Lane HUitt - Crypto Artist

​In this episode, Lane Huitt joins me to discuss Crypto Art, Crypto philosophy, and a number of other topics. Lane is both a Contemporary Artist and a Crypto Artist.

Transcription

Brandon Zemp  0:00  
What's up guys, it is Wednesday, October 9. This week on the podcast. My friend Lane Huitt joins me to discuss crypto art, crypto philosophy and a number of other things. This is an episode we filmed a little while back in person, so the audio might not be completely up to par. With that said, still a great episode, we talk a lot about art for about the first 10 minutes. And then at about 1130 we really start jumping into crypto. So if you want to skip ahead to about 1130 or So, go ahead. As always, be sure to share this episode with somebody that you think would like to learn more about crypto and blockchain enjoy. This is the block hash podcast. 

How you doing, man? 

Lane Huitt  0:47  
I'm good. 

Brandon Zemp  0:48  
Good. 

Lane Huitt  0:49  
It's really hot.

Brandon Zemp  0:50  
It is really hot. Because we're sitting in a warehouse full of mining rigs that are loud and produce a lot of heat. So it's kind of sucks, but gotta do what you gotta do. Right?

Lane Huitt  1:01  
Yeah, it happens.

Brandon Zemp  1:03  
So anyways, thanks for coming on the podcast and stopping by and doing this in person. So I don't have done one person quite yet. So we're kind of like testing some of the some of the waters here, see how it goes. But yeah, tell me a little bit about your background kind of what you're doing. You get a lot with art and stuff. So like, just tell me a little  bit about lane healing.

Lane Huitt  1:28  
Alright, well, my backgrounds a little bit all over the place. But I consider myself an artist entrepreneur type. I've been focusing a lot on building a body of work right now, which if you don't know what that is, it's usually like 20 to 30 different pieces of art that are developing the same theme that you can then put in a portfolio and present to galleries with and different collectors. And on top of that, I've been in transition to Chicago. Very cool is quite a change from the sleepy little central area that I've grown up in. And when are you moving to Chicago? and October 1.

Brandon Zemp  2:17  
Very cool. So very soon. Vertical. So you're getting out here pretty soon. Are you taking like your your work with you? Or you sell on it off? And then doing something in Chicago? Like what's the what's the game plan, a little bit of both,

Lane Huitt  2:31  
I'm probably going to put a lot of them into this and take them off the frame. And then you roll up, move around a lot easier. Because other than that, it turns into a big hassle. Right? All the canvas stretched. And then basically continuing doing what I'm doing. I've got this new podcast. So the podcast is an art podcast. Thank you. It's Canvas shop. And I chose the name not only because it's in the shop where I stretch Canvas, but it's also kind of like the blank canvas is essentially the philosophical point of like the largest potential. So I kind of like exploring that theme a little bit. Talk to a few different artists so far. I mean, did a podcast on crypto box hills, I saw that one. Very cool. Nice.

Brandon Zemp  3:34  
I also saw the video you did to walk around crypto boxes, that was also pretty cool. I actually got some laughs out of that one was entertaining.

Lane Huitt  3:43  
Nice. That was the goal, I hit a couple roadblocks purchasing my plot of land, which I guess they weren't roadblocks. It just took a while for it to change. But it's like a 30 minute video that I spent. I don't know, like three hours making, trying to figure out what happened.

Brandon Zemp  4:04  
That's how it goes though sometimes like those videos, I mean, I made a lot of them. But like the whole, like post editing and everything it takes forever. You're just like, Why is it taking so long? Despite the video being so short, and I got the same issue with my podcasts, like it's a record, like podcasts might be an hour long. But it takes me like at least two hours to fully like edit it. And then like get it put together correctly and get it formatted correctly. I'm just like, this is so not right.

Lane Huitt  4:38  
I avoid editing at all costs. I just throw some Intro music in there. And that's about it.

Brandon Zemp  4:44  
I could tell it. Yeah, you did you minimize that in quite a bit. But I mean, there's no like, right or wrong way to do it. I, for me, it's just it's nice to like, hear the conversation because I got some cool guests that come on every once in a while. And I want to make sure that you can like understand them, like crystal clear know exactly what their messages, it stays on track as possible. So I spent a lot of time editing to make sure that it kind of follows like a script as much as possible. So people know what, what they're doing, what they're talking about. So it's explained it really well. Maybe there's plenty of podcasters can completely go off the rails on purpose and do whatever the hell and they're very successful. So I mean, there's no right or wrong way to do it. And it kind of just depends on t he format of what you're doing in terms of podcasting. So, yeah, me that's just how kind of how I roll with it. 

Lane Huitt  5:38  
Yeah, I can see there's a lot of pros to that. I try to keep it a little nice.

Brandon Zemp  5:43  
That's good. I'm not like a huge art guy, but like, what type of art are you doing? specifically? I know, we've talked about a little bit, but maybe for the audience, you can kind of explain like what your style is

Lane Huitt  5:56  
like artistically. Okay. That's the great, I've spent months figuring out what I've been doing. I would describe it as kind of, like, classical aesthetics as with, what's that with a point to lyst style. So I guess short history on art is you can't you have classical art, which encompasses anywhere from like two to 4000 years of history, basically, up until the 17th 18th century, somewhere in there. And the main themes of classical art is like it kind of the purpose is to bring you into the image and show you a scene where you can kind of sit there for a while and figure out what's happening and write lots of you can picture religious art, packed full of a lot of symbolism, and a lot of different ideas that you can really like admire for a live time and a lot of cases, then eventually, the shift from classical ism landed into something that's loosely termed asceticism, which is when you start getting like seascapes and forgetting the word, but other landscapes, and certain things that just kind of look cool, right? That people enjoy looking at that there's not particularly messages hidden within the painting itself. Like if you ever look at a Bosch painting, but there, they look like a madman's painting and chances are that he was a little

Brandon Zemp  7:36  
crazy, like,

Lane Huitt  7:37  
yes, in a sense, like, Yeah, he has. He's been super enigmatic for like 500 years, I think he was from Holland and the 15th century, somewhere in there. And he has one painting called like the Garden of Earthly desires or something like that. And it's just full of

theirs birth scenes, and then there's how in one corner

and it's chocked

full of like, all these different images, that is, people have been perplexed by it forever. And I just listened to a documentary on that, which was pretty cool. Apparently, he probably believed that polyphonic mean, music was from the devil. So in his picture of how there's a bunch of instruments, and there's like, musical notes written on someone's body that like this satanic creature is reading the and so this is very weird. Yeah, that's, that's just a good example of what classical art is, it's full of a lot of imagery. And then aesthetics ism, and then modern art came out of that. And then you get a lot of non formal, non figurative sort of Jackson Pollock stuff. So I'm mixing the two. I like the imagery that classical art tends to evoke, and how it kind of like invites you into the scene to figure out what's going on. But I also like the really expressionistic kind of scenery or feeling that you can get from abstract art class status ism.

Brandon Zemp  9:21  
I don't know if I will remember, like, all those definitions, but it, it definitely sounds really interesting. And I've seen a lot of your artwork, a lot of different things that you've kind of put together and made. What are some of the like, we don't have to go through like all of them for sure. But like, like the favorite ones, the ones that you like the most Like what? Like some of the some of the symbolism behind it, or some of the things that are something that you took from to make? Those are like, the inspiration, I guess it was the Word, I'm looking for some of those.

Lane Huitt  9:55  
Yeah, so I have one called Madame psychosis, which this sounds crazy. It's an Infinite Jest, because I've been stuck in that book for ages. And I found the imagery that I've used in a painting that I just saw, at some point, it's a man and a woman in the midst of a wave, and the guy is kind of like pulling her up. But they're both in the water. He's just at the top of the wave, and she's at the bottom. So I like where that is kind of vague and have really much of a reference point to it. So I put that in one of my paintings, that turned out really well. And that one's one that I've tried to develop a little bit of a circular feeling to it. Right? Because circles are cool, man. circles are cool.

Brandon Zemp  10:50  
Their circles are word again, like I have to admit, like unless you have like a protractor or something like making it perfect circle is ridiculous. Yeah, there are some artistic skill to drawing the perfect circle, like it's hard

to be late in school art, and

Lane Huitt  11:08  
probably a lot of people have explored it. And I just also enjoy the psychological significance of like wholeness. I feel like it just translates well, on a canvas. It's kind of welcoming in a way. And so there's that one, and then another one, I'm calling Franny, which is loosely based off of a painting and, you know, classical painting called Franny. Before the Erica area hapa gets interesting, which is based off of a Greek myth about

basically a virtuous prostitute

Brandon Zemp  11:43  
that a virtuous prostitute. Yeah. Is that possible?

Lane Huitt  11:50  
Sure. I guess in Greece, it prostitute with good virtues. That's really interesting. Yeah, it's, it's quite the, quite the myth, for sure. And yeah, those are the two the most stick out to me. I also know that, and we've worked on a lot of this together, you've been creating

Brandon Zemp  12:09  
an FTS for your artwork. And there aren't like a whole lot of people actually creating really good and FT artwork. It's still like relatively new, like the whole NFT space in general. But I know even starting to create some as well, we did a canvas together. That was pretty cool. That's that I'm putting out very slowly, what direction are you thinking about going is are you going to keep exploring your ability to put out our as like an NF? T, like on open sea or super rare? for an additional? And kind of take your artistic sovereignty with you? Are you looking to do some more like physical canvases? Or like both or? or none? Or I don't know, like, what's, what's the future looking like for lanes are work?

Lane Huitt  12:59  
Yeah, I think I'll do a little bit of both, like a, like a gift file is basically a flip book. So I've been kind of exploring how to do that on a canvas. And you can take pictures of different stages and make it a moving picture. I've figured out that that's very difficult. It is, especially when, for one piece that I had, I think I was compiling between 150 200 images. And it definitely broke Photoshop a couple times, it would just freeze up. Because that's like a, it's like a 50 gigabyte file. Before it gets

Brandon Zemp  13:42  
actually figured out a couple tricks. Like I'm definitely not artistic. So I'm never going to do it again, because it just kind of sucks. But I figured out a couple of ways to kind of cheat that a little bit like Canada, like I use Canada for everything. But you can like make multiple duplicates a single like sheet Canvas, you can like multiple have multiple pages, and then you can like duplicate, whatever your work is like on every single page. And then you can change it just a little bit and make it like this open flip book. And then you can take all those and you can save them as individual pictures. And then you can run those pictures through some online generator, they'll turn it into a gift for you. That's probably like the easiest way to do it. That's how I was doing it. Because I'm not like overly techie or overly nerdy when it comes to like, software stuff. But I do know how to use Google. So it has a lot of generators out there that will do like very simple steps for you. So that was actually really helpful a little bit. You might actually, like using cannabis at that is great for all kinds of things.

Lane Huitt  14:47  
Yet sounds like that would cut a lot of work out of it. I'm not very especially techie.

Brandon Zemp  14:53  
Yeah, in that realm either as we're the same.

Lane Huitt  14:58  
I've got a friend that's like a Photoshop wizard. Yeah. But he charges me money now.

Brandon Zemp  15:05  
See, like, I

I have thought about like getting certain kinds of software for like, for like audio for like podcasts. And then like, I don't even know what they're called, like that sound like out of the loop I am and then for like photos and videos, but like, everything I can do like on basic Mac software, like Garage Band, or I movie. It works great for me. Like I don't see the point and going and spending all the extra money on software that just adds a little bit of detail. A little bit of difference. I'm like, I'm not working in Hollywood here. Yeah, like I'm putting stuff on YouTube or putting stuff up for my podcast. Like, it just doesn't make sense to me. So

Lane Huitt  15:47  
yeah, I know a lot of those, like Photoshop or blender. The super powerful for when you know what, you're what you want, specifically, right. Now for some of us.

Brandon Zemp  16:00  
That's fantastic. Like, I'm telling you, I can compete with you using Garage Band and I movie just fine.

Lane Huitt  16:08  
Yeah, the simpler tools are often the best, right? 

Brandon Zemp  16:11  
I think. I feel like you overthink it like the needs are so a little bit more tense, the saturation is all a little too high. And like,

Who cares? takes a long time to develop. See me in the photo. I can see me in the photo.

We're good, right? Like, I try not to overthink that part too much

Lane Huitt  16:30  
more on the NFT thing. I think it's really cool. Like I listen to your podcasts, the Fanny.

Brandon Zemp  16:36  
Bye, lock, lock cool by law.

Please don't kill me. If I say your name, right. I'm doing my best here. No, she was awesome. I loved having her on, we had a great conversation. And then she run the additional app and everything. She's kind of behind that. And a number of other things. She's like, very, very busy woman doing awesome. And I use the additional app lots. So it's really easy like to take a picture or something or upload your picture and then turn that into an FT on your phone. Which is really great. Because I can do the same thing on open see directly, which is also really great. But like, kind of when you're like on the go and you just want to like grab like something there. And then with your phone. It's awesome, because you can immediately comes out of t is on the blockchain ready to be collected and sold traded, whatever. So yeah, love what she's doing.

Lane Huitt  17:34  
Yeah, I'm really excited to check out additional whenever they put out Android.

Brandon Zemp  17:39  
Yeah, you guys gotta get to work on that.

Lane Huitt  17:44  
But yeah, yet, so she brought something to my attention that I thought was pretty cool with how creating additions of digital art. I never really thought about that before how digital artists were kind of their their hands tied from just the the nature of the internet and sharing things you kind of couldn't really sell it. Right? Or make it a limited edition, it can be duplicated thousands of times. So that's something I really appreciate. I've never made digital art more. Well. I take that back I have but never purely just digitized on blockchain.

Brandon Zemp  18:26  
Yeah, it's cool. I mean, I've talked about this probably a million times already on the podcast, with a number of people. But for artists, for creators, musicians, name anyone that's an artist in a field, the ability to take control of your work. And to have complete control of your royalty of monetization of your own distribution on a platform. It's huge in an industry where they get screwed every single day. And I don't know what that experience is like for like a painter or someone that makes a canvas. But I know for like musicians, it's awful. They're getting screwed. And when it comes to royalties. Yeah. So I mean, when it comes to being an artist, there's a lot of benefits to putting your work on blockchain. And in this case, on additional or on will be seen directly or on other mediums that are prevalent and coming out as well. It's just a good fit in general for artists. So I'm

Lane Huitt  19:31  
glad to see that you're using it. So yeah, dipping my toes in. I've got a friend of mine, he says he's not even he's, he's not involved in crypto currency. But he loves it. He thinks it's the most punk rock thing ever. Interesting. Because it's super anti establishment. Yeah, it's great. It's kind of like taking your power back to an extent.

Brandon Zemp  19:57  
Yeah. Speaking of in the crypto industry in general, like, what's your opinion on it? Like? What do you think about? Well, let's synthesize a little bit, that's actually kind of a broad question. But let's let's start with Bitcoin as a as an artist, as someone that's kinda sorta recently kind of involved in it. What do you think of Bitcoin? And do you think it has a future?

Lane Huitt  20:23  
Perhaps, I think so. Even if it's like, my assumption would be that bitcoins can survive, and it's not going to be replaced by something just because of its status and how it was kind of their first. And obviously, you can modify the network through lightning network stuff that I've heard about. And so that's a good thing. Probably, you know, more than me, but I feel like it probably won't get too outdated for people to just not be able to use it at some point in time. Right? Well, I mean, like,

Brandon Zemp  20:58  
with, like, the lightning network and stuff, that definitely helps its scale, in terms of its transactions, and its ability to be used by millions, if not a billion people at some point, which is very, very important if it wants to be used on a mass scale. So lightning network is fantastic. They're growing every day. It's great for Bitcoin in general. So that's, that's a huge positive. I think the, at least for me, personally, the biggest thing that gives Bitcoin value is just the fact that it has this symbolism attached to it. And as an artist, maybe you can relate to this a little bit. But Bitcoin is almost like a peep, a digital piece of art in a lot of ways, because when people see it, it represents something, what does it represent? It represents individuality, it represents freedom for a collective, yet also for the individual at the same time sovereignty. For a lot of people, it's anti government, aunty banks, which is kind of where it was born out of out of the recession. So I think a lot of that over the years has given Bitcoin quite a lot of value. And it's interesting to I mean, I think people really overlook that aspect, like they want to find something physical about it gives it value, they want to find something economically that gives it value, like what gives gold value or what may or may not give a US dollar value. I think they're looking in the wrong place. I mean, Bitcoin, its technological advancement of money, the same way that car is the technological advancement of the force, right? or emails, the technological advancement of the letter, and waiting for communication. I mean, you could look at the phone and I would go on and on. Like, if you really look at it carefully, Bitcoin really does represent a technological jump in terms of money for the first time and thousands of years away from gold, and not the gold battery thank but I just think that symbolism that it has, and what it represents is really, really strong, I think it gets overlooked quite a lot.

Lane Huitt  23:08  
I think that segues pretty nicely into an actual physical thing about Bitcoin and it's one of the cultural markers of something that has weight, and it's probably coming on a larger scale, is the emotional reaction of people. When you mentioned Bitcoin, it's I feel like more often than not, you get someone who's kind of like, they start changing their body posture a little bit like I don't often want to talk about that Bitcoin stuff. And when something's highly disruptive, it definitely has that effect. Right. Like even with with abstract art, that was a big thing. A lot of classical painters are classically trained painters would not be happy about it. And I mean, obviously, it's became a huge thing, like jack art paintings are worth millions of dollars. And same sort of thing happened with novels. You can look up like old, old articles written about people criticizing novels, and how it's how it's a womanly sort of thing to do. And it's a waste of time. And then it comes around and has a huge cultural impact.

Brandon Zemp  24:22  
It's interesting parallel, I wonder if you can look at bitcoins and novel like a monetary novel telling a story. Like last 10 years, now, we're getting really philosophical here.

Lane Huitt  24:35  
Yeah, I have a tendency to do that.

Brandon Zemp  24:37  
Now. That's fine. That's great. We need more people like that. encourage more people like that. Great ideas come from people that are great thinkers, right. So probably, I don't think a little crazy. Everyone's

Lane Huitt  24:50  
you know, I was wondering, before I came here, did you ever run into the I think it was an NSA article that they wrote that was called How to make a mint. I did not set new? No, no, it came out in the late or mid 90s, or something like that. And it was about cryptocurrency is titled something like how to make a mint. Like online, like using cryptographic sort of signatures and computers and peer to peer networks. Well, you gotta you gotta remember

Brandon Zemp  25:22  
that the internet, but first first came out, it was a DARPA program. The Internet internet was a government program. It wasn't created by Silicon Valley, like most things are today. That's the only reason that we really have the internet and have actually gotten the infrastructure for it, and then over time developed it out. And it's commercialized Why not now, but I've had that theory for a while, like Bitcoin could have been a government project at some point. I mean, no offense to Satoshi whoever he she are, they are what it may be. You just don't know. Mikey, really don't I mean, there is a possibility that it could that Satoshi could be a pseudonym for the CIA or for the NSA or for DARPA, I don't know. Or they just it was a government program that built Bitcoin, it's a possibility. So I wouldn't be surprised to hear that there's an article like that out there. They mean, the government is kind of had programs that explore all kinds of things for a very long time, like, well, well, before they ever like became mainstream by it and best buy products. Yeah. So I mean, these things are really innovating with inflated cash, is the government or is it BestBuy? Or is it Silicon Valley? It's like, they're thinking about this stuff. We're out of time. But I mean, it's what the government's not putting it, in Best Buy it on putting it target for you to buy. I mean, obviously, this technology gets out and gets developed and whatnot. So

Lane Huitt  26:57  
yeah, the best story I could come up with, and what I'm hoping is true, is that someone working on that project was like, man, someone should really do this. But I would get busted.

Brandon Zemp  27:09  
So I get an Edward Snowden type situation. Yeah, it's that's possible to I mean, I doubt we'd ever hear that story, unfortunately. And you know, I think what gives Bitcoin so much more value, also towards symbolism is the fact that we don't know who she is. And that's like, the best part. Like, if you want something like Bitcoin to work, and you want it to truly be decentralized, there has to be no freedom for me, I don't know if that, for me, that's like the hardest part with buying into the government theory of it. Because the government wouldn't want to control it, the government would want to enforce it. Like, why would the government create something that would be anti government? It just doesn't make sense to me, they wouldn't create a decentralized system that they can't stop, or they can't control? It's very clear with how Bitcoin works, when you look at it, that it's very unlikely that a government would have created it, or government or whatever, Satoshi na Komodo was like a physical person or group or it was aliens, like, Who knows?

So it's, it's one of those that's

like my top picks when it comes to situation? Yeah.

Lane Huitt  28:21  
Yeah, it's a super, super compelling story, I would hope that the full thing comes out within our lifetimes. That would be a cool

Brandon Zemp  28:30  
documentary. I don't know, I hope we never learned who institution is just just because it adds to the symbolism behind Bitcoin, like, I do want Bitcoin to succeed. Like, I don't necessarily. I wouldn't be necessarily unhappy if it didn't succeed, either. Like I just I know, it's some form of cryptographic currency, whether it's Bitcoin or something

Lane Huitt  28:52  
else will succeed. Well, there's a lot of just pure geniuses working on projects all over the place. Absolutely. And that lends to a lot like, just like Elon Musk starting and starting Tesla, one of the most like irrational things you could do on paper and start an independent car company with electrical cars, and then say you want to

Brandon Zemp  29:18  
shoot rockets. Right?

Lane Huitt  29:19  
Yeah. And then go into the private space industry. Yeah. So

Brandon Zemp  29:24  
he definitely stretches the bill a little bit, for sure. But I mean, he definitely has a way of kind of figuring it out. And he's a smart guy. Like Elon Musk is absolutely brilliant, in so many ways, and his genius and innovator and yeah, I don't know, he's an interesting guy. And I know some people that think he might be Satoshi too. And he just wanted minute. It's very possible. I don't think it's him, but it's a good gas.

Lane Huitt  29:52  
You would have to like cross cross reference the amount of time that he is spending on on it other companies.

Brandon Zemp  29:58  
I think he's busy, be that kind of a guy. So

Lane Huitt  30:01  
he is, I mean, you remember how people bought that couch, couch forum?

And I think they started a GoFundMe because he was just sleeping at SpaceX or Tesla.

Brandon Zemp  30:12  
Yeah. And they like crowdfunded a couch. Yeah.

Lane Huitt  30:16  
Yeah. And what's cool is that there's going to be, I mean, this is totally a penny. But I feel like there's going to be a few companies like PayPal, which are started by super young people in the cryptocurrency sphere. Because I know, one of the people you interviewed to getting out of high school or something just like a couple years ago. I'm like, This is crazy.

Brandon Zemp  30:42  
Yeah, but I've had so many interviews lately, with so many people. I'm kind of space in that. So. And I think that almost every podcast, we almost always bring up VR, like just kind of goes that direction somehow.

Lane Huitt  30:55  
Yeah. But at any rate, there's so many young, smart people that are just going to need involved in it for a long time.

Brandon Zemp  31:04  
You know, you're kind of already seeing that, like EF Coinbase, obviously, which is like the crypto equivalent of what PayPal was, in a lot of ways. Yeah. Then you got the Winklevoss twins with Gemini, they're really pushing that. And that's growing tremendously. guys really kind of pushing the bill with like binance. And Beatrix, I don't know, industry is getting really interesting. The biggest X Factor is what are these big exchanges going to do? When the decentralized atomic swaps kick in, when which you can start to do now already, but like when they're in full swing, and all you have to do is go to a website, to exchange your crypto, you just punch in your output address and put in their address into your input and then boom, it instantaneously swaps for you, whatever you want Bitcoin to theory in theory into Litecoin, on and on and on. And there's no record to be kept. There's no one in the middle that they can go after, they are to no easy way to shut the site down. This goes against the grain for all the exchanges, they're out there. I mean, other than custody, which no one really wants to do in the crypto space, unless they're doing business, these exchanges are going to have a real problem. Because with the decentralized exchanges, you don't need metrics, you don't need binance, that model falls apart. And you start to not necessarily need Coinbase or Gemini or others that are very similar, unless you're a big corporation, or unless you're a business that like everyday needs to prove custody and have like a ledger of transactions and whatnot, which you'll be able to do anyways without them. But these these centralized exchanges are going to definitely be a big big factor. I mean, it basically is their

Lane Huitt  32:57  
business business model now, actually, I'm sure they'll have a first to market advantage. And a lot of contacts and a lot of people a lot of big corporations to work with. through all of that. Which kind of reminds me of like the most exciting thing to cryptocurrency for me is the different applications from like healthcare records. Like facilitating transactions. I know that might become outdated with cryptocurrency there's a lot of

Brandon Zemp  33:30  
use cases are blockchain.

Lane Huitt  33:32  
Yeah. But kind of like, I think what XRP or ripple or I'm not up to date in whatever sort of things happening between those two, but whatever they were trying to do originally Remember, it is like moving big amounts of money from country to country. That sort of stuff. And the NFT space. Now I think regarding ripple,

Brandon Zemp  33:56  
I know that projects a lot of flack for being some what's centralized, that I mean ripples, not a bad project, like the technology behind it is pretty damn good. It's really fast. They've been in the market a long time they've gone through lawsuits, their battle tested and a lot of ways. Yeah, they do a lot of PR stuff. Yeah, they they're consistently working with banks, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, I think we're people in this industry go wrong, as they get highly polarized towards being decentralized, if that makes sense, like, whereas any type of centralized blockchain is almost a bad thing. And that's just absolutely absurd. There are tons of reasons why you need a centralized or private blockchain or side chain, look at a corporation that might need a blockchain within the organization to protect information and IP and have efficiency but no one else will be able to get into it. Or for centralized purposes, it's not a bad thing for the government. It's not a bad thing for some corporations. So we have a process for putting voting on a blockchain and kind of controlling that a little bit. I don't know there's tons of use cases. But saying that, like, centralization is a bad thing. It's wrong. Yeah, it's not. It's not necessarily bad. It's just who the actor is. I just I hate it. When people do that. I hate it. It drives me nuts all the time, like you're shutting yourself off to opportunity or shutting yourself off to technological possibility.

Lane Huitt  35:29  
Yeah, well, you can easily draw a parallel between like cash and a credit card. Like with cash, it's you got to take care of it. Right, you can lose it, you can roll roll down the street, and you'll never see some hundred dollar bills. Again, you're gonna have it on a credit card, you're not really don't lose that money. It's a lot more secure and shared anything, right that

Brandon Zemp  35:49  
the problem with the credit card, though, is, you have to put it in the bank first. Let's just use debit card, for example. Yeah. So use your debit card, which is more convenient than cash, you have to put your money in the bank, the bank, then loans out 90% of your dollar. And then everything you're spending practically is bank credit. And yes, you could go back to the bank today and get that reasonable amount of money back out. What if everyone went back to the bank, you're not going to get your money, because they don't have it. That's the major problem with our banks. And then using a credit card is just even worse, because now you're using more credit. Right? The credit isn't even backed by the money in the first place. So its face value, like a debit card or credit card seems like a better solution. And it has been a better solution in the short run. But in the long run. That's why we're in a credit crisis. That's that's why we're in a huge

Lane Huitt  36:46  
debt bubble. Well, then you have things like Venezuela that happens, where you're the inflation so bad that your credit limit can't keep up on your credit card, you're maxing out just to get groceries and stuff. That's pretty dystopian, and scary.

Brandon Zemp  37:04  
And I mean, not everybody is responsible with their credit card too. So like thinking that, you know, we live in a perfect world where everyone's going to use a minimal amount on their credit card and pay it back monthly and have a stable job. And that is

not realistic.

Yeah, so it just creates more problems. And every time that happens, just piles and piles on so

Lane Huitt  37:26  
but I know at least in my area of expertise, like both sides of this, the cryptocurrency decentralized sort of digital side versus the legacy museums, galleries, traditional artists, like there needs to be a conversation. Otherwise, it's going to get siloed. Well, it's going to stay how it is with primarily, like just digital artists exploring the digital side of it, and physical artists just sticking to their galleries and whatnot. Let's talk about that a little

Brandon Zemp  37:58  
bit, what's the conversation needs to be talked about?

Lane Huitt  38:01  
So I think, like implementation of the different possibilities, that virtual reality and MNFTS brings up. Like, I know, I heard bringing back to another Josie that you had on your webcast. She said, Yeah, she's talking about doing the show where there's just white balls in the background and VR. That's super cool. And I doubt that many people that are like, involved in museums and stuff know about that. And I think that they totally should. Because there's a lot of cool areas for collaboration, like, you never know if the Museum of Contemporary Art in New York is going to be like having an FT. exhibit. And they totally could, because they've had video game exhibits and

Brandon Zemp  38:51  
that sort of stuff. Like I'll tell you what, it only takes one though, it only takes one exhibit or one art piece to spark massive interest in wanting to do that. So I know Josie is working very hard on it. And trying to do something like that no number of people, especially that have been on the podcast are trying to do similar stuff as well. And I'm telling you it only it only takes one time. And when that happens, all the fair market publish content everywhere in the US, they're going to want to do it. I think different places around the world, they're going to want to do it. It's there's so many opportunities like why wouldn't you and I just think there's not enough exposure in the real world outside of like open seat

Lane Huitt  39:31  
for the ordinary artist, the ordinary exhibitor to like see that you can actually do that. Well then also the people that go to art shows like I know, like my girlfriend's family is in finance and stuff. They have no idea that there's like this strange cryptocurrency mashup with are going on. They just know about Bitcoin, that it's super vault tile, and it's probably about investment. That's about the end of the conversation. I think, you know,

Brandon Zemp  40:05  
I think everybody at this point, has heard about Bitcoin, at least one time. I live now at this point in 2019. I've I've talked to all kinds of people this year about Bitcoin. I think every single person has said, Yeah, I've heard of Bitcoin. At least I've heard of Bitcoin. Now, most people are still very unsure what to think about Bitcoin. A lot of people still are unsure how it works. But I mean, it's growing slowly. What's still annoying, and it's like, really slow to be like understood is that there's other stuff other than Bitcoin? Yeah. And that it isn't a currency necessarily, like a theorem is a platform, a network that you can essentially build on? Yeah, it has a native crypto called ether. But I mean, Israel was not meant to be a form of payment theory is meant for you to to build solutions. Like with FTS like that's one solution, with the you can use theory before, and you're going to see all kinds of crazy shit pop up over the years, with the stuff but I mean, this industry so big and so broad, and I'm not surprised that people have only really heard of Bitcoin, and still trying to understand just that. Yeah, what I'm excited for is for them to realize, and for all the different niche industries to understand is that there's a lot you can do in the blockchain space. And I want, I'm waiting for them to migrate there. So it's going to happen, like who doesn't want to take control of their their art and get paid for it? Like, who doesn't want to use a decentralized social media platform, or someone has to pay you something small to like your post or to share your post or comments on it? Where there's a distribution of wealth in the form of providing value, not just random distribution of wealth, but providing value in return. And I mean, all kinds of things. I'm I'm not going to get into it. We can get her all night talking about the different.

Lane Huitt  42:16  
Melissa says, it's very punk rock, it's very revolutionary like it is the it's so everyone wants to do is blockchain. Yeah, yeah, there's a big opportunity for a lot of interesting changes and revolution. Like he could, I could easily see you walking into some sort of, like group show at a gallery, and then one person show is all like virtual reality. I think that'd be super cool. And then if you walk if you walk into a show, too. And let's just say you're the prototypical baby boomer, you kind of know how to operate on a Mac laptop. And then you see someone over in the corner with some Oculus goggles.

Brandon Zemp  43:01  
Like, this is so cool, like, you're normally going to go check it out, I think we're going to see what those galleries is a lot of augmented reality and mixed reality solutions more than your virtual reality, because virtual reality have to put on a headset and step out of reality. Whereas augmented reality and mixed reality, you take what you're already looking at, and you kind of overlay it with the virtual thing. And the augmented ones really simple. So all you need is your phone. And I've showed you a few times on there's like an art vive app or via the app or I don't know, it's really cool. Because if someone has created, like a gift, or a moving picture with a picture, a movie video, Jesus step back in time for a second.

Lane Huitt  43:50  
Moving Pictures exists, yeah,

Brandon Zemp  43:51  
for their artwork, or whatever. And then you use the app. You can it, it shows like the animation and the Josias and a lot of goals for that. I'm sure you've seen that, too. Yeah, with her artwork. And I think with these galleries, you can build a walk into a blank gallery, they're going to have like, maybe like little indicators in the gallery, and then you hold up your phone, or you put on a headset, and all sudden the white walls come to life with artwork, and are moving and interacting with you. And it might not be individual stuff. It might be like a whole experience. Which is crazy, too. Oh, yeah.

Lane Huitt  44:30  
So I think I think it's just like the next, the next segue with album card art, because you look into a lot of installation pieces. And there was a big movement through the 80s and still still going on. But people create whole scenes like I was at a show and there was a bed with some sort of melted substance all over it. So people have already been trying to create, like, spaces there. The what's the word? They're simulated spaces, in essence. And it's just, I think it's just the next logical step to spitting out some for speaking of simulated spaces.

Brandon Zemp  45:14  
I know I've know you've been in crypto boxes a few times. And for people in the podcast that listen closely, they probably know that I like the boxes quite a lot. When are we going to see a lane Hewitt Art Gallery and crypto boxes?

Lane Huitt  45:30  
I don't know it might be a while

Brandon Zemp  45:33  
because you got that FTS comments. So now the identities you can display them. Yeah. So you're, you're like halfway there. And now we just gotta we got to get you in world. So people that are walking around can like see it, bring it

Lane Huitt  45:47  
bring it to like a different level. I mean, technically it is my art gallery because I wanted an empty seats up in there. But there's, to be honest, there's so many art galleries there are, I'm like, how do I do something new with this and change it up a little bit, you got to stand

Brandon Zemp  46:05  
out, you got you got to have that you got to stick out like I know what's really popular lately is putting something on the roof. So like when you're in crypto boxes, and you're at your parcel, and you're building your parcel, build out a roof for it. Because when people go to crypto boxes, they don't necessarily know where to go. So they go to the map. Most people go to the map. And then on the map, they can see all the parcels but they can also see the roofs for all the parcels. So what a lot of us have done is like put our names, or our Instagram or Twitter handles on there. Or we've put our apartment Josie has put her artwork on her roof. There's all kinds of different things on different roofs that kind of like grab your attention make you say, Oh, I want to go there. So I mean, so I can do one thing you could do to probably take one of your pieces and do something with it. And like put it like on the roof or something.

Lane Huitt  47:00  
Yeah, I have an open roof right now. But it's two stories, right? So I might do that in the center and the walk in the middle.

Brandon Zemp  47:09  
That would be kind of interesting.

Lane Huitt  47:10  
And people could see it from the bottom and wonder what it is. I know there's a

Brandon Zemp  47:14  
lot of art galleries in there now. But I'm telling you, the foot traffic is still very low. But compared to the beginning of the year, the foot traffic is very, very high. And it's growing quickly. And all the parcels are going to be minted, supposedly by the end of the year. So not only in there selling like crazy to like there's not a whole lot of parcels just sitting there for sale for auction. I can guarantee you by the time we get through January 2020 in those parcels might be completely gone. band I don't I don't know if he wants to like go beyond origin city and like, build out more parcels or knocks he's not really hasn't really made a decision on it yet. But all I know is that there is a cap on wisdom city as a whole right now. And there's no guarantee of anything after that. At the same time. If it continues growing, it's popular. I mean, having anything there might be incredibly valuable. So if you had an art gallery, you might get more people walking through them you think

Lane Huitt  48:12  
Yeah, so yeah, that was my point in getting a space was like I just I just needed you gotta get at least have excessive fear of missing out, right. But I'm really excited to see the different things that young girls, I want to I want to see some like social interaction aspects

of text chat. 

Brandon Zemp  48:31  
Well, are you into discord? 

Lane Huitt  48:33  
Yeah. 

Brandon Zemp  48:34  
Okay. 

Lane Huitt  48:34  
Yeah.

Brandon Zemp  48:35  
It's definitely a good place to kind of see what's going on. I know he wants to put a river around the city. Kind of like we have the chutes and bends. I'm really hoping that we can kind of float it around the city. That'd be cool. We'd want to put like emotes and emojis and like different ways interact with people. I know. I know. He's working on the voice chat still, which should be huge to voice chat with someone and world. It works really great with the Oculus quest. So far, I know a lot of people have been raving over that. And it feels real. And you can see hands in your building and stuff. And it's, it's pretty cool video and live streaming is going to be added relatively soon, that'll be another huge leap, where you'll be able to have an event and board or show a movie or show a video or just go live and have people go there and sort of YouTube. Yeah, like it's a huge pull up that like video on a platform like that. And you know, as VR gets more and more popular, people are going to want places to go. I mean, the only place you can really go is alt space on Oculus, or VR chat. That's about it. There's a few other places but I mean, really, that's about it. What happens when everyone is using VR and they want to explore outside of the Kingdom of Facebook. Right? They want to venture out into the Badlands. You got to get involved with crypto boxes, you gotta you gotta buy something. And while it's cheap, again, see, it's not gonna be cheap forever.

Lane Huitt  50:10  
I really gotta pick up an Oculus. That's the next step. Yeah. I think the networking possibilities for virtual reality are going to be really cool for introverts like me? Well, I think what I'm going to

Brandon Zemp  50:25  
like the most about virtual reality is the podcasting aspect, being able to say, okay, you're on the other side of the world, I'm on the other side of the world as well. we're nowhere near each other

Lane Huitt  50:37  
hosts, the Live podcast hosts a live podcast

Brandon Zemp  50:40  
in a sit down format, where I can see you and you can see me and have a conversation, and have it recorded with great audio quality, and be able to hear me clearly using 5g so that we have low latency issues. And it's crystal clear, like I'm very, very excited about that. And that's where I think, I think podcasts are really gonna diverged do, I think there's a lot of people that are starting to actually get into podcasts now, as you see him pop up all the time. But a lot of them fizzle out, though. But I think a lot of them are gonna miss that leap into VR, in kind of into like the gaming realm of that. And so eventually, I want to take my podcast that direction to it just seems like such an opportunity. And then within blockchains, somehow, maybe will be some cool ways to monetize. And there's a lot of different

Lane Huitt  51:32  
possibilities out there. I don't have the time to explore them all yet. But it's good to have you.

Brandon Zemp  51:38  
Yeah, I can definitely relate

everything. I feel like I do that quite often.

Some problem before we wrap up and everything, and we had quite a long conversation about all kinds of stuff. But what do you have going on in your life that you want to share with the world and the subscribers that you're that you're doing? Are you working on new art pieces? Are you just kind of getting rid of everything so you can add to Chicago? I mean, like, what what should that people know? Like what?

Lane Huitt  52:07  
Well, a whole lot of all of that. You can go to my website, lane Hewitt com. I'll have links to my podcast up there pretty soon and my artwork. And those are kind of going to be the main things for now. When I'm in Chicago. I'm either reestablishing my canvas stretching business or maybe planning on working on the podcast and art. keeping those steady and seeing where those go. Awesome. Sounds like we'll definitely have to follow up after Chicago. check in with you and maybe do another so. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, actually, maybe we'll just come on here episode. Yeah, stop.

Brandon Zemp  52:50  
podcast. Okay, cool, awesome. Lane.