Cryptographic Seeds In The Garden Of Ideation
How often does a piece of art grow in value over time? We have a Mona Lisa, we have a Guernica, each worth more today in USD than ever before. Indeed, the insurance alone on the Lisa is around $600 million. If someone were to buy the Mona Lisa today, the price would be astronomical. But the next buyer would pay even more. So it is unfortunate that today, some five hundred years after being painted, everyone but Da Vinci would reap the profit. Understandable, but unfortunate. Could there be another way?
What about music, books, films? How many of these grow in value over time and how many rapidly depreciate? Very, very few pieces of music can grow over time without becoming novelties. In pre-modern times, music was inherently scarce. Each performance had value, not in USD necessarily, but in a sort of intangible, communal way. The value of water on a hot day. The Natyashastra, written at least some 1800 years ago, lays out a distinct repertoire of theater, dance, music, and performance. A form for every function, dedicated to passing down tradition. Individual pieces may be composed and forgotten within the form, but even today Bengali girls dance Bharatnatyam and young men learn the ragas.
Tradition begets antifragility. Somehow, that which lasts over time continues to exist, and exist boldly.
In the era of recorded music, what was once intangible is now a product —with opportunity costs. Is it possible for a recording to increase in value for its creator over time? We have every year, a Billboard Top 100 filled with songs that have a half-life of 1–2 months. Even this is a conservative estimate.
In order to squeeze maximum value out of each of these productions, we have developed an algorithmic structure that generates revenue from arbitrary ‘streams’ and advertisements. Unfortunately, this has lead to a bloated asymmetry: 100 executives need be paid before the artist receives a single cent. This structure incentivizes music to survive through commercial means — advertisements, licensing placements, corporate playlists, meme videos, lame club DJs, jingles. In short, garbage, and garbage with a very short timespan.
Is it desirable that recordings grow in value over time, is this a worthwhile goal to aim for? After all, we live in the era where nameless nobodies go viral overnight, making enough to live comfortably forever, and what’s wrong with that? Music industry making or breaking stars, what’s new about that, right?
Well, if the system incentivizes temporality, then instant gratification is the name of the game. We will continue to get viral hits and they’ll come faster and harder over time, depreciating even quicker. Think waves in choppy weather — each wavelength adds onto the next. ‘Art’ hath become content. Digestible, immensely of the zeitgeist, and easily discarded. And the longer the system goes on, the quicker the come ups will be and the higher they will top out before falling into the abyss of used content. Ironically, music has become like a market bubble.
What’s the difference between the Mona Lisa and, say, Old Town Road? The most prevalent difference is that the viral success of Old Town Road prevents it from being successful over time. There’s also the amusing idea that there was an original, independently released recording which has now been eclipsed by the studio-produced, meme-friendly Billy Ray Cyrus feature. One wave adding onto another.
Does Old Town Road need to be successful over time? Probably not, but I still think it’s a good example as it highlights the unique situation of an artist like Lil Nas X. As we all know, this situation is getting less and less unique. Is this the right direction to create a lasting music business? What will this business look like in fifty years if we keep going down this path? And for every overnight viral success, we have 10000x as many failures, all because they saw who and what made it to the top i.e. clout chasers. Ask yourself: next year, who’s going to do more numbers, Lil Nas X or Led Zeppelin, a band that’s been dead for 30 years?
Do not misunderstand me, I am not for one second saying that Led Zeppelin is ‘better’ or that they did things right, nor that Lil Nas X is ‘bad’. Who knows how many execs make millions off fifty-year old catalogues and boomer nostalgia? I’m pointing out that in today’s world, lasting potential is a sucker’s game until it isn’t.
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I would like to posit a simple idea here: the success of physical art (paintings, sculpture, architecture) in being deflationary is a product of their function as being a) physical and immutable, b) a product of patronage, c) scarce, and perhaps most importantly, d) easily attributed to its sole creator. Ultimately the millions and millions of reproductions of the Mona Lisa, on t-shirts and posters and coffee mugs the world over, have only increased its value, because the consensus is that only the original is truly valid. Da Vinci is still the holder of intellectual property. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that France as a body of state holds the IP, making it indivisible. Yet somebody somewhere (indeed, many somebodies) is benefiting from using the image for their own gain. In this way, the Mona Lisa is closer to the Natyashastra than ‘Old Town Road’ — it represents a tradition.
Most other artworks had to be forgotten in order for the Mona Lisa to be the memorable piece it is today. What if there was a way to make art antifragile over time through the free market, without the need for advertisements or constant appropriation? A market free from algorithms, a market where algorithms would become redundant and unnecessary, what would that look like?
It might take some imaginative thinking. It might take some kind of guarantee of permanence, a system that transfers information from A to B with no mediation in between. A permanent ledger, unable to be altered, that can be engaged with by anyone and connected on a human-to-human scale. A peer-to-peer marketplace, a digital Agora, where your consumption is 100 percent in your control.
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Today’s market for music is more democratic and diverse than ever. But the costs of making successful music are ridiculously unattainable, and the product reveals an asymmetry between audience, creator, and industry, where only the top 0.1% can sustain the practice. There’s no way back from this. One wave breeds the next, and we are in deep waters.
Enter Bitcoin. It may just be able to solve this problem.
No, not THAT Bitcoin (BTC or XBT), the SegWit coin.
I’m talking about BSV, the original Bitcoin. To discuss the politics, economics, and history of BSV would take another ten articles so I’d simply like to link here to a few key concepts that will hopefully invite personal research:
- The original Bitcoin whitepaper
- SV Website
- Security and Privacy on Blockchains
- Incentives in Bitcoin
- Library of Satoshi Nakamoto’s Writings
- BSV Roadmap
What can BSV do for creators to balance asymmetries, develop antifragility, and create lasting potential?
Well, the important thing to understand is that Bitcoin is a small-world network where every ‘user’ (investor) is incentivized to support other ‘users’ (investors) because all will benefit from increased productivity. In other words, each person invested into Bitcoin can use BSV to reward others who invest into Bitcoin, with either their money or by adding value to the network. Essentially, an ultrapure capitalism.
There is a blockchain, an immutable, unchangeable ledger that can hold data of all kinds. This blockchain is pseudonymous but public, and easily audited. When the infrastructure is built, and it is being built, it will be incredibly easy to read and return queries from the chain. What can that do for creators? It means that you can upload something and immediately have provable ownership. It means that you can upload something that will never be altered. And you will be rewarded for doing so, in the form of Bitcoin.
Why is it good to be rewarded in Bitcoin? Because, like any money, Bitcoin is a transparent mutually beneficial hallucination. But unlike any other money, we can all add value to Bitcoin by using it. It is a way to be completely in control of your product, a creative-investor in the world marketplace.
Think of a downtown Main St, where every business is incentivized to help and support each other, because it increases the value of all the businesses on Main St.
So how does one ‘invest’ into Bitcoin? Sure, you can buy Bitcoins with USD and that will add some financial value. But in the near future, there will be near-infinite ways to contribute to the peer-to-peer marketplace, and be rewarded in turn. Intangibility will, once again, have real value.
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I can’t think of a better way to illustrate this simply than with a personal experience. A few days ago, the rudimentary website audioB.app was launched with the express purpose of demonstrating what can be done onchain — audio hosted on a cloud server (for the moment), but hashed permanently onto the chain.
I decided to upload some music. The process went as so: using Money Button, I paid something like $0.03 in BSV to upload a 5MB file, covering the bandwidth usage and transaction fee. I then set a $0.05 BSV price — anyone who would want to listen would have to pay this in BSV (instantly deposited into my Money Button wallet), to gain infinite access + downloading rights. The website then broke down for me where my payments would go, and the transaction fees associated, meaning that I’d receive roughly $0.03 BSV per payment.
I woke up the next day to receiving about $0.50 in BSV, the equivalent of 120 streams on Spotify. Pretty cool! The level of control I had in the process, from uploading to cost to receiving my payment, was refreshing. I am both embarrassed and amused to say that that $0.50 is the most I’ve made in a 24hr period in years of uploading music to social media. And I am excited to think what could be possible if this website was being used by a mass audience.
However, the real kick came later that day. I had received $0.50 BSV by 12PM, but by 8PM that night, the USD value of BSV had gone up some 40–50%. Which meant that my $0.50 was now worth somewhere around $0.62.
I felt an immense rush of energy when this happened. I felt as though I had suddenly seen a vision of the future. Because the reality is that for the first time I had profited in Bitcoin, not USD. I had input my value to the network, and the network responded in kind, then rewarded me for my input. Pure capitalism. My little store on Main St.
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Can you imagine a future without algorithmic advertising? A world where there’s no longer a financial incentive to follow trends? A world where creators are in control of their own intellectual properties, and can do with what they wish? A world where everyone can send micropayments, even the disenfranchised? A world where no third-party need verify and accept your transactions? A world where humans input value into a network so that all can benefit? An organic network that grows from the ground up?
I’m trying to. I’m trying to imagine cryptographic seeds planted in the garden of ideation— what will grow when we are free to decide for ourselves?
