He Let Strangers Raid His Private Wallet for Art

Non-fungible tokens, or digital assets representing unique and scarce items, have taken off in the past few weeks. So much so, that video producer Robin Schmidt and artist Simon Wan thought to do an experiment to find what is actually valuable, art attached to these tokens or their crypto component?

And that gets to a deeper question: are those buying or coveting these items cultured, or just greedy?

The Rug Pull

That was the question posed to all those who stumbled into a Telegram chat called The Rug Pull. The gateway into this rabbit hole was a QR code embedded in the latest video in The Defiant’s YouTube channel, published one week ago along with the question: Can you recognize art when it’s right in front of you?

Those who picked up on that wink and scanned the QR code landed in a parallel universe with its own special rules. Throughout the week, they were treated with short videos reminiscent of the self-destructing messages in James Bond movies, containing riddles and tasks.

The Bomb Squad

One of these tasks was for the first 50 people in the chat to fill out a Google form with their ETH address, in exchange for which they were airdropped a Bomb NFT (one of which is for sale here).

There was no limit for the number of addresses they could include in the form so theoretically, someone could have taken all 50 tokens. Still, most of the group showed to be cultured and not greedy. Unfortunately for Robin, this wasn’t the case in a subsequent test.

12 Angry Men

Robin, aka SuperMassive, performed the ultimate sacrifice: He exposed the seed phrase of his private wallet in a cryptic video. Nonetheless, the savvy people in the group were quickly able to pick up on the hint.

For what happened next, and to see what this experiment’s grand finale will be, watch the video: