Steve Wand (Bitbuzz) on Crypto Art Before NFTs Had a Name | NFTS.WTF Interview

Toronto collector Steve Wand, known as Bitbuzz, on buying crypto art at Bitcoin conferences years before anyone called it an NFT.Interviewed by David Cash. Book David to host, moderate, or speak: https://davidcash.ca

Steve Wand, known in the NFT world as Bitbuzz, is a Toronto-based collector who began reading about Bitcoin around 2012 and found Ethereum in 2014. In part one of this audio interview for NFTS.WTF, David Cash and Steve go back through the pre-NFT era: ETHWaterloo and CryptoKitties, rare Pepes and Spells of Genesis on Counterparty, Colored Coins, physical art bought at crypto conferences, and the free NFTs one artist gave her collectors as certificates of authenticity. They also talk about why CryptoPunks were not the first NFT project, the early social scene on SuperRare, OpenSea's growth, and Steve's worries about venture money and KYC.

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Chapters

1. 00:00 Opening
2. 00:13 Welcome
3. 00:50 From Bitcoin in 2012 to Ethereum in 2014
4. 02:03 ETHWaterloo and CryptoKitties
5. 03:17 From conference art to Decentraland wearables
6. 03:57 Gaming and owning your in-game assets
7. 05:11 The first NFT he bought, before the word existed
8. 07:46 Early projects from CryptoKitties to Colored Coins
9. 09:28 NFTs as certificates of authenticity for physical art
10. 11:12 CryptoPunks and the "first NFT" myth
11. 14:10 SuperRare, Async Art, and Mintbase
12. 16:07 OpenSea as "the new Amazon"
13. 17:13 Venture capital, KYC, and decentralization

Speakers

• David Cash, interviewer and editor-in-chief, NFTS.WTF
• Steve Wand (Bitbuzz), NFT collector

Key topics

• Finding Bitcoin around 2012 and Ethereum ahead of its 2014 launch
• ETHWaterloo, CryptoKitties, and the Toronto–Waterloo crypto scene
• Rare Pepes, Spells of Genesis, Counterparty, and Colored Coins
• Crypto collectibles and crypto art before the term NFT
• Why CryptoPunks were not the first NFT project
• Bidding wars and community on early SuperRare
• Async Art and Mintbase as underrated platforms
• OpenSea's growth and physical-plus-digital marketplaces
• Venture capital, KYC, and what decentralization means to collectors

In their words

"This is like the craziest technology I've ever seen in my life." Steve Wand (Bitbuzz), on first trying Bitcoin

"Some of the early things just were too early." Steve Wand (Bitbuzz)

How to cite

APA: Cash, D. (2021). Steve Wand (Bitbuzz) on crypto art before NFTs had a name, part 1 [Audio interview, video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/jaLmzUcNHjw

Chicago: Cash, David. "Steve Wand (Bitbuzz) on Crypto Art Before NFTs Had a Name, Part 1." Recorded 2021, NFTS.WTF. YouTube video, 18:35. https://youtu.be/jaLmzUcNHjw.

About NFTS.WTF

NFTS.WTF was a Web3 culture publication and interview series edited by David Cash, covering artists, collectors, and builders during the 2021–2022 NFT boom. It ran for two years and closed after a board decision by the NFTS DAO, which left many of its interviews unpublished.

Recording details

Recorded 2021 (date unconfirmed). Original release: NFTS.WTF, January 2022, as Part 1. This edition: archival re-release in the NFTS.WTF animated audio format, with chapters and captions, 2026.

Transcript

Machine-transcribed and reviewed. Timestamps link to the moment in the video.

[0:00] That moment I was like wow, this is like the craziest technology I've ever seen in my life We are here with Steve Wand aka Bitbuzz a legend in the NFT space And Steve thank you so much for joining us today We appreciate you making the time today. We want to talk about a few different things I want to talk about some of the projects that you are currently working on a little bit of your history in the space And a little bit about your NFT collection and what's exciting you these days So maybe just to start people off for anybody who may not be aware of you How did you get started in NFTs and maybe crypto in general?

[0:46] What first sparked your spark your fire in this space? 100% and thanks for having me on I appreciate it. So I actually I started reading about BTC back in about 2012 Didn't fully grasp it the first couple times. I read it. I'm had to dig a little bit deeper and then Spent like a weekend of me like buying some moving it around figuring it out fully and I was really like eye-opening for me That moment I was like wow, this is like the craziest technology I've ever seen in my life So that led me kind of pretty heavily Down the Bitcoin rabbit hole and then I found out about Ethereum in 2014 from Ethan Buchman Who is now the kind of one of the top people at Cosmos? ATOM token and Ethan was the one who said that you should take a look at this Ethereum thing there I see owing soon and it's doing smart contracts, you know kind of different from what BTC is doing So I did take a serious look at and I was like wow This is pretty

[1:41] impressive being kind of native to Toronto myself There's a lot of people that work around the area that also we're talking about Ethereum So it's a no-brainer to get involved in at that time and then I kept following Ethereum saw some, you know unique things happening with particular limitations and they had homestead the six versions they were implementing over the two years to get it launched live And then I was at ETHWaterloo, which I believe took place in November of 2017 Then actually I was in the second row right behind Vitalik and his father Dimitri When at the Shopify building, I'm in Waterloo, but they hosted that and CryptoKitties had won the hackathon there Dapper Labs and and then shortly after that I was reading, you know It was kind of crashing Ethereum one that went for 160,000 So I was like wow There's something going on here and I had watched kind of from a far Counterparty

[2:29] on Bitcoin in say 2015-16 start doing rare Pepes and Spells of Genesis and So I could see that there was the actual collectibles being tokenized on the blockchain that no one was talking about it No one owned them that I knew on any technical questions. You asked most people they had no idea how to answer them So yes, there were assets but moving them storing them wallets and everything else Like there was none of them and that's like some guy made it and you had to trust the guy For those assets to be stored properly, which wasn't a very smart thing to do at that time So it was just nice to see like a smart contract platform specifically designed to handle these things came out And when I saw CryptoKitties is like, okay where you can breed these things. That's that's a huge game changer Meaning they have parameters on the pack end for future gaming perhaps So I was just a no-brainer to get involved in it And so I

[3:17] started you know getting some early assets buying a lot of the early NFTs because I was buying the physical art at crypto conferences I was attending and so when those artists started releasing NFTs, it was all over them immediately and That kind of led me in 2018, maybe mid 2018. I Realized essentially on a couple boxes. I kind of found them and I was like wow, what is this? And then from there that kind of piqued my interest and now I'm specifically I'm heavily involved in the metaverse Digital fashion we've launched some wearables on Decentraland about a year and a half ago through one of the first companies to get you know, the first five to get a license to make wearables in DCL and And then so many of the space is a big place for me as well I see a lot of value in the VR aspect and the high quality gaming And then with games credits, I also see with owning your own assets We see what's happening with Axie

[4:12] and everywhere everything else So obviously if you give people who are playing Fortnite The other model where they could do the exact same thing is that same quality of content only they can mint their own You know NFTs they could put them in game. They just control themselves and buy them at any time That's a huge game changer So I've just tried to put myself in the space when I see some value in something that I've been waiting for for a long Time I'm gonna be like here it finally is it's it's coming to fruition and it is actually live Or something's going to go live I try to be there as soon as I possibly can once I discovered it and learned about it I'm sort of director burned by entering naively. I'm gonna think that's very important too, because If I would have I think like my career my path in the space would have been a lot different And I come in and just like a wrecking ball and just book grab

[5:00] things Followed the hype and FOMO and just kind of feel never was paying attention to what was going on just following everyone else I think that would be in a different position in the in the space Absolutely. No, you have an incredible history in this race, and I appreciate you sharing all that with us So many things I want to touch on and I'm sure we're gonna talk about a bunch of them today But yeah, I think in in kind of summing up ones past in the space And I know it's such recent history every time you're talking about this as history It almost sounds ironic because you know, we're talking about the past few years The space hat moves so quickly that really does feel like such an expansive list of things so much has happened in such a short period Of time and that really speaks You know the the exponential growth of this like hyper modern period that we find ourselves in With web3 and everything that

[5:45] encapsulates it a few things I want to talk about but just as we're kind of talking Discussing your playbook how things have worked for you in the space and that's a term that I use a lot in this And these kinds of interviews like when I was talking with WhaleShark We're thinking about like what were what were those key steps like in your journey? And I know you were you were on the NFT train like so early on and I do I would actually love to talk about some Of the specifics out around like Waterloo and people who may not know internationally how how important of a city that is for tech in Canada and internationally, but before we get into that Being somebody who is into NFTs and you said 2018 and I know you were at least in crypto earlier What would you say is the first NFT you ever bought? And was it even called an NFT or would you just call it crypto art because it wasn't an NFT yet There wasn't

[6:27] a smart contract yet Yeah, to be to be honest the Counterparty and rare Pepes which is between 2014 and 16 and Ethereum did their own rare Pepes late 16 Those were never referred to as an entity and not fungible token or anything like that. There was bit corn That people would have in conferences back in the day and you get like like almost like like a board You'd buy these packs and in those they had parameters. So they were like a Magic: The Gathering only like a rare Pepe style So when we were doing that we were just trading they were literally just like crypto collectibles That's what we were calling them And the reason why we call them crypto art is because technically when you went to the conferences No one would let you buy anything in fiat. Everyone's like, I don't want that garbage I just want I want to be paid in Bitcoin and the funny part was some of the artists were doing Ethereum work But back

[7:16] in the day at the conferences, they were still the maximalists like it was pretty heavy I still are they're still are they're so active Like you'd find people that are just like oh this is cool You buy one of the BTC themed works and you'd say like, okay, Jimmy Easton's like yeah But it's like in the car or like under the table. It's back Like why do you have it here? And they're like, yeah, they're like, you know what some people would like knock me for having that here And I was like well fuck that I want to see it And so they would show me in a lot of times I would buy them and then it was Josie Typically, so I was buying the CryptoKitties. I bought some crypto motors cars. Why did you buy your first CryptoKitty out of curiosity? Um, well, I have some I have quite a few Gen zeros and Gen ones so they were like brand new they would have been 2017 when I bought those and then my daughter bought

[8:02] like 50 of them one day too and was breathing And they said in her wallet now No, she hasn't I don't think anymore But yeah, there was there was ChainBreakers was out before and that's actually the project has sold and gone away. Oh X universe I brought some planets that project lapsed and is no longer So some of the early things just were too early and Counterparty was just too early Colored Coins Just to get some context this Vitalik was working on a project called Colored Coins Prior to Ethereum's white paper being put out in 14. So this was in 2013 and it literally lays out It's for digital collectibles. That's what Colored Coins That's what it's like and goal was to be Mr. Hold these assets were seeing flourishing on Ethereum So the talents knew that that was a piece of what this would become I believe back then I'm Counterparty was just too early and To be honest Nxt, Nxt token was not only the

[8:56] first have an NFT on 2014 for the museum in New York you were given an NFT and that was the first one But Nxt also moved to proof of stake Three years before anyone else considered doing it So it was an early blockchain and Nxt kind of didn't win either because it was too early as well It was big enough was almost a standard had like hundreds of thousands of devs working on it the first major smart contract platform to be proven and and so, you know, it was just kind of a no-brainer to fall in heath to lead into the metaverse into the NFTs But Josie really for art specifically when I bought Josie's topic consensus in 2018 or 19 she said to me I'm going to give you a CoA today for this art But in about six months, I'm gonna have an NFT ready and I was like, oh that's fantastic And she's like, yeah, you're gonna get them free.

[9:45] It's the CoA for my physical pieces And the first two pieces I bought so you got free Josie NFTs with those as a CoA And and I mean now those are worth probably hundreds of thousands I mean she gave them to us free and the second time she sold them When you had to buy it and you could try and match if you owned a piece She would reserve it if you didn't care about the NFT She would print on the open market and I remember they were 0.3 ETH and ETH was maybe 150 bucks So they were still extremely reasonably priced So I do give Josie a lot of accolades and over the years on Clubhouse on Twitter and a lot of other places I do give her a lot of credit. She was a very young Like very skilled artist coming into a sea big-headed Deep-pocketed men which is an easy task for a young woman to do who's like not proven herself yet She came in with no holds barred Was very very polite about it But also could stand your ground

[10:39] and be aggressive when need be which you have to give her credit for And I think after all these like now XCOPY Coldy and Josie and everyone's seeing their day in the light now because they were doing this shit like 2015-16 when no one was doing it at all So for them to come out and set the tone with the coldy standard with the 24-hour auction times All these things were like I know they stepped up to took the lead on it and and I know history should look kindly on Them and their work should reflect those price points because they were like the earliest of the early in this space Absolutely, and I mean that's really why I want to have like before we get into a bunch of details I really do want to have a bit of that conversation with you because I feel like more people need to know about these early Days of crypto and crypto art and what that even means and what that meant before there were

[11:27] NFTs I've had a couple conversations with Rob Ness both publicly and privately about you know Where he was it within this like rare Pepe Ecosystem and those relics that he has like there's still you know, people really don't know what to do with them But I really do believe in the next five years. Like those are the gonna be the things we have in museums explaining the rise in this space because that's In my mind even with like the punk selling out now and and for anyone who knows me I'm just I'm not a punk holder. I I saw them when they were free didn't get them Don't have a desire to have them. I don't like pixelated like low-quality NFTs personally so you can see though. There's a huge demand for them now. However, Christie's put out an auction or Sotheby's put out an article That said, you know, we're selling the first NFTs ever so there's a huge misconception in the space a lot a lot of

[12:19] newbies think punks and reason why everyone their value that they've Kind of accumulated over the years and the floor they've said is because of their this first NFT. That's a blatant Like this truth, they're like the seventh or eighth project or we're finding about more and more every day We can say the first viral NFT project, but I hate when people say the first NFT because yeah The first NFT project and right now because they weren't they weren't ever Obtainable or in no one wanted them in demand until they were wrapped because of the standard They couldn't be traded easy on OpenSea the second that you've got rare Pepes Spells of Genesis I think it's like token that other like the game they had on the Counterparty when those assets can be moved freely Interrupt with wrapped BTC traded on OpenSea in MetaMask wallets or whatever else where we all use and what?

[13:10] Then those are the true Holy Grails of this space And I think that the people now grabbing punks are the new DeFi whales that don't know and weren't around to see those things So they just grab punks because they just figured and we're told that those are the first These other assets are so much rarer and so much more valuable like the Spells of Genesis Satoshi cards is 30 of those in the world. That's to me the holy grail One I was like, holy shit Token Angels when he bought that the one from from Matt came and I Right all those like people are passing those up right now and spending like seven million on a punk Well, you could probably go by like 50 You know rare Pepes that I think in ten years are going to be worth are, you know Away in value and just scarcity.

[14:01] I mean if we are playing the game of like what's the first what's the rarest? All those are ten times rarer than the punks. There's ten thousand punks. There's there's not ten times anywhere Pepe's Hey, man, hey, man I think that's really important to talk about and I think that these kinds of conversations need to be had more outside of people like the crash course people like the quick introduction But the more people look into NFTs the more people learn about NFTs You have to go back and when you realize how far back you can go. That's when you you know, learn more So you're talking about Counterparty you're talking about some of these early platforms another thing that I think is interesting which is a little bit of fun as well is SuperRare and MakersPlace. I believe they say call themselves the first marketplaces What do you think about that? And I still want to talk about the water the thing But I just

[14:46] that just got me thinking. What do you think about that? And to you? What is the first NFT marketplace or how would you even define that as like one of the first ones from your experience? Um, so so there definitely was art markets prior to that some don't exist any longer They are again for too early as is like a sick art. It was too early It's going to see its light in the future when people realize what they can do with it and they think was there the whole time waiting for them just to Come with their knowledge and skills. They're great. They're so lovely to work with too. I think is Fantastic. There's so undervalued They're so good talked about I'm gonna so underutilized once artists realize what they can do on Async. Async will will be like a SuperRare as well easily I mean, so what Mintbase, Mintbase is fantastic and it's a sleeping giant in my mind But SuperRare was the first that kind of got

[15:32] like WhaleShark Token Angels bacillus like myself Pablo We all started going on there and and you just see we're opening each other constantly Um, so it was the first one where there was a social aspect where you talk on Twitter and then go out bit each Other on SuperRare that wasn't happening on other platforms prior to that because it wasn't enough for us There was like four people doing it So now there was like 50 of us all doing it and we all got to know each other Because just organically because we were bidding each other and we were buying each other's work I mean you'd be like, oh you be you open me on that That's such a beautiful piece like congratulations on winning on words, you know now it's like totally different. It's a lot more diluted But as far as far as OpenSea when I saw just because I've been on eBay for 20 plus years at least I when I saw OpenSea I was like this is the exact I beside my wife

[16:19] for 10 years Someone is going to eventually make something that they're like dwarfs OpenSea and makes them look archaic When I saw OpenSea I was like, oh my good god Now there wasn't the ability to put physical on there But I believe not OpenSea but other entities will soon be Launching an OpenSea and crossing over with eBay where you can do digital and physical items It has to be done. I know about three people who are actively working on it for months now I'm so that's that's only a matter of time before that I come to fruition and then Not like OpenSea's lose out because we see OpenSea the amount of wallets being open the matter user Daily user activity is disgusting. It's growing literally You mean like if that if that continues like that's mass adopted very very quickly. The chasms totally been crossed already So in in this in this space, I would give OpenSea like I always said Like business partners like

[17:09] OpenSea is the new Amazon. It'll be like a trillion dollar company very easily Now the I'm just I don't know if you look at my Twitter and socials I'm just this space was functioning fine with 100 of us trying to do it now There's 10,000 of us trying to do it and a whole bunch of VCs knocking on the door and like with your pocketbooks open I don't believe we need them things will get fast-tracked with their money and paying debts But it also skews at their end goal and if you're outvoted And out and ousted of a company. It doesn't matter anymore. You have no say at all So as much as it's nice to get VC money the Mark Cubans of the world coming in I believe OpenSea is going to start KYC if they do an airdrop, you know means definitely the KYC So it will I know it'll take the space and if you're truly into the space for decentralization is and why I got here fully Then things like that turn me off.

[18:00] No offense to Nifty They've done a fantastic job bring a lot of eyes in the space and blowing up a lot of careers The second if you ask me for my ID, I won't be using if the moving forward I removed all my for sale items and move them all off Like I'm in this space so I don't have to abide by those things You're going to come full circle and mandate that we're doing the same thing as as you know TD Ameritrade would make me do it in that expense. Like I know that's when it stops being a crypto company in my mind