Airhead

Arthur Hayes

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(Any views expressed here are the personal views of the author and should not form the basis for making investment decisions, nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions.)

DISCLAIMER: My family office, Maelstrom, is an investor in Oyl — the project that is the subject of this piece — and I serve as an advisor to the Oyl team.

What’s the point? Why do you work so hard?

The point is feeding, clothing, and housing yourself and your family. But what’s the purpose of life once your earnings cover life’s necessities? With all this material wealth in the age of thinking machines and plentiful hydrocarbon energy, why do we still work so hard?

The point of the human condition is to consume art. Art takes many forms, but at its base level, it is an experience humans produce solely to entertain other humans. It is entirely useless and priceless at the same time.

Let’s step through some traditional art forms and talk about their usefulness.

Playing Sports — An exercise by which humans waste energy playing games while others watch.

Eating at Restaurants — An exercise by which humans enhance the flavours of food so that it is enjoyable to consume calories to continue living.

Listening to Music — There is no point to music other than enjoying it.

Dancing — Involves humans expending precious energy moving their bodies just for the fuck of it.

Looking at Visual Art — Involves humans creating visual objects for others to enjoy.

Collectively, these activities are the corpus of human culture. Culture makes life worth living, and for that reason, human culture creates trillions of dollars worth of economic activity. It is clear that the platforms that allow culture to be consumed and saved are insanely valuable.

Consuming culture via a public blockchain in a way that retains scarcity but is infinitely scalable is what will attract the next billion users to crypto. This is the dream that powered the non-fungible-token (NFT) bull market in 2021.

Source: The Block

As impressive as the first NFT bull run was, what were folks actually trading? There was a promise of a decentralised way to buy, sell, and store these new digital art forms. However, upon deeper inspection, many of the collections were a combination of a scarce, fungible digital token that pointed to a centralised database where the artistic content is held. That pixelated PFP you bought more likely than not pointed to a database that a centralised entity owned and operated. If, for whatever reason, that database is not maintained, your “asset” instantly becomes a zero.

Bitcoin Ordinals burst onto the scene in 2023 as a means to create a digital artifact that exists purely on the Bitcoin blockchain. So long as we worship Lord Satoshi, the data inscribed onto the blockchain, called an Ordinal, will exist. Ordinals require no application outside of the Bitcoin blockchain to exist and persist.

Ordinals bring culture to the most used and valuable public blockchain, Bitcoin. That is why when sales of crypto digital art turn up, as the crypto wealth effect takes hold, Ordinals will lead the charge. Ordinal trading volume will explode, and the community’s creativity will be on full display. The best part about Ordinals is that no one can take them down, regardless of how stupid or offensive some perceive the inscribed art.

At Maelstrom, I tasked the head of the investment team, Akshat Vaidya, with funding an Ordinals project. Through diligent research, we invested in the Oyl wallet. To show artists what is possible using the Ordinals technology and the features of the Oyl wallet, I collaborated on an Ordinals drop called Airheads.

I want to create authentic digital art, which I define as showcasing a new way to express human creativity. I instructed the Oyl team to create an artistic collection that could only be done using the Ordinals technology. The remarkably talented creatives at Oyl came up with the concept of Airheads.

Fugazi Finance

The entire world instinctively recognises the fakeness of our current point in human civilisation’s history. Out of the senseless destruction of WW2 came many technologies that have powered our modern civilisation. Peaceful, safe, and almost carbon-free nuclear energy generates many gigawatts of electricity. Billions of people can travel worldwide on commercial airlines. And of course, the most essential thing to come out of the war: the creation of a new form of silicon-based life, which we call thinking machines or computers.

The growth of the population and the relative wealth of humanity since the war has been astounding. But the easy stuff has been done, and now politicians, in an attempt to justify their existence, have turned to printing money to engage in all manner of activities that are a net drag on the human condition. Green energy is probably the most significant global malinvestment of this age. Because we have cheap and plentiful capital, which is just a derivative of cheap and plentiful hydrocarbons, politicians believe they could dictate natural laws rather than the other way around. Taking a less dense form of energy, such as wind and solar, and expecting them to replace more dense forms of energy like coal, natural gas, and oil, will never happen naturally. And by naturally, I mean without government subsidies or below-market interest rate loans.

The green energy hoax is just one example. Many of you rue the inflation that has taken place since Pax Americana eschewed the gold standard in 1971. Forget the YOY government-manipulated inflation statistics. The price of a loaf of bread in nominal terms is higher today than yesterday. That need not be the case in an age of brilliant technology and cheap energy.

You know this regardless of how the elites gaslight you.

Your response is to speculate. Your response is to purchase magic internet money. Your response is to bid up “scarce” digital forms of culture that you understand and appreciate.

Airheads is a collection that capitalises on this inflation hoisted upon us by the elites. It does so aesthetically and technologically.

From an aesthetic perspective, Airheads is a collection of characters modelled after balloons. Think of a playful but degenerate cast of Jeff Koons’ balloon-like characters. These balloons are metaphorically filled with the inflation of our day. They are fat and beautiful because of the inflation we all experience.

From a technical perspective, Airheads is the first Ordinals collection to use a leaderboard system where your wallet size determines your tier. Unlike other collections with random attributes, Airheads have a clear hierarchy. This approach leverages recursive inscriptions to push the boundaries of what a collection item can represent, making Airheads the only collection genuinely designed for those who invested early and took the most risk.

Details

Airheads are unique Bitcoin Ordinals designed to showcase and flex your wealth. Each Airhead is an inflatable, balloon-like character generated using recursive art to visually represent the size and value of your digital portfolio at the point of mint. With 10,000 Airheads available, these characters use sequential ranking and tier differentiation to reflect asset weightings according to the leaderboard, making them a fun and competitive way to display your wealth.

• Special Characters and Tiers: Airheads are evenly distributed across 10 tiers, with each tier representing different levels of portfolio size. Some of the most exciting characters may be found in lower tiers, adding an element of surprise and value.

• Packaging Variants: Each Airhead comes wrapped in one of 25 mysterious packaging variants, randomly assigned. Some packages are themed to match characters across tiers, making them unexpectedly rare and more coveted.

All together, it looks like this sexy as fuck Airhead. Please note that certain body parts are innately large; some characters are just built different ;).

How Do I Get an Airhead?

To secure an Airhead, you have a few options:

1. Whitelist Application:
   The whitelist opens on August 6. Use Oyl Wallet to apply. Follow @airheadfun on Twitter and complete quests to earn XP (Experience Points). Even with a small wallet, you can earn big. Engage, participate, and climb the leaderboard with every quest you complete. All applicants who win an allocation will have to pay a mint fee.
2. Compete on the Leaderboard:
   Bring your Bitcoin, Ordinals, BRC-20, and Runes to climb the ranks. The goal is to accumulate the largest portfolio in the Oyl ecosystem to earn the most impressive and inflated Airheads, reflecting your top position on the leaderboard. The fatter your portfolio, the higher your rank and the more prestigious your Airhead. You must rank in the top 10,000 to receive an allocation.
3. Purchase a Whale Pass for 0.069 BTC
   Guarantee yourself an Airhead by purchasing a Whale Pass. Send the Whale pass to a whale wallet (like your vault or ledger). When that whale wallet activates it by sending it to Oyl wallet, all assets in the taproot address you sent it from will also count towards your leaderboard position, providing a significant advantage (if you are indeed a whale).

Earning XP and Ranking High

XP is earned by holding and increasing your assets in Bitcoin, Ordinals, BRC-20, and Runes. There are 15+ eligible assets across BRC-20, Runes, and Ordinal collections, which are eligible for earning you XP. This boosts your ranking on the leaderboard, helping you achieve the fattest and most inflated Airhead. The goal is to amass the largest portfolio & flex your wealth.

Installing the Oyl Wallet

Get the Oyl Wallet from the Chrome Webstore and explore the in-wallet trading experience at Oyl.io. Prepare for the whitelist opening on August 6 by creating or importing your wallet, then transferring Bitcoin, Ordinals, BRC-20, and Runes. When the whitelist opens, watch your XP accrue and climb the leaderboard for a chance to mint an Airhead.

Tithing

The folks in the god business usually say that 10% of your earnings should go to the Church, Synagogue, Mosque, etc. In keeping with the tradition, Maelstrom will tithe to Lord Satoshio using its cut of the funds raised from the Airhead drop. A portion of the funds earned will go towards our Bitcoin developer grant program.

The Future

I aim to show what is possible using Bitcoin Ordinals technology and the user-friendly Oyl wallet. I sincerely hope that artists take note and derive ideas from this collection to bring their contribution to the human experience to life. If Airheads inspires others, it will cement its place as a first-of-its-kind collection and retain value over a long period of time.

We all know that the corrupt elites that are gallivanting around the world in our names will not stop printing money. We know that inflation-inspired human suffering will continue unabated. But at least we can have a little fun and inflate our Airhead so it’s phat as fuck, and tell those that scorn crypto to pleasure my Airhead genitalia.