Author: Arthur Hayes, founder of BitMEX; Translator: Deng Tong, Golden Finance
What's the point? Why do you work so hard?
The point is to feed yourself and your family, to keep them clothed and housed. But once your income is enough to meet the necessities of life, what is the meaning of life? In the age of thinking machines and abundant hydrocarbon energy, with so much material wealth, why do we still work so hard?
The meaning of human existence is to consume art. Art comes in many forms, but fundamentally it is an experience created by humans to entertain others. It is completely useless, but it is also priceless.
Let's take a look at some traditional art forms and talk about their usefulness.
Sports - a sport in which humans waste energy playing games while others watch.
Eating at a restaurant – an exercise in which humans enhance the flavor of food so that calories can be consumed with pleasure to continue living.
Listening to music – music has no meaning other than to enjoy it.
Dancing – humans expend precious energy to move their bodies for fun.
Viewing visual art – involves humans creating visual objects for others to enjoy.
Collectively, these activities are the bulk of human culture. Culture makes life worth living, and as such, human culture has created trillions of dollars worth of economic activity. Clearly, platforms that allow for the consumption and preservation of culture are extremely valuable.
Consuming culture through public blockchains in a way that retains scarcity but is infinitely scalable will attract the next billion users to cryptocurrencies. This is the dream that is driving the 2021 Non-Fungible Token (NFT) bull run.
Source: The Block
While the first NFT bull run was impressive, what were people actually trading? People promised that these new digital art forms would be bought, sold, and stored in a decentralized manner. However, upon deeper research, many collectibles are combinations of scarce, fungible digital tokens that point to centralized databases that hold artistic content. The pixelated PFP you purchased most likely points to a database owned and operated by a centralized entity. If for some reason, that database is not maintained, your "assets" will instantly become zero.
In 2023, Bitcoin Ordinals burst onto the scene as a means to create digital products that exist purely on the Bitcoin blockchain. The data engraved on the blockchain, called Ordinals, will exist as long as we worship Satoshi Nakamoto. Ordinals do not require applications outside of the Bitcoin blockchain to exist and persist.
Ordinals bring culture to Bitcoin, the most used and valuable public blockchain. That’s why when sales of crypto digital art rise, Ordinals will lead the way as the crypto wealth effect takes off. Ordinals trading volume will surge, and the creativity of the community will be on full display. The best thing about Ordinals is that no matter how silly or offensive some people think the engraved art is, no one can take them down.
At Maelstrom, I tasked Akshat Vaidya, head of the investment team, to fund an Ordinals project. After careful research, we invested in Oyl Wallet. To show artists what is possible using Ordinals technology and Oyl wallet functionality, I collaborated on an Ordinals project called Airheads.
I wanted to create authentic digital art, which I defined as demonstrating a new way to express human creativity. I instructed the Oyl team to create an art series that could only be done using Ordinals technology. The talented creatives at Oyl came up with the concept for Airheads.
The world instinctively realized that the current stage in the history of human civilization was a sham. The senseless destruction of World War II gave rise to many of the technologies that power modern civilization. Peaceful, safe, and nearly carbon-free nuclear energy produces gigawatts of electricity. Billions of people can travel around the world on commercial flights. Of course, the most important outcome of the war was the creation of a new type of silicon-based life, which we call thinking machines, or computers.
The postwar growth in population and relative human wealth has been astounding. But the easy stuff has been done, and now politicians, in order to justify their existence, print money and engage in all sorts of activities that are a net drag on the human condition. Green energy may be the greatest global misinvestment of our time. Because we have cheap and abundant capital that is simply a derivative of cheap and abundant hydrocarbons, politicians think they can dictate the laws of nature, not the other way around. Taking less dense forms of energy like wind and solar and expecting them to displace denser forms like coal, gas and oil will never happen naturally. By natural I mean without government subsidies or loans at below market rates.
The green energy scam is just one example. Many of you lament the inflation that has occurred since the peaceful abandonment of the gold standard by the United States in 1971. Forget about government-manipulated year-over-year inflation statistics. The nominal price of a loaf of bread is higher today than it was yesterday. In an age of advanced technology and cheap energy, it doesn’t have to be that way.
You know this no matter how the elites try to deceive you.
Your reaction is speculation. Your response is to buy up magical internet money. Your response is to inflate a "scarce" digital cultural form that you understand and appreciate.
Airheads is a series that exploits the inflation forced upon us by the elite. It does this both aesthetically and technically.
From an aesthetic perspective, Airheads is a series of characters modeled after balloons. Imagine Jeff Koons' balloon-like characters, playful but depraved. These balloons are metaphorically filled with the inflation of our time. They are fat and beautiful because we have all experienced inflation.
From a technical perspective, Airheads is the first Ordinals series to use a ranking system, where the size of your wallet determines your rank. Unlike other series that have randomized properties, Airheads has a clear hierarchy. This approach utilizes recursive inscriptions to push the boundaries of what a collectible can represent, making Airheads the only series truly designed for those who invest early and take the most risk.
Airheads are unique Bitcoin Ordinals designed to display and flaunt your wealth. Each Airhead is an inflated, balloon-like character generated using recursive art to visually represent the size and value of your digital portfolio at the time of minting. There are 10,000 Airheads available, and these characters use ordinal rankings and tier distinctions to reflect the weighting of assets in the leaderboard, making it a fun and competitive way to display wealth.
• Special Characters and Tiers: Airheads are evenly distributed across 10 tiers, with each tier representing a different level of portfolio size. Some of the most exciting characters may appear in the lower tiers, which adds an element of surprise and value.
• Packaging Variants:Each Airhead is wrapped in one of 25 mystery packaging variations, assigned at random. Some packagings are themed to match characters across tiers, making them unexpectedly rare and more coveted.
Overall, it looks like this sexy Airhead. Note that certain body parts are naturally large; some characters are just built differently ;).
To get Airhead, you have a few options:
Whitelist Application:
Whitelist will open on August 6th. Apply using Oyl wallet. Follow @airheadfun on Twitter and complete quests to earn XP (experience points). Even with a small wallet you can make big money. Participate and climb the leaderboard as you complete each mission. All applicants who win an allocation must pay a minting fee.
Compete on the Leaderboard:
Bring your Bitcoins, Ordinals, BRC-20s, and Runes to climb the rankings. The goal is to amass the largest portfolio in the Oyl ecosystem to earn the most impressive and inflated Airheads, reflecting your top position on the leaderboard. The larger your portfolio, the higher your ranking and the more prestigious your Airhead. You must be in the top 10,000 to receive an allocation.
Buy a Whale Pass for 0.069 BTC:
Guarantee yourself an Airhead by purchasing a Whale Pass. Send a Whale Pass to a Whale Wallet (like your Vault or Ledger). When that Whale Wallet activates it by sending it to an Oyl Wallet, all assets in the taproot address you sent it to will also count towards your leaderboard position, providing a significant advantage (if you are indeed a Whale).
XP is earned by holding and growing Bitcoin, Ordinals, BRC-20, and Runes assets. There are over 15 eligible assets in the BRC-20, Runes, and Ordinal families that qualify for earning XP. This boosts your ranking on the leaderboard, helping you become the fattest, most bloated Airhead. The goal is to amass the biggest portfolio and stretch your wealth.
Get Oyl Wallet from the Chrome Web Store and explore the in-wallet trading experience at Oyl.io. Get ready for the whitelist opening on August 6th by creating or importing your wallet, then transferring Bitcoin, Ordinals, BRC-20, and Runes. Once whitelisting opens, watch your XP accumulate and climb the leaderboard for a chance to mint Airheads.
People in the spiritual professions often say that 10% of your earnings should be donated to churches, synagogues, mosques, etc. As per tradition, Maelstrom will use the funds raised from the Airhead airdrop to pay a tithe to Lord Satoshio. A portion of the funds earned will go toward our Bitcoin Developer Grant Program.
My goal is to show what can be achieved using Bitcoin Ordinals technology and the user-friendly Oyl wallet. I sincerely hope that artists will take notice and be inspired by this series to bring their contributions to the human experience to life. If Airheads can inspire others, it will solidify its place as a first-of-its-kind series that will retain value for a long time to come.
We all know that the corrupt elites roaming around the world in our name will not stop printing money. We know that inflation-induced human suffering will continue unabated. But at least we can have some fun, inflate our Airhead, make it really fat, and tell those who despise cryptocurrencies to go please my Airhead.
As the co-founder and former CEO of BitMEX, Arthur has deep and unique insights into the crypto market. In the show, he analyzed the impact of the volatility of the Japanese yen on the market and the role of the US Treasury in the political environment.
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