Cyber

This week, Cyber, a Barcelona-based bitcoiner, artist and the founder of Street Cyber, a group of artists whose mission it is to use street art to empower and educate people about bitcoin. Using murals, stickers and wheat-pasted posters, they've reached thousands with their message that bitcoin is a powerful tool for financial freedom. Cyber has a great story of shifting his proprieties and letting the muses direct his efforts, be it by liberally modifying the open-source work of Banksy or selling prints and stickers to fellow plebs ready to spread the word globally. I learned a lot about this relatively new medium of messaging and artistic expression that has me reevaluating my assumptions.

For anyone without the time or inclination to click on links in the show notes, I'll take a second to describe the work Cyber is creating. It's the stuff of most urban landscapes if you tune your eye to it. It's the stickers that layer themselves on lamp posts and mailboxes, it's the rouge wheat-pasted posters that appear in marginal corners of construction sites, shadowed building facades or derelict phone booths. It may even be permissioned mural paintings under bridges or in a playground. It's made, displayed and left to the whims of neighborhoods and municipal authorities to last a night, a fortnight, or more.

The Street Cyber aesthetic is that of Banksy. A bold and familiar stencil of something common or benign, a girl with balloons, a monkey wearing a sandwich board, or a Mario Brother, re-contextualized to serve a bitcoin message. Often but not elusively rendered in black and white with a deftly chosen splash of orange. These are arresting but not ugly. They're clever but not silly. They're pleasing to the eye with their familiar iconography but also deeply satisfying for the curious or savvy. Text is employed where appropriate but often just the bitcoin symbol is sufficient. It's bold stuff often made more so by context. Anyway, I hope that helps and that my attempts at describing the art tempts you to visit streetcyber.art at your leisure.

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And now, my conversation with Cyber that begins by him asking me questions rather than the other way around. I could have edited it otherwise but decided to leave it, so here's my rip with Cyber.

There you have it, be sure to follow Cyber and his gang of street artists as they bring the bitcoin message to the streets. Maybe get a pack of stickers from his site and bring the message to your 'hood. Streetcyber.art is the website to go to and all his social links are in the show notes.

Thanks to Cyber for sharing his time, energy and bravado with the bitcoin muse. Onward!