What is Crypto Art? A Comprehensive Framework

The ideological foundation of crypto art can be traced back to the Cypherpunk movement, which originated in the pioneering work of cryptographers in the 1970s, such as Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman. Their vision attracted a network of thinkers concerned with how to leverage emerging technologies to resist censorship and technologically enabled surveillance. Notable figures like Tim Berners-Lee and Julian Assange (3) were advocating for systems that offer privacy to individuals and accountability to those in power.

When Bitcoin emerged in 2018, it resonated with the Cypherpunk community’s ideas, although the group already recognized that the privacy aspects did not go far enough (4). Values such as privacy, decentralization, and empowerment found their way into early blockchain startup white papers, often summarized into catchy crypto slogans like be your own bank or banking the unbanked.

While often criticized as mere lip service, these ideas fostered a shared belief system for the technology and the emerging digital art movement. As blockchain startups adopted these principles, so too did early crypto art platforms, advocating for the democratization of access, challenging institutional gatekeeping, and supporting the rise of the self-sovereign artist. To what extent they succeeded will be discussed in a later chapter.

Despite its relatively young history, Bitcoin and the underlying technology, the blockchain, have not fallen short of mysteries, legends, failures, and drama. From the enigmatic figure of Satoshi Nakamoto to the FBI’s takedown of the Silk Road marketplace and major crypto exchange scandals, the public’s perception often focused on risk and chaos. Many dismissed blockchain technology as too complex and irrelevant.