Tycho first heard about crypto back in the days of Silk Road, calling the underground market “the coolest thing in the world” at the time. Now, decidedly legit, he’s launching his own”Tycho Open Source Community” using polygon NFTs.
Tycho says he bought his first hardware wallet in 2011, but didn’t put it Bitcoin am working on it. In an interview with decodethe artist – aka Scott Hansen, or ISO50 from his blogging days at the time – shared the story of how he got into crypto and web3.
In 2016 he bought Ethereum and swore never to sell it, just to see what happened to it.
“We should have this Ethereum thing,” he recalled when he told musician Jakub Alexander on his tour. “Bitcoin is old school, but Ethereum, this is cool.”
After that, he almost forgot about his crypto for years as he continued to make music and visual arts. Hansen designed all the graphics for his albums and developed his signature melodic, ethereal electronic sound – music that earned him two Grammy nominations.
“Our pact was that we would never sell any of it, and see what happens to it,” he said of the ETH he still is.hodling” Today.
In 2021 Hansen released some NFTs On Handy port and open sea, which he calls “a learning experience.” Inspired by beepleJustin Blue (3lau), and artist Reuben Wu, sees Hansen Web3 and crypto as a good match for his community.
“We used to talk to each other at graphic design conferences,” Hansen said of Beeple, who recently collaborated with Madonna on a NSFW NFT Collection.
Tycho’s community — which he claims includes VFX artists, musicians, and other graphic designers — was first formed in the blogosphere, but has since spread to a token-gated Discord server.
Given its collaborative and professional members, it is no different from the one music producer Illmind also builds through NFTs with its “Squad of Knights,” which offers holders IRL benefits such as recording studio space and musical collaboration opportunities.
Hansen sees Web3 as a way for artists to get rid of the social media middleman.
“Web2 social media platforms came around and hijacked this whole thing,” Hansen said of how social media changed internet communities. “It doesn’t really feel like a two-way street anymore.”
When he heard about Medallion, a full-service crypto platform, Hansen was intrigued. He said he started working with the company because he found their terms attractive.
“What’s interesting to me about the Web3 space and using Web3 for this purpose is that with Patreon you just create a login,” Hansen said.
But with his ‘Open Source’ community, which gives holders access to things like pre-listening to albums and live streams, ‘the artist owns the data’.
Hansen said he always wants the NFTs — which act as access tokens — to be free, while additional benefits could cost money or crypto in the future.
“I think this was the end game, to create this kind of community space, this Web3 community,” Hansen said.
Whether Hansen will be releasing music NFTs under his Tycho alias in the future is something he says he is investigating. Hansen told decode he has “a few releases in the offing” that he could turn into music NFTs, but no concrete plans yet.
When asked why electronic artists love Steve Aokic3lau, doodmau5, Dillon Francisoand he himself is so open to Web3 compared to artists in other genres, Hansen has a few ideas.
“Electronic musicians in general […] you have to be a bit tech savvy to even get into it, and I think you’re probably quite interested in technology, just like a general concept anyway, if you’re into this kind of music,” he said.
As someone with a background in computer science, digital graphic design, and electronic music, Web3 and crypto felt like a natural thing for Hansen to explore.
In his opinion, Web3 hasn’t leveled the playing field — it’s still hard for new musicians to find success — but he believes Web3 will eventually become “the norm.”
“I don’t look at it” […] like this kind of utopian vision that it was kind of touted like in the beginning,” he said. “But I definitely think it’s another tool in the artist’s toolkit, so when we have a different kind of leverage, I think that will shift [the] power dynamics somehow.”
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