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FILTHY FIAT
about///COLDIE
WHO THE F IS COLDIE
COLDIE METHOD
PROOF OF WORK (2018)
CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE A PHYSICAL 2018 PROOF OF WORK LIMITED EDITION PRINT
Originally minted as an ERC-20 token on R.A.R.E. ART LABS on September 26, 2018, Proof of Work was the genesis artwork that would grow to become an iconic crypto art in the early NFT movement.
Digging for NFT Gold
Over the years, there have been sleuth collectors in the crypto art community who are very good about researching Ethereum smart contracts, HASH that hold image link information and bread crumb trails that help piece together what was happening years ago on R.A.R.E ART LABS. One such collector is NooNe.NooNe explains his trip down this early crypto art rabbit hole to find evidence of the genesis Proof of Work artwork token.
“When I found out that some of the pieces from RARE Art were possibly unsold and locked in the smart contracts or burnt, I immediately started a quest to understand what treasures had been lost forever. I explored all the different pieces in the main wallet and tracked if any of my favorite artists minted in the marketplace; I found multiple pieces from XCOPY and Hackatao; my head was about to explode! I thought it could not get more exciting at this point, but I was wrong! I did not find any mints from one of the artists that I admire the most: Coldie! I went onto the RARE Art discord hoping to find something there and so I did – scrolling through the conversations between OG artists, there was what seemed to be one of the very early Proof of Work by Coldie. It felt incredible to discover a master piece that NooNe knew about, a hidden gem trapped in space and time!
P.S: I have been since lucky enough to purchase the physical peace of the unsold NFT.”
PROOF OF TOKEN RELEASE
July 29, 2018 on R.A.R.E. ART LABS
https://twitter.com/rareartlabs/status/1156010281308344320
The Backstory
I grew up in the gold country of Northern California. All my life I was surrounded by gold rush culture and references to what took place all around the town I grew up in. Part of this included going to the site of where gold was found in Coloma, CA. The energy and history of places like this has always resonated with me, and to this day I feel a deep connection with gold rush history.
Around 2012 I was getting into spray painting and wheatpaste art which is a process of using a glue-like materials to plaster paper artwork on walls much like street artists like Shepard Fairey are known for. One of the first I made for this was a gold miner with a gasmask on. At that time, cryptocurrency had not been introduced to me, but the basis of the idea of toxicity and mining had been formed. This is the only photograph I have of the original art wheatpasted under the freeway in the drainage tunnels. The gas mask and gold in pan are covered in glow in the dark paint, so it will shine forever in the dark.
It has since been locked up due to homeless people digging for gold and eating away the sides of the tunnel that were not concrete, which I think is totally rad they were looking for gold down there. So now this artwork will be in a living time capsule forever.
