From Selling Art for $100 to Selling an NFT for $69 Million - Beeple Fireside Chat

forget about 24 hours when you finally came back down to earth update us on where you are i haven't come back down to earth like i'm still like what the [ __ ] is like what is going on you got your perspective i just want to be happy don't you

good evening everyone good evening uh first of all uh to kick it off i just want to thank people for being here it's great to see him i'm excited about all of you seeing this i but most of all i just want to thank everybody who showed up uh there's a hundred trillion things that are going on uh during this week and you could be everywhere or anywhere and you're outside it's a little chilly i appreciate the perseverance and we're really excited about having you here so there's some seats open if people want to sit um and i just i'm really grateful that you're here thank you for supporting this so yeah let's pop that up so i you know i think i put out a lot of content and talk and all that so i'm going to focus on getting stuff out of people for all of us because he's harder to get stuff out of so mike what's up let's start with have you spent the money yet it's gone that money is gone tell us like no like honestly i think we can all get like the normal stuff this is a small community still this is what's fun about when things emerge on a serious note when something that remarkable happens and we'll see a lot of footage here i think it's been well documented the moment i do think it's the watershed moment for the space punks you know board ape there's been a lot of things but i really do think your sale is the one that most hit people's radar the extremity of the sail probably caused a lot of reaction and we that's all well documented i actually want to dig into the human that you are what happened in the first forget about 24 hours when you finally came back down to earth like where update us on where you are i

haven't come back down to earth like i'm still like what the [ __ ] is like what is going on like i'm still like it feels like it's still very much like something that i have not processed i processed it more than you know 24 hours later but it's still something that i think a lot of people are still trying to grapple with like what is going on right now um just because the world was a certain way and then over the course of just a few months the world was a different way and not just to me what to a lot of people what's different for you as an artist a lot of times that level of commercial success can really change it how are you do you feel like you've been affected look at it differently is there like how are you as an artist like what's going on um i would be lying if i wasn't say you know i'm not affected by this at all of course i am i'm a [ __ ] human and i sold a [ __ ] thing for 70 million dollars like it literally feels like silly even like saying it um so yeah of course i'm affected but that's where i feel very lucky to have been in this sort of framework with the everydays where i have to keep doing work so the sale happened at 11 a. m i have to do a picture each day by midnight so i had 13 hours before the next piece of artwork i was putting out there was no like oh [ __ ] now everybody's watching me blah blah like it was like man everybody's it is what it is i got to [ __ ] do this thing in 13 hours um and so that really has allowed me to just kind of sort of keep plowing forward and i know that most of the artwork that i'm putting out i'm not gonna sell or at least i'm not gonna immediately sell maybe um and so i think that sort of takes a lot of the pressure off that it's not like are people gonna like this is it gonna sell like blah blah it's just like it was where it's just sort of like i just do it people [ __ ] with it great if they don't whatever it's not i think that's amazing i actually think that's how you got there in the first place what is your observation of the market right now you know i think one thing that is very underrated about you so many people view you as the artist you had this big sale i got to know you it's why drock and nima and the team got to go to your house to make this when that auction was going on in that first six you know that six or seven or eight weeks that we got to know each other before this i viewed you as somebody that understood the market that there was a lot more of what i'm good at in you than a lot of artists that come along which i think is what led to a lot of that success so when i ask you this question i'm just genuinely interested because i think you're gonna have an interesting observation what is the current state of the nft art market from your perspective

i think what is probably different from me than a lot of other maybe artists or people in the space is i think i have more of a healthy dose of skepticism than most people and so i'm always trying to like this is too good to be true because it feels very much i'm always waiting for it to be like jpegs just kidding they're not worth anything what were you thinking like and because for a long time they weren't worth anything and so all sudden it was just like wait now people are paying for this [ __ ] it's like wait what the [ __ ] like does when you make that statement is there a part of you that knows that it's not like just kidding the whole thing goes away forever but yeah but is there a part of you that does believe that it's a gold rush and it's similar to things we've seen in the past where right now it's so fever pitch there'll need to be a correction and they'll come back later on

i would say there are certain projects that i would be surprised if they stand the test of time uh like what not be friends um the um i think it's one of those things where nobody [ __ ] knows i i'm not going to sit here pretend like i [ __ ] know and anybody who's telling you what they the space is gonna look like in five ten years they don't [ __ ] know uh and that's what makes it interesting exciting um but i think you know as long as you're sort of investing in creators and teams that you know you believe are going to sort of be around for the long term because i think it's very easy to make promises and it's [ __ ] free to make promises oh i'm gonna do this and i'm gonna blah blah and it's like yeah but are you because at the end of the day if you don't then the thing is not going to be worth [ __ ] yeah and so it's funny my favorite thing that emerged in the last six months is the road map like everyone's like you mean the pitch deck from every startup that failed in the last 15 years like this obsession that the road map was this very important thing i think it's just fun to watch this space make the same exact mistakes that web 2 did where it's like no you don't get it gary it has tokenomics i'm like every project will no you don't get it gary gaming's going to be big no [ __ ] dick face right like you know i think people get confused what a dick face face mike tell us back to more fun before we go into the film what was the most ridiculous phone call you got within the first week after this monumental moment there was a bunch dude well give it to us we want to be entertained people are freezing their asses off give them talking to [ __ ] madonna it was just like well let's talk about that now i well that's guy will kill me guy or kill me you talk to madonna i did it go well yeah well okay what else garyvee called me what about like some third grade friend who was like yo there was definitely some people who came out of the woodwork where i was like oh yeah i remember you that's it's been a sec um but yeah i think it just it obviously everybody has been super positive and super supportive and so you know i have a big question that i think a lot of artists here and projects here you know because i think just to remind everybody if you're here like this chamber gets real small real fast just to remind everybody like 99 of the world has no idea what the [ __ ] going on here right now and so this is super early which means a lot of good things are going to happen to a lot of people here as long as you don't get caught up in the biggest vulnerability in this space which is people love to say things like it's about the art and about the community let there be no confusion 90 of the behavior in our space right now is about short-term money and it is the vulnerability yes everybody complaining about things if you look very carefully it means it [ __ ] up with their short-term bag so we have to be thoughtful but i do believe a lot of people here will have versions yours is pretty extreme but i'm pretty confident that there's a lot of faces i'm looking at now and we'll look back at drock's footage and be like oh [ __ ] they were there now they're doing this that's what happens when you're early in the thing that's going to happen do so this question is loaded in that do you feel pressure now because people have invested extraordinary levels of money into your art do you feel that you have to execute for the next year's decades to justify those costs and does that weigh on you or do you feel like the market is the market like how does that sit with people

uh it doesn't really there is pressure but it doesn't it's not hard for me because at the end of the day i was doing this for free for 20 years i was getting up and trying really [ __ ] hard to make digital art the best i could for 20 years before anybody gave a [ __ ] before anybody would pay for it and that's where it feels too good to be true because it's sort of like i'd already seen again i was pretty popular before this in terms of you know the digital art community and this or that and so i'd already seen a bunch of benefits from doing that and so that's where it was like wait so now people are gonna pay a lot more money for it um and so i think at the end of the day all i can do is get up and try really [ __ ] hard and that's it and like that's what i was doing before and that's what i'm doing now and so i'm and i know i'm trying way harder now too and so that's it like that's all anybody can do well listen uh there's probably a lot of places a lot of people are trying to get to so i think we got a little bit here i really i'm so grateful you're here i'm incredibly grateful to ryan harwood and the 137 pm team yes i want to yeah definitely thank the 137 pm team because you guys crushed it with this like super happy without and thank you for like making this happen like very much the best part was drock nema j the team was there and they were texting me and they're like he likes us and he doesn't like all the other people that are here and we're like super fired up and uh i'm really glad that everybody's about to see this i think the work is really strong selfishly what i think ryan and i want to do is put out more long-form tyler we want to meaningful content and so this was a real get for us we knew we were recording something and uh we're really proud of it and thank you so much for allocating your most precious asset of time to be here with all of us and i think it's time to play it so are you guys ready thank you for being here thank you guys thank you seriously youtube watcher what's up it's garyvee first of all thank you so much i hope you're doing super well during these times uh i also want to ask you please subscribe because my commitment and exploration of youtube is about to explode stories polls more content more engagement more surprise and delight this is the time to subscribe i hope you consider it and i hope i see you soon