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Edge Of Asia 1: TOKEN2049 & All That Matters, Feat. WhaleShark, Jaeson Ma & Lucaz Lee Of Affyn
Listen to Edge co-host Josh Kriger speaking with global leaders in NFT from domains as far reaching as art, music, and themetaverse.
In this special episode, he chats with some of the leading names in the industry: Whaleshark, Jaeson Ma, and Lucaz Lee. Aside from talking about their own thriving and promising ventures, they also discuss the current situation of the NFT scene in Asia, particularly in its southeastern region. Tune in as they explore the rich prospects to uncover within Web3, NFT’s incredible power in community building, and reinventing traditional gaming models using the metaverse.
Listen to the podcast here
Edge Of Asia 1: TOKEN2049 & All That Matters, Feat. WhaleShark, Jaeson Ma & Lucaz Lee Of Affyn
We’re bringing you a special episode filled with content curated from our travels to Southeast Asia and beyond. Stay tuned for some amazing interviews with incredible folks. We will cut from one conversation to the next, introducing each guest as they arrive to give you the feeling like you’re right there with us, jumping into each engaging conversation as it emerges. Stay tuned.
This is Josh. I got to TOKEN2049. I have to immediately check out some amazing dope art. I’m here with WhaleShark looking at some of the incredible collection of pieces that he has brought to show the masses here at TOKEN2049. Seven thousand-plus people are expected. There’s a lot of good energy going on. Who says anything about a bear market? This is an art market. It’s great to hang out. What do we have going on here?
Josh, thank you so much for coming to the gallery. We’re thrilled to be working with 2049 and showcasing a lot of NFT art here at TOKEN2049 Singapore. This gallery is created in tandem with both TOKEN2049 as well as OP3N. What we have managed to do is curate roughly about 30 pieces from some of the leading NFT artists and creators in the space.
What you’re standing in front of is our very first part of the exhibition, the one and only, Pak, the highest-selling NFT crypto artist in the entire space with over $350 million worth of art sold. What we have done for the first time is take out both of Pak’s Genesis pieces. The standing offer on these is extremely high. I will not disclose the exact number but what you see in Cloud Monument Light and Cloud Monument Dark are his two Genesis pieces. They are highly coveted by a lot of artists and collectors in the world.
They’re beautiful.
Thank you. We love the minimalism that he brings to his art, and in that case, also being able to create something extremely unique. When I do collect digital art, I enjoy collecting things that are not possible to do on paper or paint and canvas. With his streak of minimalism, he’s also able to deliver an extremely unique experience with the art that he created. For instance, here are 3 of 8 Rubik’s cubes that Pak created. They are stunningly beautiful with the different colors and transformations of each and every single one of them. These are three of his earliest works. On top of that, we did sell one at Sotheby’s in November 2021 for $1.1 million.
What was the color scheme of that one?
This is Rubik’s Fortune. This is a gold Rubik’s cube.
It’s the one at Sotheby’s.
The one that sold was also gold.
The gold one draws me in. The red one is beautiful. The silver is beautiful. There’s something about the detail in this gold one that captures your attention.
It’s the molding on it. You can see it’s not just pure gold but there’s marble around it. When people look at a Rubik’s cube, they assume it’s going to move on a standard basis. It does start as a standard basis but all of a sudden, it starts to throw everyone off with these amazing movements and creative movements that it has instead.
You can configure life in so many different ways. It exemplifies that. We’re moving towards XCOPY.
I don’t think XCOPY needs an introduction to any of the Web3 or crypto degens in the space. XCOPY is probably the most famous and most enjoyed crypto artist in the entire space. I was fortunate enough to be a very early collector of XCOPY. Whale has about 26 one-of-ones that XCOPY launched on SuperRare. The average price of his old work runs anywhere between $2 million to $7 million. These are some of his earliest works.
The reason why I love and collect XCOPY is that the emotion is so raw. Glitch art isn’t something that has broken the mainstream yet but XCOPY truly exemplifies that glitch style as he looks to express discontent with some of the things that are happening around the world. Right next to The Jungle, there’s something called But You Can’t Hang It On Your Wall that Josh is standing in front of. That was XCOPY’s expression of discontent with people saying that NFTs aren’t worth anything because you can’t hang them on the wall. Everybody, it’s hanging on a wall.
I see his eyes wide open in this particular figure but yet the slash is through the eyes.
It’s his expression of discontent with things that are unfair and not right. Given the strong belief that XCOPY had in NFTs, this was his way of expressing his discontent with people saying that NFTs were not worth anything.
He showed them.
Similarly, you can see the same glitch style in The Jungle as well as The Influencer and Trender that you have over here. One of my favorites is The Influencer because I always encourage everyone to do their research. When you have people who are blindly following influencers, particularly in the NFT space, that sometimes can lead to a lot of trouble. I love is work. You can see the anger and the discontent but at the same time, you can see the custom use of glitch style to bring out that notion. The music has been curated by Verbal from AMBUSH, Teriyaki Boyz, and M-Flo. It’s amazing as a backdrop for all of us.
Stay tuned. You will hear another interview with Verbal if you keep up with the content from our trip to Singapore.
The final crypto artist that I’ve curated here at this exhibition is Hackatao. If you know XCOPY, you know Hackatao. If you know Hackatao, you know XCOPY. They were two of the very first people to launch their NFTs on SuperRare all the way back then. Hackatao is a husband-and-wife pair from Italy. They were extremely successful as well as extremely well-known in the Italian contemporary art scene from a traditional standpoint. They were one of the very first artists to take the leap from the traditional into the digital.
What Hackatao does is that they do provide a commentary on social, political, as well as media-based events. Josh, what you’re standing in front of, Ra’red-eyed Frog, is a call to action for people to protect the environment. The husband-and-wife pair is one of the very few duos in the space but equally as famous and equally as coveted as XCOPY is.
It’s a beautiful piece as well.
When I collect digital art, I want to see movement. I want to see the perfect lines and the perfect circles. I want to see things done on a digital canvas that you cannot do with pen and paper or you cannot do with paint and a canvas.
There are some layers to that piece. The writing looks deep and rich like a tattoo.
I’ve only sold 3 NFTs out of the 420,000 NFTs that I purchased since 2019. We sold one Pak at an auction at Sotheby’s in November 2021 that went for $1.1 million. Another leading NFT influencer, Pranksy, was fortunate enough to have acquired a Hackatao from me for about $500,000 in November 2021.
How many offers do you get on your NFTs?
We get a large number of offers but our track record in terms of making sure that we’re holding on to our NFTs speaks volumes about the way that I view the industry moving forward. These are two of my favorites, Selfiecation, which talks about censorship in a selfie-driven society. At the same time, Z-Girl to me represents a commentary on the popularity of zombies within mass media that we have seen over the last few years. They’re extremely beautiful pieces. They’re tastefully done while at the same time bringing out a very poignant point whether that be social, political, or on mass media as a whole.
It is interesting when you think about all the zombie-related film projects and, generally speaking, the zombie runs but then we have this situation where we’re trying to awaken society in that contrast.
I love this piece. This was probably one of my favorite pieces that I purchased from Hackatao all the way back in 2019.
It’s amazing. I wouldn’t mind it hanging up in my office either.
The final part of this NFT exhibition, at least from my side that I put together, was curating an extremely famous and revered photographer. Michael Yamashita is probably the most legendary National Geographic photographer in the world. He has close to two million followers on Instagram, which also makes him one of the most followed photographers in the entire world.
Michael is up there in age but he still continues to take his inventory of photographs, take new photographs, and join the NFT space as a mentor, a leader, and truly an example of how these artists create out of love. Michael Yamashita is amazing because, given his storied career, he had access to places in China that no one else or no other foreigner has ever had before. When you’re looking at Mountains in the Mist or Seasons of Jiuzhaigou, which are beautiful scenic places within China, he’s able to capture that for all eternity using his lens.
The other brilliant thing about Michael Yamashita is that he captures all of that data from the focal lengths, the equipment that he uses, the weather, and the location all in the metadata itself. If you click on any of these NFTs, it will pop up a whole list of metadata in terms of when he did it, how he did it, what equipment he used, and everything. This was the first time I saw the blockchain used so aptly within NFT art. He’s fantastic and amazing.
He’s an early pioneer. We had Numbers Protocol at NFTLA, which is trying to elevate photography in that way but it takes individuals like Michael to start the movement of people to look at photography as an NFT capability as opposed to digital photography. This is breathtaking. I’ve been to Japan. I’ve not been to China yet. I want to go after looking at this incredible art.
It’s a beautiful place, particularly the natural landscape over there. Next to the Seasons of Jiuzhaigou, number 4724, you also see his photography in Tibet. Michael does take a lot of pictures, whether that be about nature but he also takes a lot of social pictures and understanding about the heritage. This is one of my favorites. It’s a photo from Michael Yamashita on his Tibet assignment but next to that is probably the most interesting of all the five pieces that you see here.
When you look at it, you probably wouldn’t think that it’s photography. However, what Michael did, and he’s always pushing the boundaries, is he took his photos, fed them into an AI algorithm, and used a generative algorithm to come out with an artistic interpretation of his photos. This is a generative adversarial network piece. It is comprised of several of Michael Yamashita’s photos together, coming out with a brilliant art piece like this.
It’s fascinating, especially with the rise in AI art and some of the controversy with some artists being concerned about cannibalizing the true nature of the work. You have a very respected artist that has taken a different position and used it to enhance his work.
I believe that everything is possible in the age of technology, whether technology aids you, whether you’re doing it in concert with an algorithm or code, or whether or not you’re feeding the source into AI and allowing that to develop what it may. It’s a brilliant time to be alive, particularly for the artistic side of the world.
WhaleShark, thank you so much for spending some time with us and for sharing this beautiful collection with the world.
It’s my pleasure. Thank you for coming to the gallery.
We are at TOKEN2049. I’m so humbled and honored to be here with the one and only WhaleShark. We’re having a nice conversation. It’s a little quiet. People probably had a lot of fun. I hope you did as well. We showed up. I don’t drink a lot. It’s nice because I get to come in early and be ready for the day.
Josh, thank you so much for having me on. I love your show. Similar to you, I don’t drink a lot but drinking is not a requirement to enjoy these next few days in Singapore. It has been an absolute blast.
Let’s be energized by the coffee, the food, the conversations, and the amazing art that you brought to the table. What was the reaction folks had on the first day of seeing that amazing exhibit that you walked us through?
It has been an amazing experience. It started a little bit slow in the morning. What we have realized is that a lot of the people here at TOKEN2049 are DeFi or cryptocurrency-first but us being here as one of the only NFT exhibits in the entire space helped us evangelize a lot of people to go further down that rabbit hole and understand, “It’s not about the cryptocurrency and the decentralized finance. You can collect digital collectibles as well.”
It has been an interesting day. I would highlight that probably the most asked question by a lot of people who visited our booth or our exhibition has been, “How do you make money?” That is the number one question that people have been asking. Our response through Web3 fashion has been, “We HODL.” We HODL our NFTs. The second most asked question has been, “Can I buy those pieces?”
For those of you who are familiar with me, out of 420,000 NFTs of the last few years, only 3 were sold, the short answer is no. It has been an extremely engaging experience. I’m very glad that we have been here even though it’s not an NFT-first exhibition. It has allowed us to play an ambassador role here in Singapore to teach people more about digital music, digital photography, and NFTs.
That’s amazing. I want to rewind but I do have another related question. This is our first time in Asia since COVID. We’re getting to know both the crypto community and the Web3 community. You’ve been on the ground here for a while. What is the NFT scene like throughout Asia, Singapore, Japan, and South Korea? What has been your experience with the adoption of collecting fine art NFTs in this area of the world relative to the United States?
Each market is very different. If I’m taking a look from the North all the way to the South of Asia. In the North of Asia, you have countries like Korea. Everyone knows that Seoul is the mecca of eSports. Naturally, we saw a lot of strong adoption, not only by development companies but also by Web3 companies like Animoca Brands who launched The Sandbox. You saw a lot of people talk, adhere to, and adopt game-oriented NFTs. When you went to Japan, it’s a mixed basket of every single type of NFT. You have so many famous creators. Japan is also one of my favorite sources for NFT photographers.
There’s such incredible art in Japan.
It’s amazing. Even the great Murakami has put his foot in the game by not only releasing Murakami.Flowers or working with the RTFKT team on CloneX. The North of Asia is very much excited about the possibility of NFTs. Moving on to the South, what you have is China, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia. What you’re seeing is a mixed bag of people who go towards different types of NFTs, whether that be PFPs, digital art, digital photography, or music.
I do want to highlight Hong Kong, particularly as a special hub for NFTs in the region. It’s no surprise that a lot of the world’s largest traditional art collectors live in Hong Kong. While you will never know what they have collected because they like myself prefer to run anonymously in the space, I can tell you that fine digital art is thriving in all of the art markets where fine art is recognized.
TOKEN2049: Hong Kong has become a special hub for NFTs in Southeast Asia. It is home to many of the world’s largest traditional art collectors.
That’s great to know. I want to do a call-out to a particular Chinese contemporary artist, Cai Guo-Qiang. My girlfriend got so excited about the fine art side of NFTs here that she bought one of his first digital pieces. It’s a fireworks experience. This is the name of the artist.
Cai Guo-Qiang is one of my favorite digital artists throughout the world. He has an amazing talent that is displayed throughout some of the most prestigious galleries and museums. On top of that, he is probably the most humble man she will or I have ever had the chance to meet.
She’s going to be so excited that you know him and respect him as well. It was a beautiful piece based on the different conditions you chose and the time of day you mint. It was a completely unique fireworks display. Do you pick up some of those as well?
I did. I am very close friends with Mr. Cai. I’ve had the opportunity to interview him twice, once before his first NFT drop, and the second one during his second NFT drop, Your Daytime Fireworks, which is what you showed me. He was working with TRLab to create an education system where people would understand more about his history and work and then be rewarded with the ability to have these amazing NFTs. The man is an absolute legend. He’s extremely humble. He operates out of the US. Who knows? Maybe some of his US fans will get an opportunity.
Let’s get him to NFTLA with you.
I’m sure he would love that.
We will have to talk about that. Let’s rewind a bit. You’re also a living icon in this space. How did you get into NFTs?
It was a decade-long process for me to reach NFTs. The first time I heard about cryptocurrency and blockchain technology was in 2010. It took me about two years to buy my first Bitcoin but once I understood what financial freedom looked like, I took 1/2 to 3/4 of my salary every single month from 2012 all the way to 2015, purchasing Bitcoin at about $250 average price.
What industry were you in at that time?
I was doing marketing and branding. I did have a relatively successful career working at corporate but you’re always looking for that next leg up and that evolution toward what you want to become. I bought Bitcoin at an average of that price for roughly about 3 to 4 years. After that, there was a point in 2015 or 2016 where the block times or the transaction times were taking half a day. Back then, Bitcoin was supposed to be digital money and not digital gold. I got a little bit frustrated probably for good reason. I ended up selling all of the Bitcoin that I purchased over those last 3 to 4 years. In 2015, I went full FOMO into Etherium and bought Etherium for roughly about $9.
Speaking of branding, I have to give you a shout-out because we wanted to be creative with our partnership packages for NFTLA in 2022. We did have a WhaleShark option but what was a little challenging is this. Do we put that above the Whale package or below? Where does that fit into the hierarchy of the sea? I don’t know what you would have done. You would have put WhaleShark above.
I’m flattered and humbled but honestly, at the end of the day, I consider myself one of many collectors within this space. You could have had a Dolphin package and put WhaleShark underneath the Dolphin package as well.
It’s good to know that if we mix things up in 2023, you’re neither here nor there. We’re at a pivotal point in the NFT economy but also the cryptocurrency economy and the global economy. What do you see going on?
Crypto has had a very good run for more than a decade. What we’re seeing now are the challenges and the frictions that you see as something which many people, many governments, and many authorities didn’t believe was going to be a thing that empowers the masses. They are now slowly starting to get worried about the decentralization of monetary policy and financial systems and are moving forward to try to restrain that growth simply because they lose control over their monetary system. It’s a little bit sad but it is inevitable as cryptocurrencies become a real thing. In addition to that, in decentralized finance, you no longer have these big banks hiring tens, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people trying to run processes but rather have automated smart contract protocols.
I know how that goes.
Apparently, I’m going to NFTLA.
I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Josh.
Thank you for inviting me.
Thank you.
I knew this guy has a great office.
We had the sale on the 6th of July 2022.
Thank you.
You will be the first to see it.
The graphics are very vivid.
He has a net.
Not yet.
You earn something while you’re there.
Thank you. That’s pretty exciting too.
It gets wild.
It’s incredible stuff.
I’ll see you at the hot pot.
Let’s do it.