“Bitcoin is the hardest form of money”: gmoney on digital ownership and the quiet normalisation of crypto

Our first interaction with gmoney took place in April 2023 in New York City. NFTs were still a cultural trend, boosted by ventures from Nike, Adidas, and PepsiCo, enough to justify a multi-day conference called NFT.NYC. Already known as an early Ethereum investor and a CryptoPunk holder (NFTs often valued in the six figures), gmoney organised a treasure hunt across his favourite New York bodegas (convenient stores), promoting his connected-clothing brand, 9dcc. Although 9dcc was discontinued in 2025, he still experiments with decentralised finance on Ethereum.

Gmoney’s public identity is closely tied to CryptoPunks, one of the earliest and most influential NFT collections. There are 10,000 unique Punks, launched in 2017 and propelled into mainstream attention during the 2021 NFT bull run. Gmoney, however, had been involved long before that peak, becoming a core community member and long-term believer. Over time, his Punk evolved from a digital collectible into something closer to financial infrastructure. “I consider it an asset class,” he argues during a new encounter in Paris. That connection to his digital avatar even led him to collaborate with Prada and adidas on a capsule collection. In early 2024, he “took out a one-million-dollar loan using it as collateral, on a decentralised platform, without paperwork or KYC.” That experience, he says, “captures the original promise of crypto.” The loan wasn’t a speculative move; it served as a bridge for an off-chain, real-world transaction. What mattered was not speed alone, but autonomy: he did not have to hand over personal information or seek approval. “I have this asset that has real value,” the New Yorker explains. “If there’s a lender willing to lend against that, then there’s a market.”

Gmoney’s first encounter with Bitcoin dates back to around 2012. “I remember seeing it trade at $27 and then spending hours trying to figure out how to buy it, but I couldn’t,” he tells us. When the price later surged to $1,000 and collapsed, he dismissed it as a passing mania. “You know… tulips, right?” At the time, he was making most of his money by shorting stocks. It wasn’t until 2017, when Bitcoin returned to that same price level, that he began to reconsider. Why, he wondered, did it keep coming back?

Attracted to Ethereum

That question led him to think about Bitcoin less as a trade and more as money itself. Today, he describes it as “probably the hardest form of money,” pointing to its fixed supply. Unlike gold, which expands as more is mined, Bitcoin cannot be produced in greater quantities, regardless of price. Rather than claiming Bitcoin transformed his worldview overnight, gmoney situates it within a longer historical arc: barter gave way to currency; currency to banking. Bitcoin, he argues, is simply the next iteration: a digital system that allows value to be exchanged in a trustless manner, without relying on centralised institutions.

That same logic extends beyond Bitcoin. The ability to borrow against NFTs, or spend crypto directly through cards linked to traditional payment networks, represents for him a quiet but significant shift. He now carries multiple crypto-linked cards, tools that let him stay “long crypto” until the moment he chooses to spend it, instead of routing funds through a bank first.

What gmoney describes is not a revolution announced with noise, but one unfolding “slowly, then suddenly.” As more people accept digital assets as collateral, each new participant lowers the barrier for the next. “The flywheel accelerates”, he says. In his telling, crypto is no longer only about proving itself, but about being used. That is why he is now mostly focused on Ethereum, a platform that enables him to interact with different assets permissionlessly, 24/7, “without paperwork,” as he puts it. It also explains why he was spotted among the small crowd invited by Consensys at Nasdaq’s closing bell to celebrate Ethereum’s 10th anniversary, alongside Joseph Lubin (Consensys CEO and Ethereum co-founder).

What about NFTs? Gmoney won’t let you call them a fad. CryptoPunks generated roughly $300 million in secondary sales in 2025, and digital creators like Beeple now have their own sections at Art Basel. Maybe it is an asset class of its own.