Roman Empire Redux

A few months ago I went to Basel because Brian Droitcour invited me to speak at The Art of Protocols. Since then, I have been thinking of the Roman Empire almost every way, but in a turn for the worse, I have been thinking about the scenecoins of the Roman Empire. 

The most interesting part of the conference was the Bitcoin Ordinals panel. It was an all-bro panel: so you can already figure out that we were dealing with peoople that think every day about The Roman Empire. The panel was really, highly entertaining. Someone there said that “Ordinals were the purest form of free market capitalism” which is something I also think about every day. But it was Theo Goodman, who’s an OG crypto artist and works at Nym, a brilliant mixnet project, that brought the topic that has occupied most of my mindshare to this day: it was The Romans who invented the first proto-NFTs!

*** mental gymnastics has entered the Touch Grass newsletter ***

Romans depicted contemporary events engraved in their coins - allowing for distribution, value, and a degree of immutability. 

*** drops mic ***

My family (meaning my dog, husband and myself) are obsessed with the intersection of finance and art, coinage and crypto. So we’ve been writing about this a lot. Here’s a short post for the new platform Untitled I just wrote - and would love to read replies on.

And here’s a memecoin retrospective I wrote on the plane to inform the Untitled post.

More contemporary forms of proto-nfts aka just novelty coins can be further found on this unpublished analysis by The Husband, about a novelty coin from the Dresden State Art Collections:

“The coin B.XXXII, from the early 18th century, depicts two soldiers exchanging a watchword, hinting at secrecy and corruption, with the inscription "Geld ist die Lösung" ("Money is the solution"). The reverse shows an old man holding a purse from which through a hole coins are falling, with the inscription "wie's kommt, so geht's. Nulla bleibt übrig" ("As it comes, so it goes. Nothing remains"). Satirical coins from this era used humor and critique to comment on societal issues, political figures, and economic conditions. The exact use of this coin is, however, uncertain; it could have been a satirical piece mocking figures like John Law, particularly his emphasis on replacing coin with paper money, which culminated in the great Mississippi Bubble, or it could have been a spiel mark used in games. 

As challenging as it is to know the precise meaning of B.XXXII, perhaps its absence of fixed meaning is part of its cultural value, as is potentially the case with our new expressive cultural/financial instruments.”

Anyways, that’s all I wanted to say. All those distribution talks that social apps have as value props (Lens included), and that have pivoted us from the previous narratives of NFTs as digitally scarce objects, were not invented by Stani or Jacob from Zora, but by the Romans. 

Anyways, this is a 1000% shitpost-as-a-newsletter, I’m on a plane heading over to NYC and later in the week to FWBFest.

Catch me on Saturday at FEST - where I will be joined by my favorite iconoclast, Latashá, on a fireside about the many tribulations and dynamics of the relationship between creators, tech products and the blockchain. We’ll also have an activation - Aura Photography! Come take your aureal photo, get a copy of it, while the digital manifestation is posted as a collectible on Lens (should you consent to it, of course). Hit me up if you’re coming - I would love to meet up, if your and my social batteries allow it.

And now, the weekly digest:

• The /entrylevel contest by Chromuh and Chris Martz is kicking off tomorrow. I really can’t wait to see how this experiment evolves.

• Sten’s new drop, a little world you can fold and put on your nightstand or in a museum. So much love. And of course, because she’s such a fantastic writer, her accompanying essay. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of knowing how to talk about your own work. Sten does it really well, so if you are a creator reading this - take notes.

• IRL art swaps are happening on Lens! Mifella <> Simon

• This Lenny x Mifella has my heart

• Jessy Jeanne x Mystic Garden

• Tiny Rainboot x Mystic Garden

• Blake and the Plantoid - one of the first blockchain as a medium artworks I noticed by my dear friend Primavera de Filippi

• /mifella summer continues - here’s p3rp’s latest and Patrician commissioned a brilliant piece by Merukuro

• Eric launches fundraising frame - put your money where your mouth is

• 0xppl integrates Lens! My fav crypto native app! 

• Never launch on a Friday, they say. Well, Joe Delong doesn’t work like that. Untitled (now on Base, coming soon to Lens) launched this Friday. Looking forward to your hot takes!

• All Ships x Lens Book Club this week in Brooklyn!

• Aura Photography x Lens at FWB Fest

• Mystic Garden by Definn is here! And with it, a curated drop of Lens native artists for the books. Here’s Aoife’s.

• Matthew Chaim

• Carlos

• Diana

• Eamzfella

• Didop

See you next week IRL or URL.