I woke today to maybe the most crypto thing that has ever happened to me in this space over the past 8+ years.
I got a SuperRareBot notification that I had sold this artwork for 3.5 ETH (~$12,000 at time of sale) …
Hooray!
but as soon as I saw it, i already knew that I would see none of that money. – zero – zilch – literal 0, as in zero. Whoever hacked or socially engineered & gained access to my OG wallet earlier this year immediately transferred out the $10k (after SR fees) to their own holding wallet, likely using a MEV drainer bot setup.
I had also made another smaller sale for this piece – Crude Acquisition – some hours later, all of which was also gone by the time I woke up…
I have been feeling a bit under the weather lately with me whole family getting hit hard by some bug 🪲, so I went to sleep early last night and was only learning this all from my phone while taking a break during my daily morning bike ride to the beach where I beast a little and do 100 pushups minimum to maintain my adonis physique which is somewhat less than currently.
When I got home, I got to see it being mentioned in the Friday sales roundup by Roger Dickerman, who literally sounds like a made up name, but whatever RD…
Now I knew this was bound to happen at some point, with either a primary sale or a larger secondary sale. I just haven’t had the funds nor time / learning / focus to program a better MEV drainer bot to get ahead of the scammer(s), who I hope are choking to death to on a chicken bone as we speak ⁿᵃᵐᵃˢᵗᵉ.
Alchemy of Experience
My next door neighbor got hit by a car the other day and is in the hospital awaiting major surgery. She posted on Facebook leading primarily by counting her blessings and reflecting on her need to slow down – which I thought was so ᵃᶜᵗᵘᵃˡˡʸ incredibly enlightened – and after reading her transmutation of pain into gratitude and paragraphs of text that would inspire others…
I’m attempting to lean into something similar. After all, health is the only real wealth – and despite the loss of $10k which I really need right now – I still have too much to be thankful for, including this experience, and a reminder to NEVER SHARE YOUR SEED PHRASE WITH ANYONE, even people you think you can trust. And to keep a unique indecipherable multi layered security protocol [online and off] to keep yourself protected.
This is also reminder of why financial self sovereignty is important – why freedom to transact is important – and why crypto is important. There’s no one else responsible for your actions on the blockchain (and by reflection, life).
Somewhere along the line, my security protocols slipped, or I let them slip. I could cry over spilled milk or I can alchemize the pain of knowing what great things I could have done with that $10,000 (including basics like paying rent, buying things I know I’ve needed, some other people’s art, nutritious food, and the usual I do with all that) into a renewed fire to do crypto better.
The Grand Irony of this Piece…
There are a lot of elements behind why this incident and this particular piece of crypto art is extra ironic to me given the history of what has preceeded in the early days of crypto art.
It is [1 of 3] of the earliest pieces of stylistic copies of BOTTO’s AI powered algorithm produced pieces. BOTTO is Mario Klingemann’s Ai powered [mechanical turk / genius art “whatever”]. The piece where all the funds were stolen was meant to be a troll / commentary on Trickery Contagion called Classic Trickery Contagion = my own take on the larger subtheme on using classical trickery to add some ai spices to it and call it new modern trickery.
I used Midjourney to copy the style of the piece using Ai and add some elements to change the original meaning, in this case (per the description) from trickery in general to trickery as it relates to the classic art world and users usurping their elements…
BOTTO aka Mario & Ai (original)
Genesis Period. 2021 Nov #002. I respect and admire the work of Picasso, Miro and Kandinsky and I felt the need to pay them a tribute as they have been inspirational to me. The title refers to people’s craving for entertainment and the trickery behind the entertainment for making people blind and oblivious to what is actually happening around us. The clown and the hatter are the victims of this type of trickery. The rest is for the viewer to interpret. Botto in conversation with GPT-3
Max Osiris aka me and Ai & God & tacos (originaler)
While Picasso, Miró, and Kandinsky are celebrated for their contributions to modern art, their legacies are intertwined with the erasure and exploitation of women, both within their personal lives and the broader art world. These artists operated within systems that reinforced male dominance, and their work, while revolutionary, is now critically examined for the ways in which it reflected and perpetuated gender inequality. Feminist scholars argue that it is essential to recontextualize their contributions within a more inclusive and equitable understanding of art history.
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I essentially recontextualized Mario’s Ai powered money printing machine with a slight lean towards that whole thing about exclusion of women from historical perspectives, which is just something Ai spit out based on the aesthetics of the piece. But also real.
Is it stolen?
Yes and no. It has a whole new meaning.
Is it a copy?
Kind of, but not really, because you know, Ai.
Am I pissed my $10k was stolen by some disphit hacker?
Yeah. Am I gonna release more cortisol into my bloodstream by stressing out about it? Nah.
Because There’s (Two) More!
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The nice aspect of this whole affair is that I was able to save the other 2 remaining BOTTO copies, by just getting in there on time and transferring the pieces to a wallet I now control and that hasn’t been hacked just in time before the auto drainer kicked in…
Steal Proceed (it’s mostly about Red Bull) & Asymmetrical Libation (1/1 of #1 of #1 of BOTTO) are the only other 2 in the series from the original series that has now been capped at 3 total (because the hacked wallet can no longer be used to mint on SR – kind of a natural scarcity assurance).
I had them priced at $22k and $33k respectively, but this hack got me priced it at the original hack price of 3.5 (while 1/1 supplies last).
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Deeper Dream History
What makes thing entire thing funny to me is the history between me and Mario – nay, beef – that started in 2018 when I sampled his Ai monstrosity in a larger piece called Generally Adversarial, Historically Speaking which was my very first censored piece on SuperRare (self-censored at the bequest of the CEO). I would leave their dirty work to themselves, thereafter. ᶠᵒᵒˡ ᵐᵉ ᵒⁿᶜᵉ
At the time Mario (who doesn’t seem to give a flying fuck about royalties, based on his auction house involvement) lobbied and even got Artnome involved in trying to strong-arm me to remove the piece which really only sampled his piece as part of the larger whole (because he had a fragile tiny boy ego at the time and didn’t understand why cryptoart is actually important at upsetting the status quo is my only guess. My other guess is that he’s German and way too sensi about protecting the status quo). But I digress.
Anyway, I burned the piece cuz I was too new to the game in the revolution we were all starting to cause – way before even ROBNESS even considered the idea of #trashart, which he also stole from actual trashart, pre pre the PR piece that was paid to propagate all over the whole wild world.
Pablo Fraile eventually bought the Rarible piece with the original unlockable that contained the censored piece which helped fund Crypto Art Show 2 for *checks notes* 10 ETH (now worth ~$33,355.26) but at the time it was about 1/10th that, but was my first ever 4 figure sale so that was cool and we were able to have a historical art show DURING COVID-19 LOCKDOWNS (a whole ‘nother story). Here’s the “censored” reprint:
Now some people think all I’m doing here is swinging my big dick around from having caused so much ruckus even so many years before Beeple invented NFT’s in 2021 – and the’re not wrong. But also Pablo sold or transferred this piece to someone else as soon as he realized I’m not one to suck up to collectors.
Anyway, there’s a lot more angles and intricacies and whatnots beyond this, but i have the brain of a hamster right now and this Space Dust IPA is kicking in to drown my sorrows of losing a (classic) rack in the past 24 hours.
I haven’t proofread this whole thing and I’m just going to self publish this little account of my wins and losses. If you have any questions, I may edit this to be more coherent. Leave a question or comment below and I’ll do my best to answer, clarify, or whatever. Happy almost New Year, #cryptoart aficionados!
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