Jack Butcher is the creative genius behind Visualize Value. He became known for his viral NFT projects, like Checks and Opepen, marking a significant departure from the traditional art world to the digital art realm. Butcher’s journey to the blockchain began in a very different place. He moved from a career in sports marketing to become one of the leaders in the world of NFT. His story is a testament to the transformative power of the internet, the community, and a true intuitive grasp of digital culture.
Early Days and the Spark of Crypto
Butcher’s first foray into the world of crypto came back in 2017. He developed blockchain explainer decks for clients at Visualize Value. Butcher naturally honed his craft as a marketing and sponsorship expert. He did have a nice jump start in the sports industry prior to taking this leap. This experience must have provided him with a robust sense of audiences and how to cultivate engagement. These skills would prove to be instrumental when it was time to step into the NFT space.
That all shifted once he began painting concepts from Naval Ravikant’s viral thread, How to get rich (without getting lucky). He turned those ideas into paintings in his distinctive minimalist way. This was the beginning of a key shift. Butcher started to find her audience by taking dense scientific information and breaking it down into digestible, graphic-intensive formats.
"It massively changed my life. I’m still grateful that I stumbled upon those ideas and credit those frameworks for a lot of the massive inflection points in my personal journey and how I thought about putting work out into the world." - Jack Butcher
Entering the NFT Space
Even with all that experience and early exposure to crypto, Butcher was not an early believer in the NFT space. Only six months prior to minting his first NFT, Chisel, on Foundation in March 2021, he had scoffed at the suggestion. His conversion to NFTs occurred in ultra-short order.
"I always refer to it as that 56k modem moment. Minting your first piece and seeing it arrive there underneath your name. It just felt like a moment in internet history." - Jack Butcher
Chisel provided his official debut NFT for this new adventure. That same year, he celebrated a groundbreaking sale of 74 ETH, equivalent to $123,500. This success did much to confirm his reputation as one of the standout artists in the rapidly growing digital art space.
Butcher’s introduction to the world of NFTs was not fueled by a desire to create the next meme coin or to chase the pump. Instead, it was a deliberate exploration of how blockchain technology could empower creators and foster new forms of community engagement.
Checks and Opepen: Redefining Digital Art
Butcher’s radical approach to NFTs really showed their full potential with the release of Checks and Opepen. Checks, which dropped 1/3/23, was a 24 hour open edition mint at $8. The project made news last week by dropping 16,000 editions based on the internet meme ‘Pepe’ and generative minimalism.
Amazing stuff, right?! Checks vaulted 16,031 mints in only 24 hours. This booking blitz is a testament to the overwhelming excitement surrounding Butcher’s work and an example of the open edition model’s power. This project defied the traditional concepts of scarcity and exclusivity in the NFT world.
Just five days later, Butcher released Opepen as a free mint. Opepen brought a new, opt-in model where holders could take an active role in the reveal process of subsequent “sets.” Imagine … This above creative process really contributed to the feeling of community ownership and creation by the community as a group.
"There’s thousands of hours and thousands of tweets that sort of contribute to the evolution of this thing. From the outside, all you see is the image. But the real artwork is the network effect, the conversation, the collective authorship." - Jack Butcher
Opepen has since gone on to break 87,000 ETH in trading volume, the equivalent of about $240M at current prices. This extraordinary feat underscores its runaway success and the power of Butcher’s community-oriented vision. On the surface, Opepen is a remarkable convergence of art, technology and community engagement.
Challenging Conventions and Empowering Creators
Butcher's work often challenges conventional notions within the NFT space, particularly regarding royalties and the focus on secondary market sales. He encourages creators to center their creations around deeply valuable work and smartly build community over acquiring short-term gains through tactics.
"A lot of people ended up in these golden handcuffs, where the focus switches to how do I get the artwork that’s already out there to change hands without making new artwork." - Jack Butcher
He’s a strong advocate for treating creators and other stakeholders fairly when it comes to their compensation. He cautions that there are pitfalls for those that focus solely on royalties. Butcher admonishes artists to keep their focus on producing compelling new work, not obsessing on the subpar market.
"Expect to get paid for the work you make, price reasonably, and keep building. The people who don’t need royalties get them. The people who need them don’t. It’s just a power law." - Jack Butcher
Creator first Butcher’s philosophy is all about giving creators the tools to cultivate sustainable, independent art practices on the internet. He envisions a future where artists can thrive without the need for traditional galleries or representation, fostering a more decentralized and accessible art world.
"People building consensus from the ground up, making a name for themselves, having a commercially viable art practice independently on the internet without needing a gallery or representation. I hope in a hundred years, that’s a thousand times more true than it is today." - Jack Butcher
