1/I'm finally getting around to sharing a short story about one of the craziest things I've done this year. On 17 December, I won the auction for 'In Titan's Light', the very first NFT created by @deadmau5 and @sutu_eats_flies https://superrare.co/artwork-v2/in-titan's-light-17270

2/I'm an amateur product developer. I get my kicks out of coming up with ideas that I don't see anyone exploring yet, and then building and testing products with small crypto communities to see if these ideas have any legs (most of them don't but a couple have done ok!)

3/My experience of crypto is as a vast new frontier, like what I imagine the world must have felt like to 16th century Europeans. There is way more creative ground in this new world than I could ever hope to cover, and each day the frontier seems to expand exponentially (sutu )

4/I work with a small team of engineers, and to pay for their time and to pay my own bills, I've done a fair bit of degenerate gambling in crypto over the years: speculating on tokens, launching tokens, arbitrage, trading bots, early stage investing, yield farming, you name it

5/I've come close to getting rekt way too many times over the past couple of years , but one of the things I love about crypto is how it has allowed me to pursue random projects that no employer, no vc, no angel would ever fund (and rightly so I might add )

6/Some time around Wednesday last week, a DJ friend of mine sent me a link to 'In Titan's Light' and told me @deadmau5 and @sutu_eats_flies had just dropped their first ever NFT onto @superrare. This is my friend throwing a little $ETH > $500 rave back in November

7/I've never purchased an NFT, nor any piece of art even. But I have been toying with some VR/NFT ideas, plus I found it super exciting that this piece of art was the gateway into crypto for two established non-crypto artists

8/Having no clue about art, I didn't know what to expect. The second I hit the volume button on that mp4 tho, it just gripped me deep in my chest and wouldn't let go. I couldn't really say why, something about the track syncing with what look like fireworks lighting up the mouse

9/I looked at the bidding and saw that @MaxStealth5 was leading with a 35≡ bid. My DJ friend reckoned that bid was low, so I chucked in a bid for 38.5≡. That's a lot of ETH for me, but I didn't expect to win so I thought screw it, I'll get my eth back in a day anyway

10/A few hours later I saw that @maxstealth5 had upped the bid to 45.67≡. My heart sank. For some reason I couldn't get myself to shrug the bid off and walk away. I knew I was about to do something stupid, so I thought I'd cool my head with a bit of research

11/I jumped onto the @SuperRare discord and was stunned to see how active @deadmau5 was on there. I had no idea how deep the guy was into 3d animation, he clearly knows his technical shit. Not only that, he's a proper degen too, having bought a stack of $TSLA back in 2007

12/For @sutu_eats_flies I checked out his site, his twitter and an awesome doco he did with ABC called Cyber Dreaming. What impressed me the most was the diversity of ideas Sutu has come up with and brought to reality

13/Case in point the Voyager Golden Record – are you friggin kidding me?? Hell yeah! I'm such a nerd reminds me of Star Trek where they find Voyager turned into the superintelligence VGER. Can't wait to get my mitts on this puppy, it's going straight to the pool room!

14/To top it all off, it was clear to me that this was not only the first NFT that @deadmau5 and @sutu_eats_flies had created, it was also the very first time either had set up wallets, plus the eth from the winning bid would be the very first ETH either had received!

15/My attempt to hose my fomo down with research and reason failed miserably . My fomo pumped from level:HIGH to level:APE i.e. dive head first into something you have zero clue about and zero business even being involved in. But I HAD to have that NFT

16/I bid again, this time for a bit over 50 eth. Not long after, @MaxStealth5 upped the bid by 15 ETH to 65 ETH . I checked out his wallet and, suffice to say I was woefully outgunned. The guy could bankrupt me 10 times over without breaking a sweat if he really wanted to

17/At this point there was about 20 minutes left in the auction. I tried to play it sneaky, bidding just before the 15 min mark, so that the clock would extend on any further bid that came in (per @SuperRare's auction mechanics)

18/I don't know whether it was because @maxwealth5 is more sensible than I am (not a huge hurdle), or whether he got distracted by BTC pumping past 20k that day. Whatever the reason, I saw the clock tick down to zero, and I punched the air and let out a yelp in my office. I won!

19/After I won I was totally wired, not unlike @sutu_eats_flies I think haha. I tried to unplug from the whole NFT thing for a day. The next day I expected to feel buyers' remorse, but it was the complete opposite. I was super excited to continue exploring the NFT space

20/I also started understand better why 'In Titan's Light' had gripped me the way it did from the very beginning. I saw @deadmau5 use some of the eth from the auction to purchase his first NFT. And I saw @sutu_eats_flies playing around with flying whales and virtual raves

21/I'll be the first to admit that I can get caught up in converting BTC & ETH into its $ equivalent. But this hides a deeper truth. That we're building brand new infrastructure that is allowing a growing number of people unprecedented ability to pursue their dreams

22/And in the case of artists imo, these aren't idle dreams. Since forever we have relied on artists to help us make sense of the world. To journey into chaos and capture what they find in stories, images and sound so that the rest of us can get a glimpse of what they can see

23/The worlds we're creating are vast and complex. The more we explore, the more the terrain expands. We need to attract artistic talent to have any hope of understanding and internalising these new worlds. And no, blog posts and price charts alone aren't going to cut it

24/Which is why, @deadmau5 and @sutu_eats_flies, I'm thrilled that you have taken the plunge. We need more people like you in crypto. Welcome. I've seen this play out dozens of times. Now that you're in, there's no going back

25/And thanks for creating 'In Titan's Light'. To me it's a gateway. A spaceport to a new world. To the world for art for me. And maybe for you guys, to the the myriad worlds being created and erased on top of crypto every day. And no, the NFT is NOT for sale