#NFTCast
# Interview with Sirsu - https://twitter.com/sirsuhayb
Artist, advocate, leader, and mesch
Philly born and "raised", but he moved around a lot
Parents encouraged art and art career
Pokemon voice acting
MySpace as the foundations for his business career
Every time he found something he loved, they pushed him.
Why it is important to encourage art and artists
How we all benefit from what Sirsu's parents did to encourage his artistic path
How that became part of his mission to support and grow artists and lead
Digital vs. traditional for his choice
His path to crypto pre NFT
How he lost a lot in a wallet from when he had bitcoin as a kid
His crazy path between art and a crypto hackathon healthcare crypto project and how he ended up in Japan
How Instagram filters introduced him to NFT
How he understood early that art on blockchain equaled creative immortality
Was struck with the idea that decades or more later, that people will discover art
Dove headfirst into NFT at that point with Discord, the web, friends, etc.
Started recruiting people
Saw gas increasing and realized it would be difficult
How curation is a mess and categorization is so difficult for artists
How old styles of art may not apply to new artists, especially if they didn't go to art school
Concerned that people see it as a bubble rather than where equity, wealth distribution, and inclusion can happen.
Agrees with me that NFT is the gateway drug to crypto and he saw that early on
# The Mint Fund - https://twitter.com/themintfund
Helps artists get their art on blockchain with funding
Provide marketing and legal guidance
The system is meant to be self-sustainable
How to get involved with them - DM them on Twitter
# HeatCheckMe
An effort to create an influencer platform for growing art exposure for artists
How it came about from just asking a community "Can I get a heat check?". He wanted to build consensus around the best things people were creating. Then the whole thing got out of hand with heat related gifs and deep fakes of Sirsu.
Whether black artists are having more success in the NFT space than they get the opportunity for in the traditional art world.
His most brilliant or important person in NFT/Crypto