Written by Shahid Meighan
On June 2, 2022, we kicked off our first “Ideation” topic with Phoenix-based artist Justin Pierce, or ‘J. Pierce’, for short. He shared his journey with painting and artwork, and how he was able to use that talent to break into the universe of NFTs. His first NFT collection, J. Pierce and Friends, sold out after about two months and generated over $2 million.
“I came into the NFT space thinking that it was just people collecting digital art, like posters and print stuff. I didn’t realize coming into it that it’s like stocks. I’m just stoked to be in the mix now,” Justin said.
Justin is currently working on his upcoming NFT collection, J. Pierce and Zombie Friends, which is scheduled to be released in late June 2022. Although Justin has thus far been successful in the NFT space, he gives all the credit to his team of experts that he works with.
“We did everything on our own. Like, we’re not some multimillion-dollar company that has all these connections. We did everything, marketing, post [production], everything with a small team.”
Adam Small and Ryan Tregaskes continued with the topic of NFTs as they presented and challenged the audience to think of NFTs on a global scale and the myriad social benefits they have to offer, such as allowing poorer people in developing nations to participate in their local economies. NFTs can also create the space for like-minded people to form communities around a common mission or goal. NFT’s such as Apocalyptic Apes are focused on environmental cleanup and offsetting carbon emissions.
We wrapped up our gathering with some commentary from Scott Carlson, Director of Global Architecture & Head of Digital Asset Security at Kudelski Security, and Nima Sadeghian, Esq. as they explored and debated the future legalities of blockchain technologies and its decentralization.
Many thanks to our attendees for engaging with our guest speakers and furthering the conversation on these different topics. They will surely be coming up again and again within the next decade, and for some of our attendees these conversations gave them a peek into these emerging and growing industries, and what’s to come in the near and distant future.
