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Miguel Vallejo On Building An Art Community Around NFTs Plus: Twitter And Insta May Integrate NFTs, Israeli President NFT, Wimbledon NFT, And More...
How can artists collaborate through NFT? What can physical/traditional artists do to adapt as this new art modality is introduced to the world? An NFT Art Community might give you the answers and solutions to both. Miguel Vallejo is one of the great minds behind Art Community, a space where artists can work together and collaborate as they transition into the world of crypto and blockchain. He joins hosts Eathan Janney, Jeff Kelley & Josh Kriger to discuss this new platform and how it can benefit artists, and how this extends to both digital art and physical art. They also talk about the latest news on NFT surrounding its integration on social media and many more relevant topics on the matter. Tune in to learn more about this new collaborative platform and stay in the know about what’s currently happening in the world of NFT.
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Miguel Vallejo On Building An Art Community Around NFTs Plus: Twitter And Insta May Integrate NFTs, Israeli President NFT, Wimbledon NFT, And More…
Our episode features guest, Miguel Vallejo. He is the Founder of Art Community, a community of creatives combining knowledge from different fields to provide a social impact model that bridges artists and their supporters. He started his career as a graphic designer at age fifteen and leveraged this to create a signage and marketing company called Pro Signs that still exists today. In 2017, Miguel co-founded JeTtrades, a crypto-forex education platform, and mid-pandemic, Miguel went on to co-found Fealty Investments Group along with two partners. Since 2020, this venture has expanded to include a marketplace for artists aforementioned called Art Community, which we will be talking about. Miguel, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me here.
It’s great to be here. We had one other in-person episode with another Art Community in Venice, California and I was representing for that one. It’s great to have Eathan here with you and with me. Jeff will join us on our next episode and we’ll have more adventures from Puerto Rico. You’re the first person we’re meeting with and it’s great to connect with you. You’re doing so many interesting things with the community. Maybe you can start by telling us what your origin story is for this project.
I started in 2021. We’ve been in Puerto Rico developing different strategies, forex investments, and crypto. With all this knowledge that we have acquired during the years that we’re driving inside the NFT world, it’s bringing so much value to everything that we can build, especially for artists. When we saw this, we started telling ourselves, “Puerto Rico is full of great artists.” On the island, there’s so much lack of information about the crypto world that while we started building this, what we’re always been doing is bringing to the local people this knowledge so they can understand what is the blockchain and everything it’s building for it.
As part of it, for local artists, we’ve been developing all this information so they can understand what the NFT world is and bringing a marketplace to them so they can bring all this art and future art to work as NFT products inside the marketplace. We have a vast array of great artists. We have a great team that we are building, a curator team that is professional artists in Puerto Rico. We’ve been developing all this marketplace. We’re bringing all the ideas and trying to bring new innovation inside the marketplace, merging physical art and the NFTs as well. Because Puerto Rico is so full of physical and artists that are doing street art, physical art, and all this, we’re trying to merge all these guys together so we can build a great marketplace for it.
You’re communicating with people that you’re connected with about NFTs, blockchain and crypto. What about you? When’s the first time you heard of NFTs for example?
In 2019, OpenSea started sending all this NFT. When OpenSea started the whole marketplace in the whole general area, I was amazed how about how this world and my world were merging. I’m a graphic designer, I love YouTube work, and I’ve been working in the film industry and animations. I started at fifteen years developing websites. I don’t know if you remember flash animations back in the days. Back at the time, I was so passionate about that. I started learning about animations, building websites with animations and all this stuff. Now with the NFT, when I saw them, I was like, “This is my world.” I can start with all the guys that I know from Puerto Rico, the local artists that we have. We can build a great marketplace for them.
There are 35 artists in the community and I got to assume that there are various degrees of receptiveness to doing this from guys and women that were like, “No, this is crazy. Why do you want me to do this?” To ones that are like, “Sure. I’ll come.” Can you talk about the adoption process and getting them on board?
I want to bring so much culture to the marketplace. NFT could bring much value to these old people that are in the art industry and they don’t know about NFT. One of the stories that I’m working on one-off is about a 74 years old lady. I’m trying to explain to her, “I want to produce all your physical art as NFT.”
How did that conversation go?
She’s like, “What is NFT? What do I have to do?” That is why part of the platform is working with an in-house marketing team so we can bring the value of, “This is your physical art and this is the version of your physical art as an NFT.”
Did you guys get into the gas conversation? I was like, “How’s that going to work?”
NFT Art Community: We’ve been bringing all these ideas and trying to bring a new innovation inside the marketplace by merging physical arts and NFTs.
No. That is not a topic for that. I feel like the artists already know about this and that’s part of why we’re building a blockchain for our own is so we can start bringing new ideas and almost have all this energy resolve, intellectual property, and all this managing for NFT. This is part of what we’re building with the team inside the marketplace.
What about the street artists? What do they think about this?
They’re excited about the NFT. We have a lot of street artists around the world doing many things and they’re part of the platform. We are in the midst of making an agenda for the drops. We’re going to begin probably in August or September 2021 to start the agenda for the drops for every artist. They’re excited, especially one of the artists that I’m excited about is my favorite street artist. I was excited that he is going to be part of the platform. We’re cool with that.
When you’re talking about working with this woman who has more age, it reminds me of Quincy Jones. He’s getting in the NFT space and he’s right on top of it. He’s been on top of everything.
We’re interviewing the CEO of his platform, OneOf.
This generation is the why generation. The easy part is to say to them, “You don’t have to do anything. Just give us your art.”
“You’re going to get some magic money that will be in your wallet in a digital format that you don’t know what to do with but it’ll be cool.”
“Your physical art is going to have a value. It’s going to be great, so don’t worry.”
What are your thoughts on how this can impact the economic potential of local artists? How’s the economy here post-COVID and overall? What do you think this can do for the community?
It’s going to bring a lot of value, especially to local artists that don’t understand how much value an NFT can go through the space. We want to bring importance to physical art because physical art has some value itself and this artist has built their career with their craft and their passion and all the art they’re producing from their mind. They already have a value, so putting the value of the physical asset inside the marketplace as a value, as exact value is going to bring both of the economies, decentralized economy and a traditional economy, to merge together. They can have both of the best worlds inside of the economy.
NFT is great for artists now that it can be part of the second market and bring in these sales inside the intellectual property of them, inside the world and the smart contracts. It’s a beautiful thing for artists, especially for me to see and do a part for them. It is a great thing, especially in Puerto Rico because I know that Puerto Rico is a small island. People are scared about crypto. It’s a thing but at the same time, Puerto Rico is in the spot. All the crypto guys are right here. Us being a US territory, we have a lot of advantages on that. Mixing both of this world inside this little island for artists is going to be great.
That was a question that we want to ask you. Josh and I see what it’s like from the contiguous United States. We have friends and we see people moving to Puerto Rico. People call it Crypto Rico. We’re curious about what do you see as a perspective of other residents around you, an influx of people coming here, the focus on that, and how there’s an integration or lack thereof?
It’s a sweet and sour situation but, at the same time, it depends on the person because I have met a lot of people with great mentalities and a great vision of how to bring more value to the island. The most important thing about moving to a place is how you adapt yourself to the culture because you’re bringing your culture to an island that’s different. We are a warm island and different in a way because we have our vibe.
I’m going to recommend every store in the country throughout the US that has a DJ in the men’s section that launches a siren as you’re trying to decide, “Do I want this or do I want that?” That’s the future.
Walmart here is the hang-out. I don’t know if you have heard the term of window shopping. They go to Walmart to window shop and they have DJ, music and everything.
Do you look down on people that don’t try mofongo? That was the first thing that Eathan did when he got here, so I consider that cultural immersion.
I ate a huge plate of mofongo. It was delicious.
Seriously, what are the challenges? Let’s talk about the sour part.
The sour part is when you come here, don’t feel colonized. If you’re coming to a place, you see necessities. If you have a lot to apport, it’s a good part. The government is giving you so much. In return, you can come to the island to apport at the same time. It brings a model for social impacts. There are so many communities that need help here. After Maria, we still have few other places without water and energy. There are many things to do here on the island that we can be productive on. We can deliver a lot of things being small. We can bring more opportunities for the people of Puerto Rico to bring to the table and bring independence.
Talk about that. Walk us through what is the social impact model of your platform to the Art Community that you’re building. Who gets what?
For the social impact model, we’re bringing value to all the technology that we have. We have automated systems that we are bringing to for the artists so we can raise funds for independent artists, especially the hiding artists that haven’t been seen. They have good talent and they are good at their craft. We’re selecting these types of artists to raise some funds for them. With our automated system, we can bring more value so we can budget them. We can bring independence to their life in a way so they can be free of building all the art for commercial pressure. We’re bringing all these technologies to them so we can impact their lives, they can change their life and be part of a good system.
We talked about NFTs going beyond the hype cycle at this point but, fundamentally, there’s a lot of marketing in blockchain and crypto. What are you going to do for the older artists that may be aren’t as social media savvy where you’re going to give them a platform and audience? How much is it going to be dependent on them to embrace this technology and to build a social media platform for themselves?
That’s a part of what we’re building because we are building a team so we can collaborate with these artists. It has it in the name. We are a community of artists. Part of the community is that they help each other. That’s what I bring to the table. I’m bringing down the egos, the artist’s egos, so they can start collaborating themselves. It’s funny because bringing all these great artists together to a platform has come together to slow down the egos and be more collaborative in a way. There are talented people and they make a great path through the international way. Bringing all these mentors to the platform and bringing the old traditions to the new traditions and merging this whole community and helping each other is going to explode in different ways. That’s why we’re building a specific team of curators so we can bring value to all generations in traditional ways and bring into the massive marketplace of NFTs and produce all this art with the team.
You’re like The Tom Brady of the Art Community. Every community has a lot of different superpowers to get that championship and that’s what you’re trying to do here.
NFT Art Community: Putting the value of physical art inside the marketplace as a digital value is going to bring both economies together so artists can have the best of both worlds.
That’s what we build in our protocol inside the blockchain of converting the physical art to the NFT. We call it UDI System, Unique Dynamic Image. We extend the rights in that in our blockchain so we can have our governance. It’s all between what we’re doing with the contract with the artists. We have an in-house marketing team of collaborators building all this NFT for people that don’t have the information on how to build this. We have the systems so we can integrate the physical art with the system as NFT with a great collaborator of people and great teams of talented people inside the market.
Every time that Josh mentions Tom Brady, I believe that’s an outreach to try to get him on to the show.
It’s going to happen.
We’re talking a little bit about how things are going and a little bit about how artists can manage the value streams coming in here. Do you have a long-term vision for the company?
We have our technology at the table. With the marketplace, we have a chip that we’re integrating inside the physical canvas. That’s where we can track the physical art. The original track is the problem that we have in the art industry. The original artists are not selling the original art. They’re only selling the duplicates and selling them at the same price. Bringing this technology into the blockchain, we can track all the original paints with that. It’s a solution in the art industry in the global aspect because by tracking the lifecycle, the original paints inside the blockchain, we can store data and temperature for the artists. You see the location of the physical artwork or where it is.
It’s another tool that we’re bringing for artists so they can track their intellectual property as a physical asset inside the world. Seeing the global aspect of this technology is a great technology for galleries and museums to bring to the table. Our community around the world can join forces around all the original physical art. If we can track it in the whole world, it can be one of the biggest storage of physical artwork around the world. Having this on the table, we can have all this great physical artwork converted to NFTs inside our marketplace.
It sounds like you’re open to all types of NFT experiences for consumers where they’re made by the physical art or they’re made by digi-physical where they get both and they all have different rarities. How crazy are we getting get? Are you going to have exploding NFTs like Burning Man-style where they burn after a certain amount of time? Are they going to evolve and change over time? We talked to one guy, Max Song, and they’re doing World Wildlife NFTs where the climate changes in the art piece as the weather changes outside.
I heard about that and I see the main is dynamic NFTs. We love bringing that value to the NFT that the art can change during the time. It’s something that we’re talking in the table because we’re seeing all these dynamic things happening. As the time runs, we want to budget different types of events that we’re going to produce as a physical aspect to budget. It’s difficult for artists to build different murals or whatever they can build. We can have different types of NFT built around the world.
NFT in my head is a picture of people with straight faces, but as the NFT goes up in value, they start smiling more and more.
Maybe a portrait of a person that is young and then it goes older at the end of the year. It’s the type of thing that we’re talking about.
If Tom Brady wins the Super Bowl again, everyone’s partying in the picture.
Tom Brady, we’re calling you to come to the show.
As we’ve seen on the show, as we talked to different artists and ask people who are in the know in the industry, the different platforms that represent different niches like SuperRare or SuperWorld or any one of these other platforms attract a certain type. What would you say the type of niche is that’s part of what you’re building? If you had to build an avatar description of the type of artists that you’re working with, how would you describe that?
It’s not only one niche of artists. We’re going to have a lot of artists inside. We’re going to have the whole generation inside of the marketplace. We have young people and middle-aged people. It’s a whole aspect. We’re wrestling the whole area of art.
All are originating from Puerto Rico.
We have international artists, too. The majority of artists are going to be from Puerto Rico. The one we’re starting, we have a few other international. We have one of the famous top piano players that we’re going to produce from Russia. He’s not from Puerto Rico. We have a great NFT that we’re going to build for him. It’s a performance that he wants to do. He’s one of the top piano players around the world.
Eathan has a team of piano tuners that can come out and help tune the piano before his next performance.
What we’re building is creating the content that we’re going to drop inside the marketplace and that’s why we’re a community. That’s why we’re merging all the artists and the well-known artists that we have around here so we can all work together to produce this NFT for artists, pianists, or whatever person has a great talent. We are going to choose them to make the NFT and make it happen to the marketplaces.
There’s a new NFT project that comes to life every minute. There’s a mix of thoughts on where this is all going. If you could wave a magic wand and paint a picture of the future, what do you see happening here?
NFT is the biggest thing that’s going to happen around the crypto world. NFT is going to emerge in everything, not only in art and real estate. NFT is everything. I know it’s going to involve a different marketplace. We have so many artists around the world. At the same time, bringing a unique style inside the marketplace is the one that is going to represent what the marketplace and the NFT world are going to make in the world of technology that we have.
Some folks see a strong push towards eCommerce and bigger brands. Have you explored the world of partnerships, brands and larger companies in Puerto Rico in mashups? Maybe there’s a good rum company here and you collaborate with them and your artists and do some NFTs for the rum for each month or each quarter or something like that. You could steal that idea if that wasn’t on your mind already.
Shall we jump on over to edge quick hitters?
Yeah.
NFT is the biggest thing that’s going to happen around the crypto world. Click To Tweet
This was a vegan burger. Impossible burger?
Yeah.
Jeff likes those.
It’s healthy.
I remember that. I’m a piano player.
What are you going to do next after the show?
Second time.
Let’s hang out. Let’s have fun after this.
Should we wrap it up there?
You’re likely to eat a lot of plantains.
We are ArtCommunity.io. We have an Instagram page and a Facebook page. You can check it out over there. We’re launching Art Community 2.0. We’re rebranding and restructuring everything in the way because we’re looking for future better and simpler ways. The marketplace, we’re attaching to integrate it and launch it as how the NFT marketplace around the world is launching, so it’s going to be great. We are going to have an event in December 2021 that is going to be part of the Art Community project, crypto-forex for Puerto Rico. We’re handling all that and you can handle it in ArtCommunity.io.
Important Links:
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Max Song – Previous episode
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Twitter, Instagram may be integrating NFT auctions into their platforms
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NFT fever hit all-time highs with sales of $ 2.5 billion so far in 2021
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Episode – Live From DeFi Summit: NFTs In The Cultural and Creative Sectors With NFT Art Pioneers pplpleasr, Matty Mo & Frances Liddell on Apple Podcasts
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How a clip of Andy Murray’s historic Wimbledon win sold for over a crore via NFTs
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Reuters – NFT enthusiasts hold firm despite crypto price plunge
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Instagram – ArtCommunity.io
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iTunes – Edge of NFT Podcast