Digital money secured by cryptography and recorded on a blockchain rather than issued by a bank. Bitcoin, launched in 2009, was the first.
And the thing that made a lot of people very uncomfortable about cryptocurrency and blockchain art was you could see where the money was coming from. You couldn't pretend that you lived in this carefree world of imagination and information and aesthetics and art, unsullied by the churn of capital.
Rhea Myers, 2010s AI Art: Tyler Hobbs, Helena Sarin, Rhea Myers
Cryptocurrency has historical ties to the Extropian movement. Life extension culture overlaps with crypto. There appears to be a Gnostic urge to transcend bodies and the material world.