The first weekend of fx(hash)
written by chronosensitivi...
I was looking around on twitter and saw someone post about it... dunno who it was. Around that time HEN died so we were all a little confused about what was going on... Me especially because HEN died just two weeks after I first figured out what tezos even was.
In my first introduction to NFTs I had mentioned to petstarchippy (https://www.fxhash.xyz/u/petStarChippy), who told me all about tezos in a coffee'd up convo while we waited outside a music video shoot at 8 o'clock in the morning, about how the generative pieces were clearly the coolest, and he was also amazed at how these people could code it all. So when I saw this was supposed to be generative art only I was immediately ready.
5:30 in the morning. According to a voice memo I made at the time, discussing how awkward I felt at a bar that night with this girl I hooked up with the week before, I was waiting for the fx(hash) market to open. Back in the day you couldn't mint any projects outside of the opening schedule. In fact, I'm pretty sure the entire opening/closing schedule was created to let the indexer catch up due to the fact that it would take around 6 or so hours just to sign each mint. The exact words from the memo are:
"the only reason I'm talking about this is cause I'm waiting for this fucking NFT shit to drop. This shit is gonna dr-cough-cough drop at fuckin 5 and I gotta wait up- I gotta stay up till then. So... -hiccup- ... 4:44! 15 minutes*-cough*... man... I still got this cough..."
At first I figured that would just be the end of it, but the other day I saw someone stress about how it was necessary to tweet out your buys so I ended up going the full nine yards the next day:
I remember seeing the first few uploads and being really confused. I had no idea who this ciphrd guy was or how he managed to get the first upload. I figured it must be a mistake because obviously the people who made fxhash should've been the first to upload. I wanted the first fxhash mint though so I went to go get it, only to realize it was already minted out and on secondary it was a full 3 fricken tez floor. I was like "holy crap that's $15! Alright... whatever... ok I'll get one." I kinda liked the way it looked.
Then I made sure I got the logos for a full 0 tez. I only ever got one though. No need to get greedy I thought 😅
I remember just going down the line on each one: 1 tez here, 0.5 tez there... They all felt a little like test projects... like the calm before the storm. I felt a little silly just "splurging" my money on random projects so I was spending some of the time justifying it in my head, calculating the values in USD before buying like, "I mean... it's only $5..."
Bezier Truchet, however, was a full 4 tez. I did a lot of that previously mentioned justification before I even minted anything. At this point I was committed to just grabbing 1 of everything I liked. I also figured that I should support other artists if I wanted to make art. Of course, here we are 10 months later and I still haven't minted anything on fx(hash) yet 😅. (I got projects in the pipeline though)
I felt bad about the animated pieces. I couldn't right click save as so I felt like I wasn't showcasing them as much as the others. I tried to get ffmpeg to work, but I can never remember how to tell it what window to record.
Somehow I got the first Kappygen
I straight up ignored punevyr's face in favor of Circular. That might give you an idea of where I was mentally at the time: No PFPs for me. It took me several months to finally get over my strict rules and buy a Smolskull at 30 tez.
I still like this piece a lot
"sorry to the gifs" 😂🤣 I was hungover okay.
Back then, especially in the first few days, it would take several hours for these pieces to sign. I think it took something like 6 hours to be honest. I didn't choose to go to sleep after minting. There just wasn't any other option.
Obviously I had missed the first day by being oblivious, but back then fx(hash) was a quiet place where pieces would take several days on end to mint out. Every single piece besides RGB still had several hundred mints left (provided they allowed for that many)
I recognized aebrer from HEN. I was glad to brag about the darkness of my pico pulse.
Punevyr was funny to me because they would put up a new piece every day for free at these incredibly high edition numbers. Tbh, great marketing strategy.
😅 I will be uploading one soon. I swear.
TY Isma. I won't let you down if I haven't already.
The next few days I started to shift my perspective on fx(hash) a little. Suddenly 4 tez didn't seem like that much, especially if Loren Bednar was posting on here
Had to grab a bunch of Galo's stuff. (IMO Crashers is very underrated and I'm not just saying that cause I own the most of them out of anyone: https://www.fxhash.xyz/generative/slug/crashers)
Almost done here, but look at me "splurging" 10 tez on Reading A Book. Asendorf really blew my mind at the time (and still does.) I saw Reading A Book as the pinnacle of what generative art could do. If 5 tez was a lot to me, 10 tez was a shit ton.
Well if you made it this far I'd understand if you feel like it was rambling on. I may end up editing this for some more real info when I can remember some of those little details that get forgotten, but I honestly kinda just made this for the same reason that I bought a bunch of fx(hash) pieces at 5 AM on November 13th: just to say I was here on that first day 😁. Anyway here was me in December:
And here's me now: