Raoul Pal: The Journey Man
00:47:53 · Raoul Pal
[00:47:53] S0: remember following you earlier in the journey, and you were comparing Latin American and South American arts that you'd had physically and that art history of that region and then showing the art history of that region continuing into digital art and how they were referencing each other. So you really came from art itself.
00:48:14 · Micky Malka
[00:48:14] S1: We came from art itself completely. We were just doing the pairings, and our first website was just pairing our stuff and... For ourselves and showing our kids how how art can talk in different generations to different people, but it still rhymes. And that was our our our whole thing. I will say we... Along the way, three things happen. One, you encounter amazing people that are so creative that inspire you. And that is people that, you know, have become our friends, like Eric from Snowfro or my people or Sam Spratt or and and or Michael and Picos. And when you start to meet them and you see the human behind them, you've even fallen in love more because inspiration of what they're doing goes beyond just what they're expressing. It's what they feel. So that was really refreshing in a world where art has become extremely stale and politically heated and in many ways boring. I remember we went to the Biennale in Venice in 2023 maybe. When was it? 2024. 2324. And we walked the Biennale, and it was boring. It was dead. There was no energy. It was just all of this. And it was curated by a Brazilian curator. We thought it was gonna be tropical and colorful and beautiful, and it wasn't. And then we walked down, we walked through Venice, and we went to the Bright Moments finale, the last exhibition. And all of these young artists and energy and creativity and pushing each other and collaborating and clapping for each other's success and the new stories. And you just feel like you were back in Paris nineteen tens or nineteen twenties when the artist had that kind of energy. So we left that place saying, we're do something about this. This is bigger than just this because that curation in the Biennale and Venice or the museums, they feel like in fintech analogy, they feel like going to a bank branch. Yeah. Why would you go to a bank branch anymore? They're... They don't talk to you. They don't need anything from the bank branch. That's how museums are talking to people and art is talking to people. So we we got more excited to spend more time in this side.
00:50:34 · Raoul Pal, Micky Malka
[00:50:34] S0: And, also, you know, I've talked ad nauseam about this. It's a cultural moment. It's like Paris in the nineteen tens. It's like London or New York in the in the early two thousands. It's like... Or or New York and Warhol factory. There's everything around this, and it's exciting, and it's young and creative and different and unique. And those are magic moments. And we're going... You know, this whole trajectory of the Internet, crypto, AI, all of this is about to change everything, and this is that moment. And this moment is going to be relevant to humanity forever. And so artists tell stories, and so... And particularly cultural stories, and that's... It's so attractive. It's just fun. [00:51:22] S1: It is. And you call it artisanal stories. We describe it as artists are here to tell you the future before we get there. And they are. They're telling... They're doing both. And and the best ones are just magical. I mean, can you go to sleep every day without looking at what people does for you every day? [00:51:40] S0: Can. [00:51:43] S1: And it's it's magical. It's a storytelling. And and and each one has a different way of doing it.
00:51:43 · Micky Malka, Raoul Pal
[00:51:43] S1: And it's it's magical. It's a storytelling. And and and each one has a different way of doing it. [00:51:49] S0: So how... So once you had the moment and you got Becky across the line... Or how did you get Becky across the line? From here's some really kind of interesting contemporary art to, listen. There's a pixel image with a hoodie and glasses, and this is a really good idea. Tell me about how you got Becky across the line, and then we'll talk about what you've what you've been building because it... It's really important what you're doing.
00:52:12 · Micky Malka, Raoul Pal
[00:52:12] S1: I wish I could tell you that it's... I take credit for it, but I didn't. It wasn't me that got across the line. You know, after being together for a lifetime, this is what happens. But she joined a call put together by the curated team. We were investors in curated at the beginning. And they had brought Matt and John from Larva to explain crypto banks. And they went online and they show the... Hey. There's five types of funks. Here they are, female, male, zombies, apes, and aliens, and here are the rarities. And there's 87 attributes, and here's how we play with them, and here's how we put it together, and here's how we did the collection. She finished a phone call, looks at me and says, I get it. I love it. We should do this. It was like a moment of storytelling when they understood the magic, And it's no surprise that it starts with portraits because every art movement in history starts with faces. Every single one. So there is some cultural moment, a technological moment, a a moment with 10,000 portraits. That was the beginning of this cycle. And that was how she saw it, and that's how she said, alright. What what do we do now? [00:53:33] S0: So what did you do then? So the the canvas, the node, punk, some of that stories is a really interesting story as well, and I think it needs to be told.
00:53:45 · Micky Malka
[00:53:45] S1: I think as a collector, what we do is we believe in this idea that trying to be the trusted friend to the artist. In in art world, that's called, like, a patron model. I don't know exactly, but I I don't think we're... Our... We don't get the joy of doing this if we don't get to spend time with the artist, meet them, and encourage them to push the limits of their imagination because that is the best way. That's where art should live. The same way entrepreneurs are the best when you push them to the limits of their imagination and you just give them the support and the trust and the comfort that you're there for them if shit goes bad. Right? So that's how we feel with the artist side. What happened was we started to talk to museums about this. How do we get this art into the museums? And the answers were extremely like talking to banks ten years ago. Well, you can talk to the committee for 2028, and we can maybe do something in... And we will need to prepare for three years, and we'll have to curate it or... Like, it was just a lang... It's just a language that doesn't speak to the culture moment that we live right now, how people are connecting to right now in the moment. Like, you're trying to explain an exhibition to 2028 to people doing an art piece every day. Like, they don't connect. By the time you exhibited, they lost them... They lost the moment. Their art needs to be expressed daily and show and and broadcasted and tell the story in in a different way. So we looked at each other and said, how do we do this? Let's not work in their system. Let's be the rebels like in Ribbit, where we consider ourselves to be rebels. How do we do the same in this world? Because it's very similar in so many ways. People don't see it. The older generation are not gonna be the the people who are actually the collectors. It's going to be the young generations who understand it, and they live it, and they're okay with digital art and living in pixels or on chain or the world seeing it but only one person on it. So we put the challenge of how do we do this? And that's where we came up with Node, a foundation that we spearheaded, that we're backing with three very clear purposes. First, Node is a network. And it starts with a concept of a network. It's not a destination, it's a network. So a node has no values, there's no more nodes.