NFT Collector: Creative AI art, Tomorrowland sells tomorrow’s future
Greg Oakford, co-founder of NFT Fest Australia, is your guide to the world of NFTs from a collector and fan’s perspective.
Seventeen years ago, Pindar Van Arman built a robot that, like him, painted with a brush on canvas.
He has built several robots since, with each iteration possessing a more sophisticated artificial intelligence that tried to paint “more like I painted.”
The term OG can be thrown around often undeservedly, but Van Arman is truly that when it comes to AI art.
He created his first crypto art project in 2015 — titled bitPaintr — and minted his first Ethereum nonfungible token (NFT) in 2018 titled “AI Imagined Portrait Painted by a Robot” on SuperRare.
“It was really hard in 2015 because I had the challenge of trying to explain the tech in an emotional way. It triggered a visceral reaction where people would say, ‘Well, wait, these are robots that can’t be emotional,’” says Van Arman.
“I’d got hate mail back then when people would say it’s hard enough for artists to make a living. Now, we have to compete with robots. There were a lot of barriers back then.”
Validity of AI art
For the cynics that question the validity of AI art, Van Arman agrees with them to a degree but makes a distinction between AI being labeled as an artist versus being creative.
“The thing I agree with them on is that AI can’t make art. But AI is a tool that can be used to make art by an artist. When you put it in those terms, no one can really disagree with you. They may not like it, but it’s hard for them to disagree,” Van Arman says.
“Here’s where it gets controversial though, here’s the middle ground that I claim which I know is true because I see it and I program it; AI cannot be an artist. AI can be creative. Creative in a very similar way that humans are creative.”
Van Arman is no stranger to having people’s eyes glaze over when explaining his work.
“All the questioning and doubt over the years told me I was on to the right thing because when you have artists in the art world saying that your stuff is too weird, you sort of know you’re on to something. I mean, artists are the most avant-garde, forward thinking group of people there are,” says Van Arman.
“For artists and art curators not to get something that you know is true and for them to say something’s impossible, you just know the time hasn’t come yet and just keep on pursuing that.”
Freedom to transact
Van Arman has frequently spoke in favor of royalties, supporting the current writer’s strike in the United States.
“I’m always in the middle of the royalty debate because I 100% support them and I support them because they exist in the writing world, they exist absolutely in the recording world. Hollywood’s on strike right now because the writers stopped getting royalties on streaming services. This has significantly impacted their lives and now they’re being taken advantage of again. The whole Hollywood strike is about royalties on streaming services like Netflix and others,” Van Arman says.
Van Arman notes the difficult of keeping track of royalties, claiming that the Ethereum network has provided a better means to guarantee the “Freedom to Transact.”
“It’s a new philosophy that the asset has to be 100% sovereign. If you own something, you have total control over it, you should not be forced to pay royalties. I went hard early on against people that were saying royalties are like tips,” Van Arman says.
“I agree with freedom to transact and that means that artists have the right to say, there are royalties on my artwork and if you don’t like it, you don’t have to buy it. No one’s forcing you to buy it and it makes perfect sense to me. But for some reason I have a hard time explaining that to people. They say no, no, no, the asset is worthless unless it has no encumbrance. They might think it’s worthless, but it might be worth something to someone else.”
Notable sales
Rapid-fire Q&A
When someone looks at your art, are there any particular emotions you hope that they’re experiencing?
“The goal for me of making AI art and the emotion I’m after is for people to not know it was AI art. To feel something and observe something and not know that the image was painted by a robot. And then only afterwards they realized it was painted by a robot, then that becomes part of the narrative. They can do a double take, they learn the story through that.”
Who are the influences on your art career to date?
“I don’t want to answer here. I don’t want to answer because I’m friends with some of them now and I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing that they were my influencers haha.
If they found out, they’d become intolerable which is absolutely true. This is what I love about this space, I am hanging out with my big influencers and it’s really fun. Love it.”
Who is a notable collector of yours that makes you smile knowing they own one of your pieces?
“There’s one collector I have and that’s unusual and I really enjoy how unusual this collector is because this collector is silent and has possibly the largest AI art collection in the crypto space but has no social media presence. Zero.
This collector is ironically named Blur, not the platform. Why Blur really brings a smile to my face is they are so conscientious about their collecting that they don’t want to influence other people, they don’t want to ape into something and then have other people ape into it because they aped into it. I think that’s really noble, the collecting is coming from the heart and they never advertise their bags yet collect like mad.”
Read also
What’s your favorite NFT in your wallet that’s not your own NFT?
“The one that gives me the most joy is my CryptoPunk. I own punk 7627. That’s actually a really obvious choice when I think of my collection.”
What does Pindar listen to when creating art:
“A lot of EDM music. Also Pink Floyd once in a while.”
What’s hot elsewhere in NFT art markets
Winds of Yawanawa, a co-creation between the Brazilian Indigenous Yawanawa and Refik Anadol collection, is on fire. The floor ripped through a 10 ETH floor earlier in the week and has more than doubled in the last two weeks.
Other big sales include:
Only two fresh Squiggle mints remain
The iconic Chromie Squiggles collection has nearly finished minting. On August 30, founder Erick “Snowfro” Calderon tweeted that 66 fresh Squiggles would be out into the world, leaving only two Squiggles remaining for the 10,000 collection.
Snowfro distributed the 66 to a selection of family, artists, collectors, institutions and friends while announcing Squiggle #9998 will be a special commemorative mint with further details soon and #9999 headed to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Day 0 Squiggles occurred on November 28, 2020 with approximately 9,000 of the total collection being minted in the first two months after the initial mint. Snowfro decided to keep the remaining mints up his sleeve and has been releasing those at various stages over the last few years as the popularity of his artwork continues to skyrocket.
Tomorrowland surpasses $2 million in NFT sales
World-renowned EDM festival Tomorrowland generated over $2 million in NFT sales on Solana.
Tomorrowland superfans were able to secure pre-sale tickets, access secret gigs, become eligible for giveaways, and be treated to exclusive tours of the festival ground.
Tweet of the week:
The tweet of the week goes to Justin Trimble commenting on Refik Anadol’s work being spectacularly displayed on the new Vegas Sphere. The Sphere was first covered in this article of NFT Collector.
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The lower house of Poland’s parliament failed to secure the required three-fifths majority to override President Karol Nawrocki’s veto of the Crypto-Asset Market Act, pushing the country further away from regulating its digital-asset sector at a moment when lawmakers argue that oversight is increasingly urgent.
As Bloomberg reported Friday, the legislation — advanced by Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government — was intended to align Poland with the European Union’s MiCA framework for crypto markets. The bill was introduced in June but did not survive the president’s veto.
Nawrocki blocked the measure last week, arguing it would “threaten the freedoms of Poles, their property, and the stability of the state,” as Cointelegraph previously reported.
With the president’s veto upheld, the bill will not move forward, forcing the government to restart its crypto lawmaking process.
The proposal has sharply divided lawmakers and the crypto industry. Supporters framed the bill as a national security priority, saying that comprehensive rules are necessary to curb fraud and prevent potential misuse of crypto assets by foreign actors, including Russia, according to Bloomberg.
However, several crypto-industry groups opposed the legislation, warning that its requirements were overly burdensome and could drive startups out of the country.
Critics pointed to stringent licensing rules, high compliance costs and criminal-liability provisions for service-provider executives, arguing that the bill risked stifling innovation and creating an uncompetitive business environment.
Related: EU plan would boost ESMA powers over crypto and capital markets
Crypto adoption in Poland ramps up amid regulatory pause
Cryptocurrency use in Poland continues to accelerate even as the country stalls on comprehensive regulation. Chainalysis recently identified Poland as one of Europe’s “large crypto economies,” noting that the country’s onchain activity has expanded significantly over the past year.
According to the company’s 2025 Europe Crypto Adoption report, Poland recorded more than 50% year-over-year growth in overall transaction volume.
Polish investors are also increasing their exposure to Bitcoin (BTC), reflected in a surge in Bitcoin ATM installations in recent years. In January, Cointelegraph reported that Poland had become the world’s fifth-largest Bitcoin ATM hub, surpassing even El Salvador — a country that has made Bitcoin a central element of its monetary and financial system.
Magazine: When privacy and AML laws conflict: Crypto projects’ impossible choice
US attorneys representing the federal government have requested that a judge send Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon to prison for 12 years at his sentencing hearing next week.
In a Thursday filing in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, prosecutors asked that a judge sentence Kwon “to a term of twelve years’ imprisonment and finalize the forfeiture of his criminal proceeds.”
The filing came about four months after the Terraform co-founder pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud.
“In just a few years, Kwon caused losses that eclipsed those caused by Samuel Bankman-Fried […] Alexander Mashinsky […] and Karl Sebastian Greenwood [….] combined [emphasis included in filing],” said the Thursday filing. “The Terraform market crash triggered a cascade of crises that swept through cryptocurrency markets and contributed to what has since become known as ‘Crypto Winter.’”
Kwon, who is scheduled to be sentenced on Thursday, was indicted by US authorities in March 2023 for charges including securities fraud, market manipulation, money laundering and wire fraud related to his role at Terraform.
Though his whereabouts were initially unknown after the collapse of Terra in 2022, authorities in Montenegro arrested him on charges unrelated to his role at the company, and he was later extradited to the US.
Related: South Korea targets sub-$680 crypto transfers in sweeping AML crackdown
The price of Terra’s native token, LUNA, surged by more than 40% in the previous 24 hours amid the release of the sentencing recommendation, from about $0.07 to $0.10 at the time of publication. However, the token reached an all-time high price of more than $19.00 before the ecosystem collapsed in May 2022.
Kwon says he could still face prison time in South Korea
In a November court filing, lawyers representing Kwon asked that the Terraform co-founder be given a sentence of no more than five years. His attorneys presented several arguments in favor of a shorter sentence, including that the co-founder could face 40 years in prison in his native South Korea, where prosecutors are also working on a case against him.
“He would not be able to walk out of jail in the United States as a free man for any amount of time: He will be taken from whatever facility in which he serves his sentence directly to an immigration detention center to await a deportation flight to Seoul, where he will immediately reenter pretrial detention pending his criminal charges in South Korea,” said Kwon’s lawyers.
Although Kwon’s and prosecutors’ respective recommendations will remain under consideration, the judge overseeing the sentencing hearing has the authority to sentence the Terraform co-founder to decades in prison, or a significantly shorter time. In contrast, former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is serving a 25-year sentence after his conviction on seven felony charges, former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky was sentenced to 12 years in prison, and a judge sent Karl Sebastian Greenwood to prison for 20 years for his role in the OneCoin scheme.
Magazine: When privacy and AML laws conflict: Crypto projects’ impossible choice
Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy has suggested it could be beneficial for the UK to consider re-entering a customs union with the EU.
He said that although doing so was not the government’s current policy, he could see how other countries outside the EU had benefited from such arrangements.
“It’s self-evident that leaving the European Union badly damaged our economy, took us out of an important marketplace and created serious friction, that untruths were being peddled by those that thought exiting the EU would be a good thing,” Mr Lammy told the News Agents podcast.
“And it’s why every single day that I was foreign secretary, I returned to the subject of our relationship with the European Union.”
Asked repeatedly if he would like to see the UK in a customs union, he said: “That is not currently our policy. That’s not currently where we are.
“But you can see countries like Turkey with a customs union seemingly benefiting and seeing growth in their economy, and again, that’s self-evident.”
David Lammy meets with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan in Ankara earlier this year, when he was foreign secretary. Pic: Turkish Foreign Ministry/Reuters
The Prime Minister’s economic adviser Minouche Shafik has also reportedly advocated behind the scenes for joining a customs union.
Mr Lammy’s comments were being taken as the clearest indication yet that the government is considering bringing the UK further back in line with the European Union.
But when Sir Keir Starmer was asked to respond and say why he was not advocating for membership given that growth is an ongoing priority for his government, he was quick to dampen down the speculation.
The prime minister said Labour would be sticking to its manifesto, which pledged to deepen ties with the EU without returning to the customs union, single market or freedom of movement.
“Well, the position that we are taking has been clearly set out in the manifesto, and then we’ve been following it,” Sir Keir said. “And earlier this year, we had the first UK-EU summit ever, and we had 10 strands for a closer relationship.
“So we’ve totally reset relations with the EU.
“That’s good for our economy, good for defence and security, good for the work that we need to do on energy.
Earlier a spokesperson for Number 10 said: “We are strengthening relations with the EU whilst sticking to our red lines.”
“The prime minister reiterated that on Monday evening at the Lady Mayor’s Banquet.”
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Starmer condemns ‘utterly reckless’ Brexit template
Sir Keir set out his foreign policy vision at the banquet, as is tradition.
He said the Brexit vote was a “fair, democratic expression” but the way it was “sold and delivered was wrong”.
“There’s no credible economic vision for Britain not positioning us as an open trading economy,” the Number 10 spokesman said.
“We have to be grown up about trade-offs. We have redefined bonds with EU and stuck to our red lines.”
On Mr Lammy’s comments, the spokesman added: “That is not our current policy or where we are.”
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