of digesting something. And it depends if you want to express an emotion, sometimes it's best done through a song.

If you, and other times it will be best done through a painting, looking at a painting, sometimes both, because you could listen to a song while looking at a painting and it creates, it's like, you know, you're putting mozzarella and olive oil and tomatoes and together they get so good, man.

And that's exactly the same thing, is that there are ingredients and they have flavors and I think the digital is yet another representation that may translate other things, that may give the viewer a different flavor and it will never be a replacement.

I totally agree, it will be such a shame. Part of the reason I also stopped my previous work was that I got tired of working on a website, for instance, or a virtual game and these have a shelf life, they are virtual and then they get replaced by a new technology or it's not, they don't work anymore with the platform that you're using,

you have to put them into different platforms or different browser or et cetera. And everything disappears, but in a much more, not in a buddhist, in a permanent way, which is a nice philosophy.

This is just like you have a portfolio, you have a work and you're proud of it, you're trying to showcase it and then unless you manage to save it in a certain way, it will be gone and then all the things that you're proud of are you want to show, die very quickly.

Not only that, but to your point, I was not able to touch my work. You cannot just being able to have this communion and that was part of the reason why I stopped as well. And to go back to what you're saying, yes, the painting is the need for, even if you're not able to touch a painting, you're not supposed to touch a painting,

you can see the texture, you can look at the depth and if you look at the picture of that same painting, it will never be the same. It will never be the same. If you look at Mona Lisa on your screen, how can it be the same than going to the roof and actually look at it in person?

You won't get the same emotions. So yes, you're right. Now, you could have a version of Mona Lisa in a 3D Mona Lisa that, well, maybe not Mona Lisa because it would be a shame, but a different thing, a different woman that is being displayed very, that will convey a different emotion that would make you want to look in a different way.

And I think these are also as important because that allows us as human beings to also make our communication system evolve. - And that's what all of this is about, is this communication.

When you really dig down deep enough, money is just communication, money is just a language and also a way of storing the energy that we output and we only have a certain amount of energy, we only have a certain amount of heartbeats and then we're gone and this is something that I would like to communicate to people

outside of the Bitcoin world is stop fucking around doing things that you don't love because we only have a very small amount of time on this planet and you want to leave the planet, hopefully a better state than what you arrive in it or at least the same.

And I kind of see that the trajectory that the majority of the world is on right now and I don't want to take this dark, but it's not good as far as I can see it and I think most Bitcoiners will agree with that.

That's what excites me about the world of art is that you can portray these ideas and try and explain to people and excite people and get people to be thinking a little bit more because you can do so much with books and you can do so much with words but sometimes like you were saying, a song or a painting is very, very hard hitting

and can wake people up and make them see. I'm pretty sure that we're all right, like I'm, I've never been so sure of anything in my life that we are right and that what we're doing can change the world in a positive way.

And so finding whatever medium, whether it is physical or digital, whether it's music or painting to convey this is to me the most important thing that I can do with my time and I can clearly see from what you're doing that this is all you're thinking about and it's really incredible.

Like the stuff that you're doing with Baltaria, the other paintings that you've been doing, the stuff that you're doing with this voice paper and everything is very, very clearly pointing towards freedom for me.

Is this something that you've always felt? Is it something that has always been in you or that was instilled in to you by your family or by your parents or why are you this way because it's not like it's great (laughs) and I love being around people like you.

I love this passion, but it's very different. So why, what is it that spurs you on and makes you do what you're doing? - I don't know, but it's true. It was, you know, in hindsight it was something that was there all along in the sense that

I left France to live in the country when I was, you know, after my studies, my 20s and I left everything and it was in a way a quest for freedom. It was not because there was this, you know, job, not because there was, well, there was this girl.

Yes, there was a woman. - There was just about the same, there always is. - But there was, you know, I arrived in New York and New York was such an expression of freedom that was captivating and there was this level of liberty

that you don't necessarily, or that I didn't feel necessarily when I was growing up in France. And it really, well, it's a weird thing to say, but freedom kept me captive in New York City.

And I was so impassioned by that concept that I was not able to live for a long time, even though in the end I was not in love with New York anymore, it had changed in many ways.

You know, the manatee in itself, where I was spending a lot of time was, there was always neighborhoods where you could escape and if you wanted to get away from it or if you wanted to find some peace, you could do it.

Or you could always explore a new street or find a new interesting place that was really creating a curiosity. And through the last years, it became impossible, or nearly impossible to find that.

Or every time I had to go further and further and further and explore a place, which is, you know, interesting, but it gets old. And I got tired of this. New York was not necessarily the same anymore.

And I left for her to find my citadel in the countryside. And now it's, I would say, you're right. It's another quest for freedom, being in nature, being around animals, being in communion in many ways with the lack of humans around.

There is something very liberating in that as well. Especially when you have lived most of your life as, you know, in big cities such as New York operators. So to answer your question, yes, I believe it was always there.

I'm not exactly sure why, but it was always there. - I had something that really interests me the other day. I was listening to your episode you recorded recently with our mutual friend, Daniel.

It was his final question. And it was, who would you communicate? Who would you orange pill? And you said your dog and it made me laugh. And I thought, oh, fucking hell yeah, I'd like to tell my dog as well.

And then you said something afterwards that made me think a bit deeper. And you said, well, I'd be interested to see, well, it might not be in quite this wording, but it was basically, I'd be interested to see Bitcoin's impact on nature.

From my understanding, and I don't want to doctor you, but you are very much in nature at the moment and away from people as is bad as, it's very much something that I would like to be as well away from people and more with nature.

So I'd be interested to hear what your thoughts are. There's a lot of talk about societal change with Bitcoin and the monetary system and the social impacts. But I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on, how is this going to work in terms of nature?

And do you think that we're going to become closer to nature? Or do you think we're going to get further away from it? - So I don't know if this is Bitcoin necessarily related, but don't you think we already started seeing more of a shift out of the big cities towards return to nature?

I felt like this process has already started and it started before COVID, it's not, you know, COVID of course, the lockdown stories around the big city. I'm sure create a lot of needs to get away from the smaller patterns.

I mean, you know, if I was stuck in New York City in one bedroom, I would go crazy right now. But yes, I believe that we're going to see more and more of this, I believe that it's part of the principles of self sovereignty where you regain your freedom to go, where are you pleased?

And I believe it was the reason why cities became so important is because a lot of people were there not by decision necessary, but by necessity, it was because that's where the jobs were, that's where you could make a living basically.

And it was not necessarily possible to do, to achieve the same if you were anywhere else. But in the society, we live now where there is much more democratization around what you can do virtually the new jobs that you can actually have anywhere in the world.

And now, a new money that allows you to do that freely and very easily, that basically you start having all the pieces of the puzzles in front of you in order to stay in a place that you really want to versus a place that you had to be.

So I really believe that this exit of the big city is going to increase over time. Yeah, that's a world I want to live in. I think we could all do very well to get a bit closer to nature and closer to our roots and sort of remember that we're not disconnected, that we're not just a completely

separate, we kind of almost put ourselves on a pedestal and we're like, oh, human and then everything else. And that's so far from true. We rely on everything else. And it would be nice to see a bit more of a connection to all of that and a bit more of a realization of just how beautiful and incredible this planet is.

And I think there's so many barriers in the way in modern society. And we take it for granted, people are too busy to realize. But I've noticed myself, the happiest days I have, if I'm just with me, my dog, my Mrs.

We have some good food. We're out in nature. We're away from technology. We're away from all the bullshit. And we're just at peace. And that's the most happy time that I can have. And I think maybe that's forgotten.

People want to be so busy and fill their time and have all these possessions and have all these things. And it never makes you happy. It's a distraction from what really matters. And you know, it's funny you talk about this.

I'm just really-- I had this on my pile of books I was supposed to read as a Frenchman in a foreign country in the US. I don't necessarily read the same classics. And when I was really introduced to recently was "Walden" by Thoreau.

And so I started looking into Thoreau and the transcendentalists, Emerson et cetera. And it's incredible how close their way of thinking are to the big corners. There is this rejection of the central authority

and of organized basically systems and religion in a central way. There is this need for independence and self sovereignty and basically a return to nature. And these are topics that are common to the community of Bitcoiners nowadays.

So well, it was 1830s or 1850s. And now we're here. So it seems that the need has been dragging for very long. Maybe it's time to revisit it for sure. Yeah, 100%. And I think that we're going to get there.

I feel very confident in the people that are around us. I feel that we have enough people with enough brains. And we have an incentive model that is weighted in our favor. And the world is going to change drastically.

But I do think for the better. Yeah, it's an exciting time. So yeah, I wanted to just wrap up by saying, I really appreciated you taking the time to take this call. I really love your artwork.

And I don't say that just to create fluff. I really mean that it's fucking awesome. And the white paper, I was very, very happy to be included in that. I think that all this stuff that you're doing is it's not art for art's sake.

It's art for freedom's sake. And I can feel the emotion in it. And it really speaks to me. So I'm very happy to have it in the space. And I hope that at some point, when all this lockdown stuff is fucked off and we have a bit more freedom, we can enjoy a glass of wine or a beer together.

It'd be great to meet you in person. And yeah, before we jump off the call, if you can do any shilling of the voice paper or of anything else that you'd be working on, of your artwork, anything like that, anyone who's listening to this, definitely go and check it out.

If you haven't seen it already, it's incredible. Yeah, Max, well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. Definitely, I will take up your offer on having a glass of wine as soon as we are able to.

And, well, so there is the voice paper that everybody can take a look at on my website, dimsion.com/voicepaper.html. I have bought the domain name for voicepaper.org, but I haven't linked it up yet, so I don't want to show that.

OK. But apart from the voice paper, the rest of the project, there is the first part where I'm working on the video of memorizing the entire white paper and then telling it to nature. This is ongoing process.

It will, I hope, be done soon, but it's not there yet. And Bultardia keeps going. Every episode is on the 21st of each month, one time on bultardia.com. And every second month on citadel21.com as well.

And finally, look for scared.c because I'm going to have an auction on the Lightning Network coming soon in about a month and a half. So these are very excited as well. Perfect. All right.

And I will link all of those in the show notes as well. So, yeah, thanks again, mate. I really appreciate it. And I look forward to having that glass of wine with you soon. All right. Thanks, Max.

Cheers.