Christie's is one of the top international auction houses worldwide, overseeing hundreds and thousands of luxurious art pieces from different parts of the globe. Answering the inevitable call of innovation, they are now embracing a brand new medium: digital art. Nicole Sales Giles, Christie's Business Director of Digital Art Sales, reveals how she helped pave the way for the historic auction house to jump into the thriving world of NFT. Joining Jeff Kelley, Eathan Janney, and Josh Kriger, Nicole explains how they now directly connect and collaborate with founders and artists in search of the most impressive pieces of NFTs to add to their collection. In a sponsored hot topic, the trio talks to Chris Bennet of Alliance to share how they onboard people into Blockchain through stellar education paths.
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Listen to the podcast here
Nicole Sales Giles Of Christie’s - The Top-Tier Auction House Leading In NFTs, Plus: Kris Bennett Of Blockchain Training Alliance, And More…
Stay tuned for this episode and find out how an established organization brokering the finest art sales in the world stumbled into NFTs by hiring smart young talent and letting them take some chances.
Who on this show is holding a treasure trove of the hottest Beanie Baby collectibles?
How Blockchain Training Alliance is onboarding the masses into blockchain with stellar education and a path toward enriching new careers in tech. All this and more on this episode.
Don't forget. We put together a gathering at NFT LA a few months back that brought out thousands of the world's most innovative doers in the NFT space. Head to NFTLA.live to get tickets to our bigger, bolder, better, but also as intimate and impactful event happening in Los Angeles, March 20th of the 23rd, 2023. See you there.
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This episode features the amazing Nicole Sales Giles, Business Director of Digital Art Sales at Christie's, an iconic auction house and world-leading art and luxury business, as well as a digital artwork pioneer. Christie's is internationally renowned for its live and online auctions, as well as its bespoke private sales. Nicole holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA in Art History and Economics from Duke University and oversees Christie's global strategy operations and business development of the firm's NFT initiatives. She joined Christie's in 2012 and has excelled in various positions, primarily within the 20th and 21st-century art departments in New York.
In March 2021, as the business lead, she facilitated the historic sale of people’s Everydays: the First 5000 Days, the first purely digital artwork to be sold at a major auction house. Prior to her role, Nicole was the Associate Vice President and Business Manager of the private sales division, as well as for the online sales group of Christie's. She has also held management positions in client strategy and business intelligence.
Christie's serves as one of the top international auction houses specializing in more than 80 art and luxury categories and an industry leader in digital innovation. NFTs are now represented and auctioned off as part of modern and contemporary sales. Nicole, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here.
Thank you for having me. I'm so excited.
It's super great to have you on board here at the show and all the fun things that Christie's has been doing. Christie's has been around for a long time, long before crypto and NFTs. We are talking over 250 years of real excellence in art and luxury. As an Art History major and somebody with a clear passion for art, what has it been like working for such an iconic auction house?
It has been amazing. I have been here for several years now. If you asked me when I was in school where I wanted to work, Christie's is what I have said. The fact that I'm still here several years later is a testament to how great the company has been and how diverse things I have been able to do within the company because I get bored very easily. The fact that I'm still here says a lot. It's amazing, the crypto and digital art stuff aside. The caliber of art that passes through Christie's doors is remarkable. You get to see such extraordinary works of art and luxury goods that are sourced from all over the globe. It's high-end museum-quality stuff.
That's such a dream job for so many people I know. It's a ride up there. Tell us a little bit about the path to Christie's. What was that like?
As Eathan said, I studied Art History and Economics and undergrad at Duke. I was fortunate enough to land a job at Christie's straight out of undergrad. I studied Art Business as an undergrad. I wanted to work here, and all the stars aligned. I took an informational interview in New York City, and they called me back while I was still in the building fifteen minutes later as I walked into Starbucks after the interview. The rest is history.
We got a chance to meet the one and only people randomly by happenstance at the Dreamverse.
It seems like forever. It was less than a year ago.
That was 2021.
A good amount of time has passed since that iconic experience but so much has happened in the space, as the nature of Web3 is a crescendo on top of that. What was it like to be at the forefront of that movement with people, the one and only?
It was a crazy few weeks in the company. How it all came together is an interesting story. At the time, I was the business lead for our contemporary art online sales. My colleague Noah was the Specialist Head of online sales. One of our colleagues, Megan, who's fantastic, came and said, "Why don't we sell this NFT thing?" We were like, "Why not?" Our online sales division is typically where we showcase a lot of our emerging artists and some more accessible price points. We experiment with contemporary artists working in a variety of new mediums. This made sense for the online sales division.
Christie's is working towards accepting a lot of innovation. They are supportive of everything that the individual sales teams want to do. They quickly were like, "Do whatever you want. That sounds great." When we wanted to accept cryptocurrency, which happened during the sale as well, we got a lot of support from upper management and exec. It was phenomenal and honestly pretty easy internally to push that through, which some people might not expect.
It was an online sale. We started the bidding at $100 because we had zero expectations. This sale was over a seven-day bidding period. The bidding got to $1 million in the first eight minutes. It only stopped at $1 million because we had a threshold where we had to do more elevated KYC and compliance checks at that point. That's why it stalled at $1 million for no other reason other than that. Once we started checking all these bidders, the rest is history. On the last day of the sale, I have a handful of clients bid it up from $14 million to $69 million.
Were you directly in touch with people during that process? Was he texting you guys on Zooms together? Was he like, "What's going on here?" Give us a little bit of a sense of what's happening in the boiler room.
He was super excited. We filmed him watching. There's a video on our website. You can watch him watching the online sale prices going up, and you can see his reaction with his kids and his wife. It's amazing. Mike is an awesome guy. I have been fortunate to meet him and get to know him a bit over the past few years. It has been amazing. It was a momentous time for Christie's, him, and the market in general.
He's a very chill, down-to-earth, unassuming, humble guy. He's not self-promotional. Being vulnerable and putting his work out there every day probably speaks to the value of what he does. Beyond that, he's not much of a self-promoter. I'm reflecting back on the story of how that all came out, and what you said is exactly true. There's one level that I wouldn't have expected from Christie's. You have these long-standing organizations which have a foundational presence. A lot of times, there's this idea that it's hard for them to move and change because they have such history and momentum in what they are already doing.
The way you described how it went down also reminded me of the book, The Magic of Thinking Big. The author talks about if they have some good idea about the business and talk to the other people in the mail room, they are going to be like, "Whatever crazy idea, don't worry about it." You take that guy from the mail room and give him a second with the guy who runs the company, and he will listen. It reminds me that these brands and these established goes beyond the brand. I can't think of these names, whatever. They are there for a reason.
They've probably taken these risks throughout history and stacked themselves with intelligent people for this very reason to be on the cutting edge and make sure great things are happening. It's very interesting. NFTs like we said, are now represented in the auction office as part of the modern contemporary sales at Christie's. Now that you've got that moving, what exactly are you looking for when you are evaluating these NFT projects?
Ever since that people said we discussed, I have been fully focused on NFT exclusively. Christie's has backfilled my position. We were like, "Maybe we should focus on this a little bit more. Maybe there's something here." That has been exciting. We've experimented a lot in the past years. We've learned a lot, understanding what works and what doesn't. At least for now, I will caveat. Most people who are reading this, and you all know, this market changes at the flip of the wind. This is what we are seeing as of now, what's worked but time will tell going forward. We look for three things when we are evaluating projects. One is the narrative and the access to the artist. This is new for Christie's.
Up until now, Christie's is more or less a brokerage house. We sell art on behalf of one owner to another owner. It's pretty rare that we sell art for the first time from the creator or the artist. It has been fun and rewarding, from my perspective, to be able to work with the artist and present their work for the first time to collectors, the market, the press, and whoever else. That has been new. We look for artists with who we are able to have a direct relationship with that we can tell their story in a way that makes sense for them and use our marketing machine that has been working for 250 years to amplify what they want to present to the world. I would say that's one direct relationship with the artist.
The second thing is that there has to be a reason why the artist, creator or brand is using the technology of NFTs. We get a lot of pitches or project proposals to us where it's either a brand or a creator where it's not quite sure why the NFT technology is being used. It's, "I have this physical painting, and I want to sell the NFT version of it." It's like, "Probably not," or it's a brand that wants to do some drop with Christie's and wants to do something in the NFT space but they don't know what because they think it's trendy.
It's pushing these brands and creators to have thoughtful and strategic conversations, which we are having to have with them when it makes sense but to understand why you are using the technology. It has to add value to the underlying asset. If the asset is valuable in and of itself, work with that. If you have a Picasso painting, sell the Picasso painting. Don't sell the digital version of Picasso’s painting. Those are the conversations that we are having as well. That's the second thing.
I can't tell you how many times we are approached by people that have valuable archives. They are like, "I'm going to NFT this whole thing and sell it." I'm like, "That's a terrible idea. That doesn't work." I appreciate you saying that. Christie's is being so intentional on that second point. I hope I didn't kill your train of thought.
To expand on that a bit, the technology that has been developed around NFTs and blockchain, in general, is so amazing. There are many use cases that are valuable that we should be promoting. Whereas that's what we are looking for. It's the cases where technology is part of the art or creating value. It's not always but a lot of it is that the art is inherently digital because, in the past, there was no way to ascribe scarcity or ownership to a piece of digital art. For an easy example, if a photographer takes their art or someone makes something on Adobe Photoshop. I'm not a digital artist, so that's probably a very naive example.
If you are making something on Photoshop, you could email it out to a million people, but now, that you have minted it, you could ascribe scarcity and ownership. That's when technology comes into play. We are looking for it in and of itself. The third thing is that we want to support emerging artists. In general, we are looking for artists with some level of a career trajectory where they have had some level of success with other platforms or venues, whether it's The Gallery, SuperRare or whatever it may be. If you then get to Christie's at the next level, we are happy to promote you and amplify your voice and demand but we are not going to create demand from scratch for a new creator.
As we think about the next steps, there's so much on the horizon and so many opportunities to build on the foundation you've created at Christie's. What's next as you think about the mission going forward? We've heard a little bit about some things brewing on the education front. Fill us in.
We've had a lot of exciting stuff going on over the summer. I would say a little bit is tangentially related to our digital art team. We did launch Christie's Ventures in July 2022, which has been an exciting initiative to help work on. We are focused on very early stage, like SuperRare, companies that are focused on innovation in the art world. It's not exclusively Web3 companies but by nature of where a lot of the minds and build are now, a lot of those end up being Web3 companies. That has been fun to talk to a lot of early founders and where Christie's could add value. It's a strategic investment.
From our brand perspective, we are lending our Christie's brand to some of these early companies and financial investments as well. That's a new thing that we have been taking on. It’s because we have been so successful over the past few years that we have naturally been able to get a lot of inquiries and be able to meet a lot of these founders very naturally. It made sense to open up this arm and launch this division internally. That has been fun.
In terms of the digital arts, specifically, I would say we have two main missions or mandates. One would be to continue to try to elevate the status of digital art as a serious collecting category within contemporary art. Within our evening and day sales and typical contemporary art sales of our cycle that we do annually and biannually, we are making sure that we are including the best of the best digital art in those sales, just as we would the best of the best sculpture, photography or painting.
We are trying to educate our traditional collectors on what digital art they should be looking for. That's how we view it. NFTs are the mechanism that makes digital art collectible, and digital art is another medium of this category. Concurrently, we are focused on more emerging artists, bringing them to light at Christie's, and being able to bring in a more crypto-native community and presenting them with artists that we feel are doing amazing things in space.
I'm sure it's in high demand for the ventures side of the business. The way that you are looking for these companies and founders to reach out to, what's your process there?
My colleague, Devang, runs it. As I said, it's not exclusively Web3. In my role, because I'm very involved in digital art, I naturally have a hand in the Web3 arm of that group. It's natural. I can give my contact info at the end of this, and feel free to reach out. Ever since we launched this in July 2022, we have had several big lists of unread emails thus far, and there's one person on this team reading them. We will get to all of them.
Welcome to the world of venture funding.
Also, the world of casting podcasts. I'm like, "That sounds familiar.” We have a small team that reviews all the inquiries. It's hard because there's a lot of nuance to every project, and you want to understand everything going on in the space. Plus, it's exciting stuff, so how do you balance that amount of due diligence? Alas, good problems. I know you guys did a little mini-conference in New York. What other types of collaborations or partnerships are on your roadmap that maybe you can share with us at this time? We could always check in with you later.
Thanks for bringing that up. We had our fifth annual Art+Tech Summit in New York in July 2022. It was the first time we did a two-day conference. It was a phenomenal group of people that came from all over the industry like finance, VC, creators, marketing, luxury, and fashion, that ran the gamut. We had a congressman as well. A lot of different people in the space are coming together. That was amazing.
We are focused on bringing leaders together to come to Christie's and talk about the problems that are going on in this space and how we can work together to solve them. There have been a lot of collaborations that have come out of that somewhat naturally. That has been exciting. There's some exciting Christie's news that you can look out for but I can't quite talk about it yet. Maybe we can do a follow-up, and I can send you some information for you to send out to the readers.
Animal, vegetable or mineral, what letter does it start with?
Please keep us posted. It sounds exciting.
Me too. I'm super pumped.
We will throw it in our newsletter and tell people on social when you are able to pass on those deeds. I can relate a lot to your mission in terms of that conference. In NFTLA, we announced March 20th through the 23rd of 2023 and said that you would be able to make it this upcoming year. Our whole thing is how we co-create the future of Web3 and make it a more meaningful and inclusive place for everyone.
There is so much potential value there and so many questions, concerns, and misunderstandings that need to be addressed. We need to make sure that everyone knows how they can play a role in the future. We are excited to have you in the mix. Thank you for what you are doing to elevate those types of conversations.
We love hosting them. I get to meet awesome people in the process.
It's our work but it's fun. We are going to be wrapping up this segment soon, unfortunately. There's a lot to learn about Christie's. We are going to learn a little bit about you coming up soon, which will be fun. Before we move on, I want to know what other projects you are inspired by in the Web3 space. We always love to hear that from our guests.
There are so many artists doing cool things and brands as well. From an artist's perspective, I like what Sam Spratt is doing and Jake Fried's. I will always love World of Women. Yam is awesome. I got the privilege to meet and interview her when we sold World of Women NFTs back in February or March of 2021. It seems like forever ago but it's only March.
It's 2022, probably. When I talk about March, I'm always saying, "We did NFT LA in 2021." No, it was 2022.
We had Yam and World of Women on the show. It was a real privilege.
She's great. She's focused on genuine aspects of this community. It's nice to see and talk to other females doing cool things in space.
It was a great episode. Many people are doing many cool things, and Christie's is at the center of a lot of it. Thanks so much for sharing all of that with us. We will keep an eye out for these forthcoming announcements. We will be waiting patiently.
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As Eathan mentioned, we will transition to the next segment and talk a little bit more about you and some of your experiences. It's a segment that we call Edge Quick Hitters. It's a fun, quick way to get to know you a little better. We are looking for short, single-word or few-word responses to each question but we might dive a little deeper here or there. Are you ready to jump in?
I'm ready.
Let's do it. Question number one, what's the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?
It's a Block Granny 2 CD.
It's very generationally appropriate. Question number two. What is the first thing you remember ever selling in your life?
It was either a milk ad or an Absolute ad to a fellow classmate.
A milk ad?
Those are collectibles. Don't you remember those things? You collect all the milk ads. I don't even know if it was an ad for just milk. I didn't even know what a particular brand of milk was. It was all these celebrities, ads, and magazines, the little milk mustache, and you would collect them. We all had binders, and we would trade the rare ones. I gave you the two early NFTs.
It's very appropriate. That's cool. For some reason, that was off my radar. That's interesting.
We get some trends in responses to some of these things, depending on who we are talking to. That's a first for the show. Question number three, what's the most recent thing you purchased?
It's a cup of coffee.
How deep do you go down the coffee rabbit hole? Do you get a latte or espresso?
I'm pregnant. I'm only getting half-caf.
I was going to say that I thought you were drinking coffee for two, so you got to get twice as much.
I wish, but they are trying to tell me to lower my caffeine. It's one of the hardest things.
Question number four. What's the most recent thing you sold?
I am moving. My husband has loved this red chair in our apartment for years but I finally got to sell it because it doesn't match anything. I finally won that battle, so I sold that to a neighbor for $40 to take it off our hands.
Congratulations on that too. It sounds like that was a long time coming. Question number five. What is your most prized possession?
This might be a little TMI but I will share it with everyone. I have this Beanie Baby stuffed animal that I've had since I was six that I still have. I have a child coming and will probably still have it.
You got to tell me what Beanie Baby is.
It's Stripes, a little tiger.
Is his name Stripes? Do you have another name for it?
It's just Stripes. It's the name that they came with.
Question number six. If you could buy anything in the world, digital, physical service, and experience that's for sale at Christie's or otherwise, what would it be?
A ski house in Big Sky.
A real estate move. I love it. Moving on to question number seven. If you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would it be?
I would say confidence or the ability to feign confidence or fearlessness when you are trying something new.
Question number eight, the flip side. If you could eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would that be?
People tell me I'm too trusting. I'm not particularly good at judging people on their first impressions. I generally like everyone and learn the hard way.
That's a sad one you have to let go of. It's nice to be able to feel trusting.
That could be a double edge sword there.
We will call it naivete. It's good to have that trust but naivete, maybe.
Question number nine. What did you do before joining us on the show?
I had lunch with my friend Charlotte from the UK. She's in town.
Last official question. What are you going to do next after the show?
Continue to pack my apartment because I'm moving in a few days, and it's about half packed.
The time is fast approaching. The word on the street is we have a bonus question also.
That came from Josh. Let's hear it.
I'm sure you are a collector as well. I was curious if there's a particular piece of art in your own collection that is particularly special.
My great-grandfather was an impressionist painter. He never exhibited his work at all, ever in his lifetime. It was prolific. He did about 30 or so paintings. I organized a non-selling exhibition in the city of his stuff. I now have three in my apartment. That's by far my favorite painting that I have.
What's the theme of the paintings?
He did all impressionesque scenes, so there's a lot of floral to life and some landscapes and portraits. My favorite one is a New York City scene, Fifth Avenue.
Have you picked up a paintbrush in your days as well?
I have. That's what originally got me interested in art history. I took Art classes when I was a kid and took Art History in high school and loved that. I was like, "I won't be a professional artist but I could do professional other stuff like art." That's how I got here.
I was checking to see if I had Stripes in this big bucket of Beanie Babies here. These guys left witness protection style a block away from me. It's everything like wedding pictures. There was this little bucket of Beanie Babies. I was like, "I will give you $5 for these. Let me check him out." I was hoping I had Stripes in there but I don't.
We just learned that Jeff happens to snuggle with during every episode behind the scenes.
It's stored over here in a bunch of other random collectibles and stuff like that. I should put one out for the episodes. Thank you so much for sharing with us. We appreciate it. That's Edge Quick Hitters. We have a very special hot topic to transition here. Eathan, take it away.
Let's hit it. This sponsored hot topic is all about BTA, AKA Blockchain Training Alliance. They are creators of the world's first blockchain training and certification program for developers and architects. We are fortunate to have BTAs Chief Learning Officer Kris Bennett here with us to share some of the latest news about his company's mission and vision. Kris, welcome you and your big, awesome beard to the show.
Thank you, guys. It was an honor to be here. I appreciate you lowering the bar and letting someone like me in, even if it's for once.
We've collaborated with you guys before. I know you invited us to join a few learning sessions and tell people about the opportunities in blockchain. It was fascinating too to participate in the session I got to participate in to see all of the open space, the people who are learning about the opportunities in blockchain, and how exciting it is to get them in on the ground level. Tell us how you've molded BTA here. It has been more explosive in NFTs in the last few years. It has also been explosive in blockchain in general over the last decades. Tell me about how you are molding and creating what you are creating with BTA.
Before I jumped into the blockchain waters, I spent twenty years in IT services consulting. One of the things I heard so many times all throughout the years is that people would look at teams or me in the work we were doing and say, "I would love to be able to do what you do. I'm just not smart enough." That always struck me as an incredible tragedy because, if anything, these people are probably too smart to be working in technology. There is a place for everyone in tech.
When blockchain came around, it became apparent that this was going to be the next big thing. I wanted to make sure that everybody, whether they were technical or non-technical, old or young, or whoever felt like they had a place. The first step to any of that is learning, "What is all this stuff about? What's going on? Why is now such an amazing time to be getting involved?" That has been our ethos and our guiding principle. We've had a lot of success. Along the way, we've trained over 150,000 students all around the world. We are still going. There are no signs of slowing down.
Nicole, you probably have a good source of referrals for some of the folks that come to you and don't know what NFT stands for.
It's great what you are doing.
I'm starting my Beanie Baby collection, so we might be able to work out something in trade. Maybe some consulting advice. Don't let the tough guy image fool you.
It has been a while, Kris, since I've taken an online course. Jeff did get me a subscription to a master class one year, which was super cool. I found that content engaging and easy as an adult learner but with a shorter attention span, which tends to happen. How do you guys go about this? How do you keep this content engaging? How do you train adults that have too much access to their phones? What does this world of education look like for you guys?
I'm a big believer where you think back to the great teachers you had in school, maybe the ones who weren't so good. To me, what always made good teachers stand out was that they were great storytellers. Whatever they were talking about, they could find a way to relate it to you and make it interesting. What we try to do is tell an interesting and compelling story. Maybe you walk away and go, "Blockchain isn't for me but at least I have this newfound appreciation for what a unique and special moment in history this is." That's the approach we've taken. It might not be the best way but it's worked pretty well for us so far. Barring anything else, we are going to keep going down that road.
I remember you had an interesting story of an ancient civilization that had a blockchain type of technology. Can you tell us that little story? Is it little enough to share?
It's a quick one. It's one of my favorite ones to tell because everyone hears about blockchain and thinks, "This is something new and high tech and cutting edge." The truth is that these are some very old ideas at play. Three thousand years ago, there was a tiny little island in the South Pacific, Yap Island. At the time, they were using gigantic limestone coins as their money. It's thousands of pounds these things away.
There's no way to fill up your pocket or purse with a bunch of these and do your shopping, so how do you have this functioning economy? What they did is they ended up putting each one of these coins in some different memorable place on the island, by the pond, here in the middle of the village or over there by the forest.
Everybody kept tracking their head of what coin belonged to whom. Anytime two people wanted to trade or transact, they would work out the details between themselves and announce it to the larger group, "I own that coin over there by the pond. I've got something you want. If you've got something I want, I will offer it to you as payment. We will announce that. From that point on, everybody knows now that belongs to you." If they could figure it out with no computers 3,000 years ago, trust me, all of us walking around using smartphones and connecting to Zoom meetings and living in the modern world. It's accessible to everybody. I promise.
It's a decentralized ledger.
I would want to own the biggest tree or the coolest volcano. That would be my claim.
No coin for this man. He owns the giant volcano, so be nice to him.
Kris, when we think about the courses you are delivering to people, tell us a little bit about them. What should people that are interested in taking them to expect?
One of the biggest misconceptions, certainly the one I spend so much time fighting, is that if you want to get involved in blockchain, you have to be somebody like me. You got to be somebody who comes from a background in technology and can write code. Look at the internet. The internet created a lot of opportunities for technical people but it created a lot more opportunities for the rest of us. The fact that we are all talking here on this show is a testament to that. Blockchain is no different. It's the third wave of the internet.
Our message is whatever your skillset, whatever your background, whatever brings you joy, happiness, or satisfaction in life, keep doing that. Let's find a way that you can do that in blockchain, whether that's being super technical and hands-on or whether that's driving vision, leading a business, and building something long-term. Let's be honest. Maybe it's getting a little bit more comfortable job, getting able to work from home, seeing the kids off to school, and appreciating some of the smaller things in life. It's hard to overstate how much opportunity there is now. No one can say how long that window of opportunity is going to stay open but it's wide open now. Jump through while you can. That is our pitch.
In terms of the lineup of potential classes that Josh was super pumped about a masterclass and have this menu of so many cool things to select, what do you have? What's on the roster now, particular around NFTs?
We've launched an intro-level NFT 101 course on what NFTs are. Some of the biggest barriers out there to folks getting involved is getting over that initial misunderstanding or lack of education and realizing, "All of this is accessible." I will tell you the dirty little secret no one is talking about. All of this is still so new. It means that despite what it may sound like from the outside, it hasn't had time to get that complex. Once you learn the buzzwords and the acronyms, it's still an incredibly immature field. It's amazing to be able to come in and make contributions to that.
Anyone generally interested in the blockchain space, we got a free Blockchain Intro Course. In a couple of hours, you can learn all the basics of blockchain and understand, "What areas of the market or areas where this is going or interesting to me?" If you go through that course and wondering about the next steps or what's the right fit, reach out and connect with me on LinkedIn, look up @BlockchainBeardGuy, or shoot me an email. I'm always more than happy to have a chat with folks. What gets me up every day and doing this is seeing people open up new chapters and new opportunities in their life. Anything I can do to help facilitate that, I'm always available.
It's nice if you can get to the level where people could google Blockchain Beard Guy and find you. Let's make that part of our collective mission here.
You can find me, it's just on the twentieth page of the search result but if you keep hitting next, I promise you will get there.
If he keeps asking people to do it. It's going to move him up in the SEO.
I started on page 40. This is my get-rich slow scheme, gentlemen.
I know for a fact Jeff purchased BlockchainBeardGuy.eth. He's going to try to sell it to you for $5,000.
Kris, thanks so much for sharing all of that with us. You guys are making such progress and impact. Your general perspective on this is refreshing. We appreciate it.
It's right back at you guys. What you are doing, in my mind, is clearly education as well. We are aligned on a mission. You are doing great. You keep up the good work as well. I appreciate you temporarily lowering your standards by having someone like me on the show. You can raise them back.
Kris is also very modest. I've heard rumors in some of these conferences where Kris is so popular that they have to arrange the booth in such a way that the line can cue around the conference because everyone wants your autograph. It's a little bit of modesty there.
That's only because they see me in the Duck Dynasty coming back on the air. It's got nothing to do with blockchain. I assure you.
We appreciate it, brother. Lots of great energy.
No problem. Take care, guys.
For this next segment, we wanted to jump in and give a little bit of love to somebody that's moving the needle within Nicole's world at Christie's and all the amazing things she's doing. Let me turn the floor to her.
I like this section. This is cool. If you don't mind, I will give three very quick shoutouts. Two of them, I already mentioned earlier in the show so that they will be quick. It's Devang Thakkar who is running our Christie's Ventures program but has also been an advisor to Christie's for many years now and has become a great friend and confidant as we are exploring and innovating in this space.
I want to give a shoutout to him, Devang, and Charlotte, who I had lunch with. She runs MoonPay Concierge. She has been a great person to bounce ideas off of and talk about what has been going on, what we are each seeing, and another fellow female in this space. It has been great to build a friendship with someone like that. On the artist side, I like to give a shoutout to Diana Sinclair. I like her work. She is up to some cool things.
When you are dining with someone from MoonPay, I feel like that’s a pay. I don't know why. Hopefully, that's how it goes out for you. It sounds appropriate. I don't know why.
You never know. There are lots of pay-based companies out there. We will see. That's a little love. Thanks again, everybody, for all of your contributions there. Nicole, before we break, we did want to make sure that we direct the people to the right places to follow you as well as everything that Christie's is doing. What would be the best place for people to follow that action?
Twitter and Instagram are @ChristiesInc on both. I am @NicoleASales on both.
Also, word on the street is that we have a little giveaway queued up. That is a complementary spot in the online course, Web3 in Context: Art, Tech & the Market. That's happening Thursdays from October 20th to November 17th from 1:00 PM to 2:15 PM Eastern. It's very cool and generous. We appreciate that. Keep an eye out on our socials for all the details on how to score that complementary spot.
We are happy to be able to offer it.
Thank you so much. We've reached the outer limit of the show. Thanks for exploring with us. We have space for more adventures on this starship. Invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey also much better. How? Go to Spotify or iTunes now, rate us and say something awesome. Go to EdgeOfNft.com to dive further down the rabbit hole. Also, look us up on all major social platforms by typing @EdgeOfNFT and start a fun conversation with us online. Be sure to tune in next time for more great NFT content. Thanks again for sharing this time with us.
Important Links
- Christie's
- Blockchain Training Alliance
- NFTLA.live
- The Magic of Thinking Big
- The Gallery
- SuperRare
- Christie's Ventures
- Art+Tech Summit
- Sam Spratt
- Jake Fried - Twitter
- World of Women
- Yam Karkai – Previous Episode
- Blockchain Intro Course
- @BlockchainBeardGuy – LinkedIn
- Devang Thakkar
- MoonPay Concierge
- Twitter – Christie's
- @ChristiesInc – Instagram
- @NicoleASales – Instagram
- Web3 in Context, Art, Tech & the Market
- Spotify – Edge of NFT
- iTunes – Edge of NFT
- @EdgeOfNFT – Twitter
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