Crypto’s ‘pro-rioter’ glitch artist stirs controversy — Patrick Amadon, NFT Creator
Patrick Amadon combines a passion for art and activism, and is articulate about how he intends for his work to have impact.
Self-described as a “digital disobedient,” the Los Angeles-based glitch artist has been no stranger to controversy, having made international headlines for his “No Rioters” digital billboard displayed at the Hong Kong Art Week in March that was eventually taken down for its political undertones.
He also made headlines when he pulled out of Sotheby’s first glitch show, taking a stance against a lineup of artists that featured no women or non-binary people.
(For the uninitiated, glitch art purposefully includes digital or analog errors.)
Like many other artists, Beeple’s historic $69 million NFT sale in March 2021 caught Amadon’s attention. He had been making digital art for over a decade prior but had no way to attribute value to it.
“When I saw all the press from the Beeple sale, I kind of brushed past the $69 million figure, that wasn’t that interesting to me, but I do remember thinking, ‘wait, somebody sold digital art, how does that work’,” says Amadon.
“I’ve been doing it for a decade but I got stuck in kind of no man’s land. I would make physical work but I liked making digital work more. My audience liked the digital work a lot more but there really wasn’t anything you could do with it in the art world.”
Digital disobedience
Amadon is a deep thinker and puts an incredible amount of effort into making his art purposeful. He also embraces much of the crypto ethos and believes those who are along for the ride are all in some way a little digital disobedient.
“I mean, if you’re in crypto, it’s because you’ve rejected something. You’ve rejected something in the financial world, you’re embracing sovereignty, you embrace self custody, self reliance. There’s some social element that you rejected, that got you here to begin with.”
“I think we’re really disrupting a lot of these existing structures. We’re causing hell for a lot of gatekeepers. We’re opening up the doors for a lot of artists. None of us here are obeying what we’re supposed to be doing.”
“I feel like all of us really have embraced disobedience in a lot of ways because nobody in traditional finance wants you to think that crypto is valid. Nobody in the art world wants you to think crypto is valid. By virtue of us being here, we’re all disobedient if you look at what society has deemed normal and acceptable.”
Art is a medium that Amadon values as a way to voice his passion for activism and for its ability to point out societal issues he cares about. He puts an incredible amount of effort into making his art have a purpose.
“I like doing something that has a purpose for doing it. Often, I like using art as an outlet to comment on some socio-economic or political situation. Or cultural nuance or just something to needle the space a little bit,” Amadon says.
“I think that the story of the narrative is the art and I think that the aesthetic is really just the voice that you tell it with. That’s why I think concept is kind of the most critical element of an art piece. It has to be saying something a lot of us can say the same thing. I mean, the aesthetic kind of becomes the voice of it again.”
‘No Rioters’ at Hong Kong Art Week
Embracing his digital disobedience and desire to use art for more than aesthetics, Amadon brazenly had his piece “No Rioters” displayed on a giant digital billboard above the Sogo Causeway Bay store during Hong Kong Art Week.
The glitch art is centered around a surveillance camera oscillating side to side but the primary provocation was showcasing the names and prion terms of activists in the pro-democracy movement from 2019.
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“It was a billboard the size of the city block in the middle of Hong Kong Art Week which is sponsored by the government. I thought, let’s be a little disobedient. I’d followed the Hong Kong protest in 2019 pretty closely. I’ve been a news hawk since the dawn of the internet so I wanted to put up something to honor the protesters,” says Amadon.
“I put a giant security camera up there and then every 10th frame or so just flash protesters names, their sentences, and instances of the government beating up protesters, throwing them in jail. It’s all illegal under the Hong Kong national security law to put that in public and I had it on the biggest billboard in Hong Kong during Art Week for three straight days which was great.”
With the names being subtle and difficult to see flashing up in real-time throughout the artwork, the billboard stayed up for 72 hours before Art Innovation Gallery — the gallery that Amadon had worked with to display the piece — informed him that the owners of Sogo were concerned about the hidden political content behind the work.
“The free Hong Kong press found out about it so they wrote an article about it and then the next day it was the BBC and the Global Press covering it, and the Chinese press counterprogramming it, saying I’m pro-rioter — which I love because I am definitely pro-rioter.”
“So it got taken down by the government and I joined the list with Winnie the Pooh in terms of free speech expression being ripped down.”
Gatekeepers get out
Amadon believes that the Web3/crypto space has a long way to go, but he’s equally optimistic about the potential of the technology to democratize the art industry, for both artists and collectors.
“From a collecting standpoint, from an experiencing art standpoint, from a creation of art standpoint, it’s massive. You no longer need a brother, sister or cousin to be working at the Gagosian to get a shot at selling physical and be sitting at the main table of the art world,” Amadon says.
“It’s really tough to participate in the art world if you’re coming from a marginalized community or from a third-world country. What we’ve done with the technology is we really have flattened the space tremendously and we’ve allowed people like Osinachi and Ix Shells to participate meaningfully in the art world that would have been very difficult to access before. We are very accessible and very inclusive.”
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Doppelganger innovation with smart contract
In May this year, Amadon launched something unique with his Doppelganger drop in conjunction with Transient Labs. As an artist who is fascinated by the convergence of art and technology, Doppelganger explores what it’s like to link a nonfungible token to an array of art rather than point to a single image.
“Because we’re just beginning to scratch the surface on what’s possible in digital art and what’s possible in digital art when it’s paired with smart contracts on the blockchain, I reached out to Transient Labs and had them build a token that points to an array instead of a token that points to a single link. Doppelganger was built on that.”
The contract is artist-owned and essentially can include multiple images into one NFT. Users can pick which artwork to point to with the artist having the ability to add new pieces of art but can never subtract.
“Essentially consider them frozen metadata. They will never change and only the collector has control over what it points to. As the collector you get to select what art you’d like to be displayed. I think we’re up to around 12-13 different pieces right now. I’m going to add another very shortly. I’m just going to keep expanding it because I can keep adding to it, but I can never subtract from it,” he says.
Notable sales to date
Amadon’s first Ethereum mint was ZoFo and his inaugural mint on Tezos was RGB Glitch 2013.
Notable sales include:
Rapid-fire Q&A
Influences
“I really like Edward Snowden and Banksy. Aesthetically, I grew up with all the abstract artists so that’s how I first got into making art. I really like texture and abstract art. People like Richter [Gerhard].”
“From within the [Web3] space there’s a number of people like XCOPY, Max Capacity and Kidmograph. There was a community on Tumblr that was making glitch work that’s all still here so it’s cool to see. I have known Pak since back in 2013 because the Twitter art community transitioned over to NFTs in a lot of interesting ways.”
Personal style of art
“Glitches. But my background is in street art. I photograph it, I contribute to it. I’ve always liked graffiti. Glitch blended with graffiti.”
“Banksy was always the artist that I’ve most looked up to in terms of how they approach the art world and how they approach messaging from their art.”
Notable collector
“I have to say Anonymoux. Anonymoux has become like family throughout this process. He picked up a number of my 1 of 1s. The relationship between collector and artist can be really strong. The amount of support that you get from them really makes it possible to do this on a greater level. Just the amount of support that I’ve received from Anonymoux over the past couple of years has honestly been life-changing.”
Which hot NFT artist should we be paying attention to?
“I would say one of the biggest initiatives I’m working on right now is the 404 catalogue. It’s a quarterly exhibition, anyone can enter one piece per artist. It’s an opportunity for artists to strip away any change, strip away platform. I just wanted to be completely agnostic, social media and presence does not matter, just art and giving artists the opportunity to be seen just for their art.”
Favorite NFTs in your wallet that’s not your own
“Ana Maria Caballero, 1 of 1. I picked up her Ethereum genesis piece. She’s an incredible poet. We became friends early in the NFT space”
What do you listen to when creating art:
“I work completely in silence. If there’s any noise I’ll put headphones on noise cancellation mode. If there’s anything that’s distracting, I’ll be distracted.”
“That being said, in terms of music in the space that I like, I would mention Mariana Makwaia, I think she is an incredible musician but also doing some really interesting tech things in the space. She used a Doppelganger contract to build her album. Each track has its own metadata all on the same token which I think is a fantastic use of the technology.”
Links
Website: patrickamadon.com
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The new trade tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump may place added pressure on the Bitcoin mining ecosystem both domestically and globally, according to one industry executive.
While the US is home to Bitcoin (BTC) mining manufacturing firms such as Auradine, it’s still “not possible to make the whole supply chain, including materials, US-based,” Kristian Csepcsar, chief marketing officer at BTC mining tech provider Braiins, told Cointelegraph.
On April 2, Trump announced sweeping tariffs, imposing a 10% tariff on all countries that export to the US and introducing “reciprocal” levies targeting America’s key trading partners.
Community members have debated the potential effects of the tariffs on Bitcoin, with some saying their impact has been overstated, while others see them as a significant threat.
Tariffs compound existing mining challenges
Csepcsar said the mining industry is already experiencing tough times, pointing to key indicators like the BTC hashprice.
Hashprice — a measure of a miner’s daily revenue per unit of hash power spent to mine BTC blocks — has been on the decline since 2022 and dropped to all-time lows of $50 for the first time in 2024.
According to data from Bitbo, the BTC hashprice was still hovering around all-time low levels of $53 on March 30.
Bitcoin hashprice since late 2013. Source: Bitbo
“Hashprice is the key metric miners follow to understand their bottom line. It is how many dollars one terahash makes a day. A key profitability metric, and it is at all-time lows, ever,” Csepcsar said.
He added that mining equipment tariffs were already increasing under the Biden administration in 2024, and cited comments from Summer Meng, general manager at Chinese crypto mining supplier Bitmars.
Source: Summer Meng
“But they keep getting stricter under Trump,” Csepcsar added, referring to companies such as the China-based Bitmain — the world’s largest ASIC manufacturer — which is subject to the new tariffs.
Trump’s latest measures include a 34% additional tariff on top of an existing 20% levy for Chinese mining imports. In response, China reportedly imposed its own retaliatory tariffs on April 4.
BTC mining firms to “lose in the short term”
Csepcsar also noted that cutting-edge chips for crypto mining are currently massively produced in countries like Taiwan and South Korea, which were hit by new 32% and 25% tariffs, respectively.
“It will take a decade for the US to catch up with cutting-edge chip manufacturing. So again, companies, including American ones, lose in the short term,” he said.
Source: jmhorp
Csepcsar also observed that some countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States region, including Russia and Kazakhstan, have been beefing up mining efforts and could potentially overtake the US in hashrate dominance.
Related: Bitcoin mining using coal energy down 43% since 2011 — Report
“If we continue to see trade war, these regions with low tariffs and more favorable mining conditions can see a major boom,” Csepcsar warned.
As the newly announced tariffs potentially hurt Bitcoin mining both globally and in the US, it may become more difficult for Trump to keep his promise of making the US the global mining leader.
Trump’s stance on crypto has shifted multiple times over the years. As his administration embraces a more pro-crypto agenda, it remains to be seen how the latest economic policies will impact his long-term strategy for digital assets.
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Cryptocurrency exchange OKX is under renewed regulatory scrutiny in Europe after Maltese authorities issued a major fine for violations of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws.
Malta’s Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) fined Okcoin Europe — OKX’s Europe-based subsidiary — 1.1 million euros ($1.2 million) after detecting multiple AML failures on the platform in the past, the authority announced on April 3.
While admitting that OKX has significantly improved its AML policies in the past 18 months, the authority “could not ignore” its past compliance failures from 2023, “some of which were deemed to be serious and systematic,” the FIAU notice said.
OKX was among the first crypto exchanges to receive a license under Europe’s new Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation via its Malta hub in January 2025.
The news of the $1.2 million penalty in Malta came after Bloomberg in March reported that European Union regulators were probing OKX for laundering $100 million in funds from the Bybit hack.
Bybit CEO Ben Zhou previously claimed that OKX’s Web3 proxy allowed hackers to launder about $100 million, or 40,233 Ether (ETH), from the $1.5 billion hack that occurred in February.
This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.
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Authorities in the US state of Massachusetts continue targeting unlawful cryptocurrency market practices, with a local court fining crypto financial services firm CLS Global.
A federal court in Boston on April 2 sentenced CLS Global on criminal charges related to fraudulent manipulation of crypto trading volume, according to an announcement from the Massachusetts US Attorney’s Office.
In addition to a $428,059 fine, the court prohibited CLS Global from offering services in the US for a probation period of three years.
CLS Global, a crypto market maker registered in the United Arab Emirates, in January pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit market manipulation and one count of wire fraud.
CLS agreed to manipulate the FBI’s “trap token” NexFundAI
The charges against CLS Global followed an undercover law enforcement operation involving NexFundAI, a token created by the FBI as part of a sting operation in May 2024.
CLS Global was among at least three firms that took the FBI’s bait and agreed to provide “market maker services” for NexFundAI, including a fraudulent scheme to attract investors to purchase the token.
In October 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced fraud charges against CLS and its employee, Andrey Zhorzhes. The US securities regulator also filed complaints against two other NexFundAI manipulators, Hong Kong-linked ZM Quant Investment and Russia-linked Gotbit Consulting.
CLS Global’s profile
According to CLS Global CEO Filipp Veselov, the company was founded in 2017 to fill in a “huge gap in the market for high-quality market-making solutions and trading consulting.”
Prior to CLS, Veselov worked at the Russian cryptocurrency exchange platform Latoken, which is advertised as a “global digital asset exchange” and has about 370,000 followers on X.
The CLS team also includes chief revenue officer Pavel Singaevskii, who previously served as sales manager at Stex, a crypto platform that reportedly ceased operations without warning in 2023.
Source: CLS Global
According to CLS Global’s X page, the platform continues operating and has more than 110,000 followers at the time of publication.
How much wash trading is in crypto?
Wash trading is an illegal practice involving artificially inflating trading volume by repeatedly buying and selling the same asset, generating a misleading perception of demand.
According to a January 2025 report by the US blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, the crypto market has at least $2.6 billion in estimated wash traded volumes, or just about 2% of total daily crypto trading volumes, as reported by CoinGecko.
Estimated wash trade volume in crypto. Source: Chainalysis
Related: Russian Gotbit founder strikes $23M plea deal with US prosecutors
Some studies indicate that wash trading makes up a bigger share of the crypto market.
In 2022, the US National Bureau of Economic Research reported that illegal wash trading may account for as much as 70% of average trading volumes on unregulated exchanges.
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