PBOY’s Cave.

This column, 3 Duds & A Stud, tends to be composed of the best and worst segments from my daily video series, On Openseas. But, as its five viewers know, it is currently on extended hiatus, because I need to make money, and am habitually incapable of finishing, no matter how strong I start. (Just ask my beer pong partners.)

So, this week, our selections come from the projects with the top five gains on OpenSea, one of which, in a rare turn of events, is not an explicit turnoff. The Underground Sistine Chapel is by Pascal Boyart, aka PBOY — a French fresco muralist, not an Albuquerque meth dealer, in case there was any confusion. It doesn’t take an art history major (or much more than a glance at old St. Matthias up top) to see that Michaelangelo this is not. But what can I say? I’m a HOR for a good higher order reference regardless. 

PBOY is a crypto OG, which just means he’s been active in the NFT space since 2019, not since last February. This particular collection is a series of photographs of portions of the fresco he did inside of an old gold foundry during the 2020 lockdown.

They say that times of great hardship produce some of the most earnest and impactful art. I wouldn’t say this is that, but it is an impressive piece based on scale, time, and effort alone. And it does feel fitting that, in 2021, spending 500eth on a painting would not net you a piece of the simulated heaven in the Apostolic Palace, but rather a lofi rip-off in a literal cave. The meta layers alone make this a stunning piece of performance art.

You can own a piece of the mural for as little as 1.98eth — more than $8k this week. Today it pays to be an artist, power to the culture.

On the other hand, it pays to be:

• A sneakerhead with a deteriorating grip on reality. Gravity Footwear traded 25.91eth.