Rare Pepe Pioneer Joe Looney on Paving the Way for NFTs

Long before Ethereum became ground zero for the current NFT craze, Joe Looney was helping lead a 2016 crypto art revolution on the Bitcoin blockchain. As the founder of Rare Pepe Wallet and co-founder of Rare Pepe Foundation, he developed the first on-chain art exchange that helped Counterparty Protocol’s Rare Pepes trading card series scale into a full-blown crypto cultural phenomenon. In January 2018, Looney presided over the Rare Art Labs Digital Art Festival where a rare “Homer Pepe” card sold for $38,500 in a live auction. (It recently resold for more than $320,000). Artist Matt Kane called it “the most important NFT in art history” as its sale “influenced so many of the original crypto artists to believe we could put our art to work building both a market and belief around this new technology.”

In this episode we cover…

- His journey to Bitcoin and founding Rare Pepe Wallet

- Why he feels Rare Pepes have not gotten the recognition they are due

- Collectors are beginning to wise up to Rare Pepes, as evidenced by their rise in price and sales volume. What does he attribute this to?

- How can someone purchase a Rare Pepe in 2021?

- For a newcomer to the project, which Rare Pepes stand out as having the most historical significance? Which ones does he feel are undervalued?

- On-chain bitcoin NFT trading has its highest month on record in September. What does he attribute this to?

- His thoughts on the future of NFTs on Bitcoin

- And much more!

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