Since 2019, the Bitcoin Conference Art Gallery has invited artists to do something radical—at least by traditional art world standards: price their work in bitcoin—not as metaphor, but as method. What began as a modest experiment in peer-to-peer art sales has, by 2025, evolved into a growing body of work that reflects the movement’s shifting values, symbols, and cultural debates. With over 65 BTC in cumulative art sales, the gallery hasn’t just challenged legacy pricing—it’s built a visual archive of Bitcoin’s ascent. To price a painting in sats is to assert that value can be sovereign—that creative labor need not pass through fiat institutions or legacy art systems to be real.

This year’s Bitcoin 2025 Las Vegas exhibition features some of the most ambitious pieces yet: monumental paintings and mosaics, hand-carved relics, poster campaigns, and recursive digital portraits. The ten artists featured in this Q&A span diverse media and intent, yet share a common urgency. Whether invoking Renaissance myth or elevating meme culture to the scale of temple fresco, they explore value—economic, symbolic, and spiritual. These aren’t just observers of the Bitcoin movement—they’re shaping its iconography.

In the following Q&A, ten artists share their perspectives on their work, offering insights into what they created for B25.

Most works featured in this interview will be available through the conference auction, hosted in partnership with Scarce.City, where each piece will be priced natively in Bitcoin. The full preview gallery can be viewed here.

Bitcoin Apex has become one of the more incisive visual commentators in the Bitcoin cultural sphere, with contributions ranging from exhibitions at Bitcoin Amsterdam to the 2024 release of his book Apex: Bitcoin, Art, and the Myth of Value, which maps the evolving mythos of Bitcoin through hyper-detailed drawings. For B25 Las Vegas, he unveils a new original—meticulous in detail and symbolic density, rendered in a Dürer-esque style that echoes the intensity of traditional engraving. Apex has voiced hesitation about selling originals, making this auction a rare and meaningful opportunity. 

Q: What has it meant to live as an artist after adapting to a Bitcoin standard—and what has it meant to you to value your time and labor in sats?

BITCOIN APEX: These are interesting questions. Being a Bitcoin artist has completely changed my life. It’s changed who I am, how I spend my time, and made me realize that through my creative work, I’m encouraging others to get creative and engage with Bitcoin in their own unique way.

In almost three years of actively creating pencil drawings as a self-employed Bitcoin artist, focused on this paradigm shift influencing so many aspects of society, I’ve been delighted to hear from many Bitcoiners (especially on social media) who’ve either started using Bitcoin artistically for the first time, returned to drawing or painting after a long pause, or found a new path to Bitcoin-related self-employment.

For me, it’s still a special and surreal experience to walk this path. After more than 10 years working in a supermarket, filling fruit crates and stocking shelves, I can hardly believe I now have this privilege.

The freedom that comes with this work is unmatched. Not only in the act of drawing itself—shaped by diverse influences like historical architecture, spontaneous thoughts, or meditation, which I believe is an endless source of ideas—but also in the freedom to plan and live my life beyond drawing and beyond Bitcoin, in line with my own interests and wishes. Compared to the time before I was self-employed, it’s a completely new outlook on life, and I’m grateful for it every day.

Bitcoin isn’t just a theme in my art, it’s also how I get paid. In my opinion, accepting bitcoin is the best way to stack it. I gain multiple advantages: I support the Bitcoin circular economy, attract customers who want to pay in sats, and no longer rely on exchanges or apps to acquire bitcoin. That’s something I really value.

The first time I received bitcoin for my artwork, it felt like real money—even though I’d long understood its superior properties. There’s a difference between using Bitcoin and simply holding it. Spending or receiving it makes its potential real in a new way.

The last three years feel like a decade. So much has happened; exhibitions, travel, and countless learning experiences that continue to shape me. But one of the most meaningful aspects is knowing that over 3,000 prints of my drawings now hang in homes across 50 countries. So many unique people, all intersecting through Bitcoin, united in a shared belief: building a better world, especially for future generations.

Salvador Dalí once said, “A true artist is not someone who is inspired, but someone who inspires others.”

Mining imagery from the internet, mass media, and art history, Pepenardo (also known as Nardo) explores the role of internet memetics within contemporary art through a blend of classical technique and digital language. Earlier this year, he presented a sold-out solo show at Bitcoin MENA, centered around a Subway sandwich meme—a playful yet pointed reflection on consumer culture and value perception. Now, at B25, he returns with his most ambitious work to date: The Citadel.  Titled after a 2013 Bitcoin meme, The Citadel draws on the visual language of Medici-era Renaissance painting—employing grand architecture and spatial hierarchy to depict a stratified, satirical vision of power. Ancient symbols are reworked into a contemporary narrative about Bitcoin, touching on themes of control, accelerating change, and logarithmic value creation.  

Q: Is this the Bitcoin-era version of the art that has always emerged at history’s turning points? And what might Hieronymus Bosch think of such a piece?

X-NARDO: Yes, but only in the sense that every era’s greatest art holds a mirror to its dominant mythologies. The Citadel is not merely an artwork, it is a reckoning. It confronts the viewer with their position on a speculative hierarchy that feels both prophetic and surreal. It is a world where Bitcoin has reshaped not just markets, but meaning itself. Hand-painted in oil yet built like a multi-layered Photoshop file, it drags the digital detritus of 4chan or Reddit meme aesthetics into the studio, and suspends it in a composition not unlike the chaotic allegories of Bosch or the vertical wealth narratives commissioned by the Medici. In this sense, it is the Bitcoin era’s Garden of Earthly Delights – a dream, a warning, a satire, and a prayer, all at once. It is also a deeply personal work, a response to the anonymous 2013 Reddit post from the so-called Bitcoin Time Traveler, a post that, like myth, cannot be proven but continues to abstractly unfold.

If art once documented the divine right of kings, and later the rise of man, what does it mean now when sovereignty is self-issued, and the castle gates are made of code?

Flo Montoya’s visual practice draws from protest signage, revolutionary iconography, and grassroots aesthetics—framing Bitcoin within a lineage of resistance-based art. In 2024, she co-founded the Art of Freedom Twitter Spaces with UK-based artist Rebel Money, creating an ongoing platform for dialogue and mutual support in the Bitcoin art movement. Her Genesis Block Inflation Posters debuted at The Space in Denver and return to B25 in an expanded iteration, installed across two oversized gallery walls beneath the phrase “THE ART OF FREEDOM.” Presented alongside a major exhibition of Ross Ulbricht memorabilia and prison-made artworks, the posters underscore the deeper stakes of freedom. A free, downloadable wheatpaste version was also released for street-level installation and public engagement.  

Q: How do visual traditions of resistance—revolutionary, diasporic, or rooted in everyday struggle—inform your framing of Bitcoin as a tool for cultural and economic sovereignty? And how has the public response to the wheatpaste version, encountered outside traditional art spaces, shaped your sense of how everyday people perceive Bitcoin as a way to confront inflation and reclaim agency?

FLO: To understand Bitcoin as a tool for sovereignty—economic and cultural—we first have to examine humanity’s relationship to money, and to art. Both are rooted in our ability to assign value: to recognize what is scarce, beautiful, or meaningful. This capacity helped early humans evolve and build civilizations—and it’s precisely this instinct that has been manipulated by those seeking to control money and perception.

If you can redefine what people see as valuable, you can control how they behave. Today, just as we’ve lost sight of what money is, we’ve also lost clarity around art. Bitcoin offers a way to reclaim that instinct—to separate money from state control and return the power of valuation to the individual. A mind freed from fiat begins to trust its own senses again.

The wheatpaste poster project was born from a desire to reach the everyday passerby. We started with a simple question: What is inflation? From there, we developed clear, accessible language, ending with Bitcoin as a possible solution. Each artist created a poster designed to engage both the general public and those already familiar with Bitcoin themes.

Pasting them in the streets was my first time doing street art—and the first time I placed my work outside of Bitcoin spaces. Conversations emerged. I noticed the discomfort in people, the intuitive sense that something is wrong. I don’t know if they scanned the QR code or if it changed anything. But for me, the act was performative, and it stands on its own—whole and complete.

We later created a limited collectible edition of the posters so people could support the project and own something scarce, beautiful, and intentional. And now, at B25, we’re expanding the series to include 14 new artists. I’m incredibly proud of this body of work. The full set of 21 Art of Freedom posters speaks not only to inflation, but to the deeper possibilities of art as activism.

Madex is a Canadian artist, designer, and creative director of Bull Bitcoin, renowned for his commitment to craftsmanship and artistic integrity. His work often critiques the commodification of art in the fiat economy and explores themes of sovereignty and authenticity. In 2024, he released the Madex Manifesto—a rejection of fiat-fueled art commodification and a declaration of his commitment to craftsmanship and artistic integrity. That same year, he publicly clashed with Bitcoin Magazine CEO David Bailey, calling out the magazine’s political alignment—particularly its support of Donald Trump—as a betrayal of Bitcoin’s core principles of neutrality and decentralization.  Now it’s 2025. 

Q: You’re returning to Bitcoin Conference Vegas amid ongoing cultural digitization and AI, renewed infighting over block space and Bitcoin Core, Vice President JD Vance taking the stage, and your home country of Canada teetering on political unrest. Given all of this, what does coming back to this event mean to you—and how does your current work respond to or wrestle with these overlapping tensions?

MADEX: First, let me correct the record: I never clashed with David Bailey over Trump. That’s not the issue. What I called out, and will continue to call out, is Bitcoin Magazine’s willingness to sell out Bitcoin’s core values by pushing scams like ordinals to trusting followers, and promoting state-aligned initiatives like a “strategic bitcoin reserve.” That’s not decentralization. That’s state capture.

My critique isn’t about party politics. It’s about the fiat mindset infiltrating Bitcoin through suits, bureaucrats, and rent-seekers. I’ve always believed that tradespeople, builders, and artisans are the true allies of Bitcoin; not investment bankers, politicians and bureaucrats who lie, cheat, and produce nothing of value. These people are parasites; fiat profiteers and Keynesian cultists who’ve drained the world of wealth, beauty, and meaning.

Bitcoin isn’t about appeasing them. It’s about bankrupting slave masters and returning sovereignty to individuals. That’s what the Madex Manifesto stands for: a call to makers, craftsmen, and artists to resist the fiat system’s corrupting influence and remain loyal to their work, their creativity, and their values. It’s about reclaiming artistic excellence and rejecting the satanic sludge peddled as “modern culture.”

So why am I showing up to the Bitcoin Magazine conference in Sin City? Because I still believe in the power of signal. I’m coming to broadcast my message, loud and clear, to capital allocators who want their wealth to mean something, to creators that dream of reaching their full potential. I’m here to demonstrate that creative energy built on integrity and mastery, not compromise, is essential to the progression of our sovereign dreams.

Bitcoin Magazine and I may disagree, but I know there are people in that building, maybe even in their ranks, who hunger for greatness. And they understand that if anons witnessing Madex can awaken even one sleeping giant, it will all have been worth it.

We are entering a decisive era. Fiat is crumbling. AI is accelerating. The state is flailing. Creation remains our greatest power. The future belongs to the maker, to the entrepreneur, to the craftsman. I’m here to awaken the sleeper, to ignite the beacon.

Anik Todd is a multidisciplinary artist whose background in painting, sound, and precision carpentry informs a practice rooted in materiality, labor, and symbolism. In 2024, he contributed to several Bitcoin exhibitions, including Adopting Bitcoin in El Salvador, where his text-based drawings stood out for their conceptual rigor.  For his first contribution to the Bitcoin Conference, Todd unveils Proof of Paradigm-Defining Work (Past / Future)—an ambitious hand-painted diptych totaling over 400 hours of labor. Inspired by the memetic power of the “Buy Bitcoin” sign, the two-panel work functions as both tribute and proposition: a visual testimony to the conviction and collective effort behind Bitcoin’s emergence, and a call to the continued proof-of-work—economic, spiritual, and philosophical—that lies ahead. Monumental in both execution and intention, the piece gestures toward a new era where value is reclaimed through effort, faith, and shared purpose. 

Q: How does time, effort, and precision shape the meaning of these works? And how do you see the artist’s role evolving in the paradigm Bitcoin makes possible?

ANIK TODD: The original ‘Buy Bitcoin’ sign to me was so powerful precisely because of its rapid execution and immaculate timing – a rapid execution which however was the apex of unfathomable amounts of time and passionate dedication which had laid the path to it appearing as and when it did. With my work I wanted to monumentalise that vast and hidden undercurrent of visionary effort – both looking back in time but also forward in the indented blank-page ‘future’ piece – elegantly simple at a first glance but meticulously laboured and decidedly human upon closer inspection. Each scribbled line is precisely reproduced (by hand rather than mechanical means) and so is a true human homage to the magnitude of the wonders of Bitcoin.

I also wanted the physical scale to represent Bitcoin’s growth since the time of the original sign so as to visually communicate the expansion we are witnessing, and settled upon the growth in market capacity which produced an exact 100x129cm size!

Although I appreciate the value of humour and contemporary culture in certain Bitcoin artworks, the true beauty of Bitcoin art, to me, is the visual expression of the time that Bitcoin has granted back to humanity – and the resulting desire to once again create works of outstanding craftsmanship and awe. In an age in which our manual skills and age-old abilities are rapidly becoming redundant, I find it paramount that art can anchor us to who we are, what we are individually capable of, and inspire us to continue striving for greatness along the path ahead.

From illustrating the iconic Bitcoin Roller Coaster Guy—a meme forever etched in Bitcoin’s lore—to painting a massive mural in Nashville and performing original music from his 2024 album Blues Before Bitcoin, Marcus Connor has long shaped Bitcoin’s cultural ascent. A foundational contributor to the art gallery since its early years, his practice carries a distinctly analog sensibility: wood, working parts, hand-cut wheels, and functional objects that recall the tactile ingenuity of folk museum displays.  At B25 Las Vegas, Connor stages a new immersive installation—a wall-sized graphic overlaid with physical artworks that together form a playable game with movable pieces. Connor treats interactivity as more than engagement; it becomes a vehicle for one-on-one connection and shared discovery.  

Q: How have projects like Blues Before Bitcoin, and now The Game of Money, informed your approach to interactivity, and in what ways do you see these physical installations shaping how people connect to value, freedom, and cultural memory through Bitcoin?

MARCUS CONNOR: All of my Bitcoin art shares the same sensibility: it’s about showing that Bitcoin is fun. Not only is Bitcoin fun, but it’s also accessible to the everyman. My art is meant to demystify Bitcoin and show that it’s not just for shadowy super coders and techno nerds. Its playful nature is meant to appeal to everyone—with a bit of innocence and a welcoming smile. Another important aspect is letting people know that we all experience the same emotional ups and downs that come with volatility—and that we can face it all with a smile.

My latest piece for Vegas, The Game of Money, continues this theme: we’re playing the game, and we’re enjoying it. As a child, my father told me that life is a game we play, and the game of money is one part of that larger game. We increase our freedom by recognizing the game so we can play it—and play to win. One angle of this new project is the idea that Bitcoin is the game—or the gaming of money itself. From its inception, Bitcoin was designed to outplay fiat by introducing a competition fiat was unprepared for. But most importantly, Bitcoin is fun and accessible. I hope my art brings a smile to the faces of those who see it. I create to spread positivity and truth—because Bitcoin is verifiable truth.

Well-known Bitcoin artist Brekkie returns to B25 Las Vegas with Bitaxe Gothic—a hand-carved stone display for a functional Bitaxe gamma, complete with 24k gold leaf, gothic lettering, and a niche for an Opendime wallet. Renowned for his commitment to traditional stone carving—a material whose permanence echoes the immutability of Bitcoin—Brekkie reframes open-source mining hardware as an object of ritual and lasting significance. The piece is signed and marked with the block height at which it was completed. 

Q: How does the slow, physical labor of stone carving shape your relationship to Bitcoin’s rapidly evolving hardware landscape? And in evoking the visual language of religious relics and medieval craftsmanship, what legacy do you hope Bitaxe Gothic will carry within Bitcoin’s cultural canon?

BREKKIE: When I first learned of Bitcoin, it was still possible to mine it using GPU’s. Since then, we’ve seen the rise and evolution of ASICs and now the exciting resurgence of home mining hardware like the various Bitaxe iterations. While the hardware continues to change, the fundamental nature of Bitcoin mining, the proof of work required, remains the same, with every miner, big or small, attempting to beat the odds and find the next block. As an artist working in stone, I like to think that my process embodies that same proof of work. There’s no avoiding the energy expenditure needed to work in stone, just as there’s no way to cheat at Bitcoin mining. And as I learn and grow as an artist, my own skill and efficiency goes up, much as the efficiency of Bitcoin mining improves as hardware evolves. I love this parallel between my craft and mining, and it only deepens my appreciation for Bitcoin in general.

Though I don’t personally subscribe to Bitcoin as a religion, I do think Bitcoin is one of the most, if not the most, important developments in the history of humankind. To many, a Bitcoin miner is just a computer, but to me, the hardware that allows Bitcoin to exist and thrive is worthy of elevation and maybe even a little veneration. Bitcoin hardware in general, whether for mining or running a node, deserves a place of honor and respect in our society. I hope Bitaxe Gothic can serve as a starting point for how Bitcoiners think about showcasing the technology that is so vital to Bitcoin and improving our collective future.

A first-time contributor at B24 Nashville, Ariel Birdie debuted with works like Bitcoin Buddha, which draw on mythic and historical references to frame Bitcoin not merely as a technological breakthrough, but as part of a longer continuum of sacred and symbolic systems used by civilizations to encode value, power, and transcendence. By collapsing temporal and cultural distance, she positions Bitcoin as a modern-day relic—something both ancient and emergent, invoking belief structures as much as market structures.  

Q: How do you use visual language to recast Bitcoin as a site of myth, memory, or sacred value? What themes or evolutions can viewers expect in your new work at B25?

ARIEL BIRDIE: I started making Bitcoin Art in 2020 to explore the relationship between Bitcoin and the Divine. Our images of God… the way that humans have perpetuated images of Divinity throughout history with the use of long lasting and recognizable symbols and awe inspiring art and architecture, what is left behind is true proof of work with longevity and value. Bitcoin is analogous to God and to Art in so many ways. These connections are vast and there are infinite opportunities to create visual smorgasbord. I collect and re-document the details I like the most. I like to layer imagery I find beautiful, powerful or humorous and I like playing with the more common narratives that exist. I hope I don’t upset people too much.

Coming to Las Vegas I have two art pieces I am excited to show. I got detailed with these and have evolved a bit with lettering and political commentary. One theme is the Battle of Good versus Evil and the iconic representation of Angelic and Demonic forces. Another is Vegas Themed with imagery that mixes ancient mayan inscriptions, Art Nouveau and Time Travel…. A bit of Alien Visitation and Paranoid Conspiracy Theory is thrown in there too for good measure.

Coldie’s stereoscopic portraits layer depth with symbolic charge, drawing on Cubist and Futurist strategies while embedding Bitcoin figures into a lineage of cultural myth-making. His Filthy Fiat series—launched at Bitcoin 2024 and projected inside the B24 Dome—features glitch-based compositions made from deteriorated dollar bills he buried and later unearthed from his own backyard. The first work in the series, Warren Buffett – Filthy Fiat, was auctioned at Christie’s in December 2024, marking a rare institutional entry for Bitcoin-inscribed physical and digital artwork. For Bitcoin 2025, Coldie returns with a new magnetic portrait from the same series, designed for audience interaction and tactile rearrangement. 

Q: By inviting viewers to recompose your magnetic works, are you asking them to participate in the symbolic reconstruction of value—much like Bitcoin invites individuals to build alternatives to fiat and centralized control? Beyond the magnetic piece, what else can attendees expect to see from you at B25?

COLDIE: A major breakthrough since B24 has been realized with my latest physical works using magnets. My body of work plays with the illusion of 3D depth on a screen while also being interactive. I began thinking about how I could take this practice and turn it digital. Using magnets to hold pieces on a backboard that can change position, I have realized the vision of creating customizable living compositions. The viewer is now the collaborator. The art is meant to be touched.

This concept comes to life in Jack Dorsey – Decentral Eyes, a magnetic portrait and the latest evolution of my interactive series. It’s an opportunity to reconstruct identity and value. Dorsey’s Twitter helped reshape digital self-representation, while his support for Bitcoin aligns with the decentralized nature of the face pieces—separate parts coming together to form a unified whole. Building financial alternatives by reconstructing the definition of value is a core theme embedded into this series. This will be the first public display of one of these magnetic portraits, and I’ll be in the B25 gallery for three days to help viewers physically customize the piece in real time.

The work featured in the B25 gallery reflects this dual-track focus: Magnets and Filthy Fiat.

Alongside Decentral Eyes, I’m showing two other works. The first is Filthy Flag, a Filthy Fiat–themed living artwork. It’s a U.S. flag made of dollar bills that refreshes layout based on local time and date—acting as both a clock and calendar, referencing moments in USD and Bitcoin history. The hourly change to the orange stripe reminds the viewer that it is always time to choose Bitcoin. This piece is also inscribed as a 1/1 recursive ordinal.

The second is the Michael Saylor – Decentral Eyes print, originally released as an ordinal on the day of the 2024 halving. Both Saylor and Dorsey are central figures in Bitcoin history, and these portraits explore the reassembly of public personas and the shifting nature of value in decentralized systems.

Filthy Fiat is a wild story—check out filthyfiat.money for the deep dive.

Spanish artist Luis Simo is known for producing some of the most ambitious and visually commanding works for the Bitcoin Conference art gallery. At B23 Miami, his multi-panel mural Pepernica reimagined Picasso’s Guernica through the lens of Rare Pepe iconography—fusing historical gravity with meme-driven absurdity. As a centerpiece of the exhibition, Pepernica mirrored the ideological battleground Bitcoin faced at the time, turning satire into political commentary at monumental scale. For B25, Simo returns with KEKIUS MAXIMUS, a monumental pixel mosaic composed of over 30,000 hand-placed resin tiles. Styled after an ancient Greco-Roman floor piece, it depicts the meme-god Kekius Maximus riding a mystical bull, his Bitcoin-woven cape billowing as storm clouds part to reveal radiant light. At 78 x 59 inches, the work serves as both a shrine to meme culture and a maximalist gesture toward Bitcoin’s mythic potential.  

Q: What draws you to tackling such large-scale, labor-intensive works—and how do you think monumentality transforms how meme-based art is perceived? Do you see this physical scale as a kind of cultural counterweight to the ephemeral, fast-moving nature of meme creation online?

LUIS SIMO: For me, working at a large scale is both a creative decision and a way of responding to how fast and disposable the online world has become. Memes are designed to go viral and then disappear, but when you take that fleeting energy and anchor it in something monumental and physical, like Pepernica or Kekius Maximus, it alters how people engage with it. It forces a pause. It invites reflection.

It’s a statement that this strange, internet-born culture matters—that it’s worth the time, the labor, the materials. That gesture alone resists the idea that meme culture is trivial or short-lived. At that scale, the work begins to function more like a shrine or an icon—even if irony still plays a role.

It’s my way of resisting how forgettable digital culture has become. Memes explode one day and vanish the next. But ancient civilizations understood how to make meaning last, they carved narratives into stone, assembled mosaics that still speak to us today. I’m trying to do the same with Bitcoin and meme culture: to give these symbols a material presence that demands attention.

I’m not trying to make them sacred in a traditional sense, but I do believe that memes—however absurd—are shaping beliefs, economies, and systems. By committing to the time, the craft, the scale, I’m asserting that this isn’t just noise. It’s part of something much larger. For me, maximalism isn’t just an aesthetic—it’s a way of turning digital ephemera into modern mythology.

A longtime contributor to the Bitcoin Conference art gallery and a foundational figure in Prague’s Parallelní Polis scene, Cypherpunk Now returns with one of the exhibition’s most ambitious works. Bitcoin is not the bubble, but the pin uses glass—a medium both fragile and defiant—to frame Bitcoin as a force puncturing the inflated structures of fiat finance. Part propaganda relic, part alchemical object, it plays with themes of fragility, permanence, and symbolic disruption.  

Q: How did working in such a breakable medium shape your approach to Bitcoin’s imagery—and in a world still clinging to its bubbles, what kind of rupture are you hoping this piece provokes? As the sculpture itself suggests, have we ever been closer to witnessing the fiat bubble finally burst?

CYPHERPUNK NOW: Working with glass made me reflect on fragility—not just of the material itself, but of the structures we continue to tolerate in our economic systems. Glass is a paradoxical medium: seemingly delicate and fragile, yet in the right form, incredibly sharp and strong. Much like Bitcoin—a technology often perceived as abstract or “fragile” compared to traditional institutions, yet capable of piercing through them with force.

In this piece, glass is not just an aesthetic choice—it’s a metaphor. The fiat world is a bubble: inflated, but with a thin surface. The pin, representing Bitcoin, isn’t destructive out of malice—it simply makes rupture inevitable. I hope this work provokes questions—about what we hold together purely through belief, and how ready we really are to reshape the world when that belief bursts.

And are we close? I’d say we can all feel the pressure building. It’s about to pop!

Returning for his fifth year at the Bitcoin Conference, MEAR ONE arrives following major exhibitions at the Museum of Graffiti and a North American tour of Metaphysical Surrealism. His work continues to explore metaphysical themes that increasingly intersect with the mind-expanding nature of Bitcoin. At B25, he unveils two new pieces—including The Magician—accompanied by a limited edition print series, and a second painting (insert title), addressing themes of liberation from debt slavery.

Q:  In a moment dense with economic omens, your work evokes the reemergence of the archetypal magician. What signals do you perceive in the cultural landscape—and how do they inform your sense of what comes next for humanity?

MEAR: To me, the magician represents our creative ingenuity consciousness, a revolution in one’s mind. The more I learn about the mechanics of reality, I begin to observe these philosophical and metaphysical manifestations in my daily life. I subscribe to the thinking that reality is an agreement of various thought patterns. Ideas fall in and out of being real based on necessity and eventually disappear when they become obsolete. It is always the stranger who introduces novelty into our world, presenting something never before seen, yet so familiar that we accept it into our collective consciousness. Nikola Tesla was one of these remarkable figures, so too was/is Satoshi Nakamoto. These archetypes introduce balance in a world of nefarious ill-intended charlatans; the magic in our mind is how we make the intangible tangible. 

My works have been recording a chronology of events for over three and a half decades, exposing the conspiracies of our lives and seeking alternatives while promoting an inner state of revolt against the authorities. I have gotten beaten up, shot at, jailed, fined, and more recently slandered/cancelled online for creating art that speaks out against the system. But I remain steadfast to my mission of art, fueled by my early graffiti adventures and evolving to a more refined form of storytelling, a metaphysical surrealism narrative designed to awaken the viewer from their economic debt-slave slumber and spiritual deprivation. I paint the archetype of the magician to inspire the rebel within and fill one’s soul with magic inspiration so they might challenge the status quo. When you awaken to the malicious reality of our monetary oppression the revelation is always the same – the human spirit seeks its liberation and Bitcoin is our new LSD, our new Jesus Christ, our first real challenge to the authority’s omnipotent control.

Explore and bid on an extraordinary collection of over 75 artworks by a diverse group of artists at the Scarce.City auction page. This diverse exhibition features a wide array of pieces, including the Ross Ulbricht Collection and Max Mellenbruch’s $2.2 million sculpture, RARE. All artworks are currently available for preview or bidding online and will be on-view at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas, May 27–29th.

Use ticket code BITCOINART at checkout for a discount. Additionally, don’t miss the digital art auctions hosted by Megalith.art, offering a curated selection of top digital artworks.